Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Everything But Airplanes Purchase and Sale Agreement Needed

Bill, Sure, if you're willing to foot the bill again.

As for the second quote, my gut instincts were, "I ain't flying this thing all the way to Oregon without doing a good inspection." My enthusiasm said, "The hell with it...you only live once!" Yee Haw!

I can certainly understand the emotions of buying a plane. I'm only on my second one, but I was way more cautious with my first one. The purchase followed a thorough pre-buy by myself that was literally an annual inspection with lots of repairs and new parts. The second one was, I'm sad to say, pretty much bought months before I actually laid my eyes on her. At least my buying buddy didn't try to talk me out of it. I think now he wishes he would have...I think he'd like to have had her.

This guy is only looking for the paperwork to complete the sale, not advice on how fast (or not) to proceed with the acquisition. So, I'll leave my two cents out of it and wish you luck with this new plane. Wayne Westerman always tells me not to fall in love with another guy's woman or plane. Guess I've been busted on both counts...

If you're successful in buying this object of your affection, rest assured we'll be here to help you through the teething pains. Remember, if it flies, floats, or..............

Aw Gary! But there is a big difference between buying an airplane, and ferrying an airplane. When you buy an airplane, it is your responsibility from there on out. No matter what happens. But, in ferrying an airplane, if something went wrong, you would just have put the plane down where ever, walked away, and expected an airplane ticket home!

That's where you're wrong Bill. Instead of putting it down anywhere, and flying home, I would have figured out a way to fly Mr. Ed back home, fixed it right, then started the trip all over again, all on your nickel. Then, once at Grants Pass, THEN, I'd just walk away and demand a plane ticket home!

Just think of the airplane I could have ended up with? Maybe I now wish you had run into trouble?

Here's some input based on my purchase of a Starduster earlier this year. It was located on the opposite side of the USA from me (Georgia), so a few logistics challenges were present.

1. I had a prebuy inspection by an A&P not local to the seller's airport. Located him throught the EAA database. I think this is the most critical part of the process - make sure he is very good, and in my case, very familiar with the specific type.

2. Based on the results of his inspection, I made an offer. Offer accepted. I opened an AOPA escrow account. I highly recommend this. It includes the title search and all paperwork processing.

3. I had an aviation attorney draft a sales agreement to include some specific hold harmless language and other stuff concerning the ferry flight. It turned out that the standard AOPA boiler plate contract would have been just as good, so I would not do this again.

4. If you need to have the airplane ferried and cannot ferry it yourself, have an agreement drawn up with your ferry pilot (if you need this, I would be happy to send you the language I have) and have him named on your insurance policy.

Hope that helps.

Bill,

Thanks for the info. How much was the AOPA escrow/title search investigation?

The airplane is only 40 miles from me so ferry/delivery is no problem.

Thanks,
Tim

YIKES! Draw up and agreement? Looks like I screwed up on this also!

Hell! Gary just threw us a stack of recipts, on our way to take him to catch his flight home, and told us to pay him as we will! And, that there was no hurry to even get the payment to him!

I have to admit. Gary made it very easy and pleasurable in getting Mr. Ed home to us!

Again, Thank you so very much from the bottom of our hearts, Gary!

Tim, AOPA requires a $500 deposit to open the account. After my transaction was complete, the total charges were $486.00.

Bill, I struggled a bit with the ferry pilot agreement, but my attorney talked me (scared me) into doing one with a couple of horror stories.

If I had not the excellent help, support, and reassurance, from the members of this excellent Forum. I would also have demanded more "legalities." Ed Pataky graciously took time from his busy schedule to give Mr. Ed a looking over and a test flight. And gave me the thumbs up. Gary then offered to ferry Mr. Ed home for me. Let us say Gary did turn around and tried to take advantage of the situation? I at least had the reassurance he would never be able to show his face here on this Forum again!

So, in other words, there really was not anything to worry about. Was there?

An AOPA Title report is relatively cheap. I think it says on their site, but something like $100 or $150. Escrow services are a different animal and TITLE INSURANCE is another different animal.

The escrow will make sure the purchase/sale documents and any liens are taken care of so that you are conveyed an airplane free of encumbrance. If you know what you are doing and the airplane is local and the title relatively clean, you probably do not need this service....BUT you need to understand how aircraft titles are more like a real estate purchase than a car purchase, so that you can be sure you get what you are paying for.

Bottom line if you have not done this before or don't have someone knowedgable to help you through the paperwork part, an escrow might be worth the $500 (which I believe probably included the title fee, so that is all in).

If you are comfortable with the process and understand how to get the right documents and file them, then a title report/search is probably sufficient.

Title INSURANCE (which we won't touch here) is to insure that what you think you have is what you have. Relatively cheap, it guarantees that any undocumented claims/liens or any problems in the chain of ownership are "insured" so that if they ever arise, you are protected. I think people RARELY use title insurance, although I almost did once when I could not resolve an issue on a potential airplane where it was sold with only one of two owners signing off. The fact that it was 20 years old probably meant low risk, but the $250 lifetime premium made me feel a lot better about it.

Sorry to be so wordy.