Just my experience as a buyer, but since I had to finance, the paperwork was simplified some, well the FAA paperwork, not my IOU paperwork.
All I did was hack out the terms of the Aircraft Purchase Agreement contract and sign/notarize for my records and have a legal basis for the terms of the transaction. The financing agency took care of the FAA paperwork (very timely I might add) and the FAA had it changed in their database in, oh... a month and a half. The mistake I made was to be very clear the funds weren't released until the delivered plane passed my local pre-buy. Luckily it was ok, but I technically ended up purchasing it before my inspections
The AOPA website has an excellent page devoted to buying/selling (it didn't make me login, but let me know if you have toubles viewing it, I'll PM you a copy of a couple of the articles).
AOPA buyer/seller/owner information page [
aopa.org]
