Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Everything But Airplanes Is this one worth $25K ?

Alexander,

Are you and AOPA member? They have Vref to allow you to get a quick estimate of the price of a plane. Trade a Plane has a value estimation program as well.

If you are serious, a prebuy is necessary. It is worth the trouble and cost, but they don't catch everything.

Good luck.

Both trade-a-plane and AOPA estimator show about 19K for this plane, thats why I asked about high price in the first place.

If "market value" is less then 20K plus possible issues with radio - this is a no-go decision for me. I would not feel comfortable waisting time and money on inspection knowing that I need 6K off the asking price.

It seems unlikely that the seller will go down by 6K after only few months on the market.

I'd take the online estimators' value quotations with a grain of salt. The ones I've seen have no way of taking into account all the variables. They're okay for a gross ballpark figure but I wouldn't take it as gospel. I've got a ton of mods on my plane that the estimators don't list in their database but do increase the value of the aircraft.

I agree! But, I'm surprised on this one to hear of two online estimators showing $19K for this plane (I haven't checked them myself). In my experience, those estimates are usually higher than what I see in the actual market. These actually appear to me to be right on the money to a couple grand low!

If I look at the asking prices on 10 similar airplanes, I can throw out one or two each of the high-ball and low ball numbers (they will be obvious). Average what ever is left, and subtract 10% (for those sellers that might negotiate). That gives me what I think is a workable market range for a basic airplane.

The online estimators are designed and used by the insurance industry, and are notorious for undervaluing an airplane. Both of my airplanes came in more than $5K below what I considered to be their true value. I believe I've posted about this in the past, but the reader's digest version is that the insurance industry would rather guess a little low than high, and they are compensating for owners who typically would rather guess high than low.

It's my observation that rather than setting their values a certain percentage low, which seems more logical, they knock off a portion instead, of between $5K - $15K off the top. This is not as big an issue on a $150K airplane like a Mooney, Bonanza or 182, but knocks as much as 25% of the value off a C150-152. Where it really comes into play is when you sign up for insurance, and they don't want to insure the airplane for what you paid for it.

Looking through the paperwork, I noticed that the previous owner was unable to insure the plane for its full value by about $5,000. They'd written him to justify the higher amount he'd tried to insure, and then rejected that justification.

I decided to go with what the insurance company claimed it was worth and look at the rest as a very high deductible. But the point is that their estimate of its value was too low by about $5,000.

Insurance? What insurance?

“Patients is a virtue Grasshopper”.

preach on wayne. i have been looking for a year or better. nice one i found, i was in love with, was missing all the sparrowhawk stc paperwork. i walked away after the prebuy.

If it was a legal conversion then I would think Airmoda NW would have replaced the STC paperwork.
I would have had the owner get it replaced (after I called Airmods NW to verify it was done legaly) before I walked.