Tell him to look at tohatsu online.. brand new and shipped to your door for roughly the price he is looking for. I have been doing a lot of research on these and people have few problems. Also tohatsu is making merc four stroke under 20hp.
http://www.onlineoutboards.com/Tohatsu- ... oards.html
couple threads on iboats about them..
http://forums.iboats.com/showthread.php?t=564256