Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Everything But Airplanes Vref Values

I am often flabergasted by the low C150-152 Vref values quoted by AOPA and others. I recently spent some time talking to an insurance rep from AOPA about this, here's the scoop:

Vref is oriented towards the insurance industry, and they want to fudge on the low side. They typically state a value about $5-10K below true market value. This works ok for a $150K Bonanza, but not for a $30K Cessna.

This is why they say a decent 1967 150 with medium engine time is worth $15K when you can't find one for under $20K.

It get's worse the higher up the peformance and mod scale you go. For example, a 160HP Aerobat like mine tops out at $24K on their scale. The airplane is easily worth $40K.

I tried talking to the Aircraft Blue Book guys once at Oshkosh about this, they seemed to have little interest in any airplane that was worth less than $45K. Their attitude was that "real airplanes" sell for more than that, and anything below that is like buying a 1970's era Ford Pinto, i.e. "hey it's a car, and it drives fine, but even if it's in brand new condition, it's only worth $500 tops."

Clearly, these groups are out of touch with us guys at the grassroots level, and they simply aren't interested in being more accurate about it.

I have found the opposite with Vref on the higher airplanes. Typically I consider them valued too high (when looking at 172's and 177's and such) as compared to the Evaluator software on Trade-a-plane.

For lending and buying I use Evaluator, for selling I use Vref. However, they sure hammer on engine times...ouch.

I'm not trying to defend Vref. but my understanding is that Vref reflects the price paid, not the price asked. Also, when one modifies the base price given in Vref for items such as condition, radios, engine time the prices don't seem out of line. When I bought my airplane last Sept. after negotiations I paid just about the Vref price, and I think I got a really nice airplane. Sorting through TAP I found some outlandish asking prices that were so far out in left field that I didn't even enquire.

I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.

George

Cannot say about VRef, but Blue Book uses reports of sales from dealers and brokers for much of its information. Several factors enter into this picture. If you are a dealer you probably don't bother with the bottom of the line aircraft, not much profit in them, and they usually are direct seller/buyer transactions. This leaves little for the dealers/brokers to report. In additon, Dealers and brokers want to drive down wholesale prices of aircraft, so they can acquire them cheaper or at least have a bigger markup in them. They do this by selectively reporting low priced sales and high priced sales depending on condition, hours, etc. to manipulate the prices to their favor.

It would be nice if someone did a "Airplanes Below $50K Blue Book" and encouraged individual sellers and buyers to report transactions so the data could be honestly compiled. Probably never happen. Buyer beware.

Charles

I Vref'd 24F before we bought her on AOPA and she showed a value of around 26K and the seller was asking 21.5. Paint is '99, she has KX155 w/gs, otherwise stock vfr.

I'll punch the numbers again but we found the value to be much higher on Vref than we anticipated.

I ran both VREF and Trade-a-Plane evaluator before purchasing mine last week, and both listed about the same ($23.5K). The seller and I agreed on $19K delivered to my airport, but I noticed the bank value came back about $3K less than both of the estimates. No matter to me, since I was paying less than that anyways, but caught my eye when I saw that.

As they say, the true value of anything is what someone else is willing to pay for it, so if a $40K 150 doesn't sell, then either you haven't found the right buyer or it just isnt worth that much. There are too many nice 150's out there in the $18-25K range for me to consider buying one at such a high price, but someone might consider $40K a bargain for a clean, low-time, nicely-equipped 150/152.

Rick

Several years ago I decided it would be a good idea to send out postcards to all the 150-152 owners asking them to fill out a brief survey of their airplane purchase.

I haven't done this yet because of the logistics involved, but still plan too.

For starters, I intend to keep the survey annoymous, otherwise some folks are unlikely to be state the true purchase price because they used a lower figure for tax purposes.

Second, I'll need to figure out a fair way to evaluate the differences in condition, I'll probably use the standard 1-10 scale for exterior and interior condition, and then have a multiple choice format for avionics, grouped into high, medium, and low values. Then there's the issue of total time and SMOH, again, I'll probably set a series of ranges, its easy enough for the computer to calculate a dollar per hour average for each.

Lastly, I'll need to know the year and season the airplane was purchased.

If I can manage this survey, I'd plan to repeat it once a year. Then we would have a fairly accurate "Blue Book" of true C150-152 values.

I see this kind of data as very useful for club members selling their airplanes, and of course for buyers trying to determine if the asking price is fair.

It's a fairly large logistical challenge, I'd likely restrict the mailing to airplanes that have sold in the last 3-5 years, but that's still 8,000+ airplanes. At best I'd hope to get a 10% response.

Finally,