Pony prices and supply

[Fudgeball123]

The pony market seems crazy at the moment - prices still high, demand through the roof and very few bigger ponies (13.2-14.2) on the market. Anything around £4k is snapped up within a week around us. The only things not snapped up are either expensive or hard work.
Are people anticipating that the increase in cost of living will push more ponies onto the market? We went to a seller yesterday and they had 4 ponies for 1 child! Will people rationalise their pony collections or is there another reason for so few bigger ponies? (lots around at 12.2 / 11.2)

Most genuinely good childrens ponies are never advertised. They are sold by word of mouth and it’s not uncommon for them to have waiting lists.

bigger ponies are often more expensive as they are good for adults too and therefore are more appealing to people who need to share their horses with teenage children etc

Also the supply issue is not caused by people not selling, so I don’t think it will change with the cost of living crisis.
The supply issue is caused by how many breeders have packed up because it’s insanely expensive and with horses being so cheap for so long even as a hobby they expect to lose money on it’s no longer viable.
Brexit has made getting the nice sporty German and French ponies over much harder.
Irish sellers are (understably) no longer willing to accept a pittance for their animals to go over to England to just be sold for 2/3x as much 2 weeks later. So what is coming over from Ireland is significantly more than it was even 2/3 years ago.

If you are looking for something around the 14.2hh mark for a novicy child I think £4k is pretty unrealistic unless you are willing to accept a pony in its late teens or a conformational fault

I agree and would say that a safe child's 14.2hh pony that can do PC activities and complete a very basic level dressage, SJ or XC, a schoolmaster as we always called them, will be fetching 5 figure sums around here. Even the scrawny looking coloured cobs I have seen are going for silly money so anything with a bit of breeding will be a lot more.

Putting it in perspective, when I was a child in the 1970s my 14.2hh schoolmaster pony cost my parents £500. That same pony now would probably cost around £10,000. That is 20 times the price. However, the average house price back then was less than £10,000 - now it is about £260,000, so 26 times the price, so I don't think horses have gone up as much as houses! I think average salaries have gone up by a similar amount to horses, about 20 times.

We bought a 14.2 all-rounder first child pony for my daughter last year. She's a cob mare and we probably overpaid for it massively (because we were very inexperienced and it's the yard owner who arranged everything). We paid just over 7.5K for her, but my daughter does everything on her - Pony Club, SJ shows, eventing etc. She's lovely and does everything asked of her, very easy to load, gets on with other ponies and alone, great to hack out, fast but easy to control etc., so we're very happy with her. She's not some amazingly talented show jumper, but my daughter jumps up to 1 metre on her (it took a few months to teach her but she's such an honest pony - does what's asked of her). If we were more experienced I'm sure we could have paid less for her.

@XelaM i don’t think you’ve overpaid at all. My friend had a 15hh cob all rounder first horse type who she got £12k for easily and was swamped with enquiries

@Lastqueenofscotland2 Oh, thank you! That's great to hear. My daughter dreams of buying another more well-bred SJ horse eventually and I would love to still keep our cob, but maybe loan her out to a child/teen as she's an amazing all-rounder PC-pony.