Is there a market in flipping airplanes?

You would invest 99.000 € only to compete with PA32s that are 20 years younger and already have what prospective buyer wants.
Cessna owners already made their experience with Cessna SIDs. How long will it take for the other manufacturers to find out that their models are still flying around after 40 or 50 years? (These machines have been built with 20 years of usage in mind in times when the yearly production rates of SEPs were close to 10.000 per year.) So I would not be surprised if Piper would come up with something similar which might ruin your calculation.

IMO the market for such a plane is minuscule. I would think the best use for it is a jump plane perhaps, and as such no upgrade would help, except getting the engine fixed. I don’t think anyone is interested paying you money to fix the engine though.

Niner_Mike wrote:

So here is my question: would anyone buy it like this and be willing to put extra money in to have everything to his/her taste? I assume it makes sense for the engine to be overhauled before selling, but new owners might be doing the avionics themselves …

Several things which will keep people from buying this straight out.

People don’t like “project” airplanes and this one actually is not, apart from the 8.33 requirement it is airworthy and ready to fly. So I would take out the stress on upgrade plattform. It is if someone wants it for that, but VFR they can plug a cheapo 8.33 radio and go fly.

Secondly , the engine is over calendar, which means it has to be overhauled for commercial ops, certainly not for private ops. I’d change that in the add. “Engine needs overhaul” is a typical trigger of “run far run fast” comments. Also, over the date sais nothing, rather write when the last overhaul was done or when the engine if never overhauled was installed. It’s a huge difference if an engine has 12.5 years or 45 years since overhaul.

I am not sure about the pricing as I don’t really have too much comparison. But I would think that 72k would buy a lot more in terms of airplane, even up to up to date Senecas. As a project, the way I see it, it is a typical case where the owners ideas about price are wishful thinking. The upgrade depending on what people would want can easily double the price. A full upgrade (2x GTN, G500 or similar and upgrading the AP to 2 axis, can cost west of 100k. Therefore I’d think that with the current avionics museum, that price is overly optimistic.

Niner_Mike wrote:

On another note: is there a market for “flipping” airplanes? What if I buy it, upgrade it and sell it? Can I make a buck or two?

Difficult to say. What could be done here is to buy it, put 2 new radios (GNS430’s or similar) and maybe an Aspen or G5 and sell it again. I would not overhaul the engine unless there is a technical reason for that, as for part NCO and even before calendar TBO is meaningless. If you want to do that or something similar, then I would think it can be a profit, but only if you get it for not more than maybe half the price it is advertized now. Flipping planes is done in Eastern Europe, where they buy wrecks or “projects” and use their cheap labour to put them back on the market for competitive prices. If it is feasible in Western Europe with the wage and price structure we have here, is questionable.

You can make a small fortune with this business model…. if you start with a big fortune.

Is there a market in flipping airplanes?

As a business in the EU you have to give extensive warranties etc. so making money trading used planes is close to impossible. Therefore most professionals just act as brokers.

That being said you can make some money on project planes but you have to buy them really cheap because it might be stuck in a difficult location unairworthy, damaged, an owner who does not want to deal with the plane any more etc. Also you have to concentrate on high value planes so Cirrus and more expensive. On the small planes all the fixed costs you have like transportation, hangar, travel expenses far exceed any possible profit.

The likely wing inspection AD for the Piper fleet is expected to be focused on the PA28-235/236, PA28R, and PA32 variants. The Archer/Warrior fleet is expected not to require the AD due to reduced MAUM.

You can only make money on 3 planes in this world:

PC12’s, C185’s and Piper Cub’s. Those are the only ones that don’t decrease. Anything else will.

Forget making money on upgrades – the market doesn’t value them. Do an engine overhaul for €35K and you’ll get maybe €10-20K of that back if you turned around and sold it the day after it happened. Panel upgrades, at best 50% of what you put into them, etc, etc. Now, if you said you wanted to start brokering planes and charge a percentage on each sale, then yes, then that’s a viable business opportunity. But that’s a different model.

AdamFrisch wrote:

You can only make money on 3 planes in this world:
PC12’s, C185’s and Piper Cub’s. Those are the only ones that don’t decrease. Anything else will.

Plus C152 (due to demand by schools), plus quite a few cult types such as Stearman.

Forget making money on upgrades

I know people who buy make lots of money buying old planes, upgrading/overhauling and selling them, but they are engineers and perform all the upgrades themselves.