Sorry to hear your woes Corey.
If it's any help, here's how my story went and what I might have changed about it.
I started my PPL at a local part 141 school with no intention of buying a plane and was not a member of the club. By the time I had accumulated about 30 hours or so of renting and knowing that I would be doing cross coutry flying and overnighting that would not make renting feasable, I started my completely amateur plane hunt.
You, on the other hand, with this club as a resource are already miles ahead of me at the time.
After a few disappointments of planes being bought up under my nose while attempting to do my prebuy research, I came across my current plane on barnstormers and truthfully ended up getting pretty lucky. The first two buyers backed out for financial reasons and my month and a half of waiting paid off.
I went through AOPA for both financing and insurance. The insurance they provided me was very reasonable, about half what I pay for my car, without having a PPL yet. The only advantage to the AOPA financing on the other hand is the paperwork will be done right because they deal with airplanes all the time. You may have mixed results with your average banks. They will have a complete title and modification search done as well and will take care of all the FAA documents, as would any good airplane financing business.
The plane was instrument capable and the buyer delivered it about 380 miles in IMC, another testament to his confidence in the plane and my purchase contract had the stipulation that if my local A/P found any airworthiness or non-functional equipment that was unadvertised, he would take the plane back. This is where my most regretted mistake came into play: I trusted a mechanic that I had no knowledge of to do the inspection. I have since had a number of reasons to lose faith in this mechanic and am somewhat anxious about my first upcoming annual under my ownership.
You already have a huge leg up on me in the references you can get from this club on good prebuy A/Ps.
I flew the plane once then parked it until I finished my PPL. At that point I was already so in tune with the trainer 152s I had all my hours in and this one felt quite a bit different. Once I had my license in hand, I began to familiarize myself with my plane, it's more complicated avionics, and the big scary world (so it seemed at the time) of ownership and maintenance. I admit that having my own plane when I started my PPL would possibly have been a bit of an overload for me keeping track of both my plane's health and legalities as well as trying to learn my daily flight lesson. But again, with this club as a resource, that becomes much easier (and the number of good AOPA resources out there).
As for hangars, I had no intention whatsoever in keeping my plane in one, so I bought a nice cover, tiedowns, etc... Once I was on the field a few weeks a very unexpected deal came along and I couldn't pass on the offer. But there is no guarantee on how long my hangar will be available to me at the current price. The airport also wanted to leaseback my plane for training and some IFR work, but I decided not to for the time being and keep my baby to myself.
Anyway, I wish you the best of luck! Oh and if you do take that very nice sounding deal of Bryan's... he's a commercial pilot now too!!!
