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Plus 1. Never have a prebuy done by a mechanic who has done any work on the airplane previously.

I have to agree in my buying experience,all my pre buys where done by a mechanic had never worked on the airplane. I also seek out a mechanic in the area that has lots of experience on the type/ brand you are inspecting. Good luck.

This little tidbit of sage advice is priceless.

The more complex the airplane, the more priceless it becomes but it certainly has much value in our 150/152 world.

I wholeheartedly agree with the advice and collective wisdom expressed above. The challenge is finding a mechanic with the availability to perform the pre-buy within a reasonable timeframe.
The current airplane market has parallels to the real estate market. Don’t fall prey to a “snooze you lose” mentality. If one gets away before you have time to complete your personal due diligence, move on to the next one.
I have purchased several aircraft and learned this wisdom the hard way on one of my purchases. You will find the right aircraft for you, but you have to have a little patience or you can wind up with a “ pig in a poke”.

The above responses answer this question well. But they all beg another question - how does a mechanic get away with a “pencil whipped” annual on a fresh sale?

Pretty easy.

First off, there’s always the defense “It wasn’t like that when *I* inspected it.” So now the buyer has to foresnsically document everything that was wrong to prove it couldn’t have all happened between the sale and next inspection. And then sue the mechanic and try to convince a judge that went to school for law, not mechanics.

Except that brings up the next problem: The buyer is not the mechanic’s customer. He didn’t sell the plane. He worked for the seller. So the buyer has to sue the seller. But the seller will just say he trusted the mechanic. So responsibility gets a bit more muddied.

Next problem - the lawsuit has to take place in the seller’s location. Bought a plane in California and flew it home to the Carolinas before finding a problem? Now the buyer has to do battle three thousand miles and three time zones away.

Ok, the vengeful buyer may say, they’ll get the FAA to go after the mechanic! The buyer will go to the FAA, tell them everything that was wrong and unsafe about the airplane they just flew home. And the FAA will dutifully note this information, then they’ll want to talk to the buyer about a possible certificate action for having flown an unairworthy aircraft with known and obvious deficiencies, as stated by the buyer themself.

Oh, they may also investigate the mechanic as well, but they’ll still run into the “It wasn’t like that when *I* inspected it” defense. And even if they do punish the mechanic, that won’t get any money for the buyer to repair the problems because that’s not the FAAs problem. And, again, the mechanic was not the seller.

GOOD mechanics are truly moral and honest people.

That makes a lot of sense Kirk
I am just not sure about the one thing about "the buyer having a posible certificate action". If the buyer purchased the plane and before operating it, did his due diligence to make sure it was airworthy, that is, within annual (signed off as airworthy by an IA), all applicable ADs complied with (some could come due after the annual inspection), required docs on board etc. Then his defense is he believed he flew an airworthy airplane home. Ultimately the final "return to service" is done by the pilot after preflight / run up and he decides to take off.
I always believed the best pre buy inspection is an annual inspection done by a mechanic/IA who is trusted by and working for the buyer. annual inspections can be done any time. It's the last one that counts.

In my situation, it just so happened the fact that aviation is a small community worked to the pencil-whipping mechanic's disadvantage. You see, there is a pilot at my home airport, HNB, who used to take several planes to this mechanic based at GEZ to have him do his annuals (Bonanza, 182, 172). At the time I was taking my plane to DCY for my annuals, which is just a short 30 min hop away. This pilot would drop in from time-to-time and chat with my mechanic. He just so happened to drop in while my plane was in its first annual, and knowing I was a new pilot and a first time owner, asked Eric about it, as he was genuinely concerned I'd bought a piece of junk and wouldn't realize how unsafe it was.

Once Eric showed him everything that was wrong, and he agreed with Eric these things had been this way for quite a while, and he saw the signed off annual in my logbook, he was furious. When he saw how the mechanic, HIS mechanic, had basically screwed me over, he pulled all his business from him. That, to me, was justice served, and more than the FAA would have likely done had I tried to seek some sort of legal or regulatory victory.

What goes around comes around ,loosing customers is more important than dealing with the FAA. Nice post.