I’m calling the peak

ArrowFlyer86 said:
Totally. After looking at the data nearly every week for 6 months I have yet to see any real outliers in SR22s!
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Partly due there not being much variability across the fleet, other than time in service and pre-repack or post-repack.
 
Price update 1/31/24 to 2/29/24. Introduced a new "median price" section for each series.
Lots of data on here now. I'll probably try to find a way to organize it better so it's a little more clean. Open to suggestions if anyone has recommendations.

Only things that caught my eye was the influx of new Piper Arrow sellers causing a decent spike in asking prices (+8.9% inc MoM on an average basis, and +6.8% MoM on a median pricing basis).
I wish I shared their optimism for our resale value :) . Same for PA28-* sellers; a similar increase. Also 172s taking a quick breather before prices continue their inexorable climb to the moon.

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EDIT: Added in the motivated seller list. The tail numbers with the biggest price declines. The guy in #1 has dropped over 40% since September.
 
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For models with low numbers (Archers, 152) you are getting huge swings (40% increases), is that because of the long production runs and variability of prices? Maybe group all the 15X models together, like you did with the Mooney.
I would ignore new planes and focus on used prices.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
For models with low numbers (Archers, 150s) you are getting huge swings (40% increases), is that because of the long production runs and variability of prices? I would ignore new planes and focus on used prices.
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There is lots of variability in the models and there isn't enough of them in the market (low N) in order to create some stability. Archer, Acclaim, Sierra, Debonairs, Musketeers (which I dropped)... They've all had low N and been bumpy.
Unfortunately there's not many ways around it unless I manually curate the listings that are included with each series, which I don't think I should do.

For instance... All it takes to swing the Archer market above is like 3 guys to list a late 70s Archer with a good glass panel and newer SMOH times and you're going to see a huge spike in prices. I'm not really in a position to say that shouldn't be counted. Same for Malibus. I've seen "avg" swings of 100k because 5 people have 80s models for sale and 2 people list a >=2012 model year PA46. That market is so small that 1-2 listings does legitimately swing the aggregate asking prices.

The solution (to me) is that I frankly don't really give hardly any attention to low N series. If I see N less than 15-20 I figure it's going to be an erratic series. Thankfully because of their low prominence in the data they make very little impact on the aggregate market stats at the bottom.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
At those prices, 3 of those Lances on the motivated list must be trashed.
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Somewhere recently I ran across a couple for sale in Alaska that were freight dogs. Original radios, trashed paint & interior, and 15k hours. I'm sure that's them. Considering what it would cost to bring them up to something a private owner would want, they're probably overpriced.

On the bright side, the fact that a p32r can survive to 15k hours in that life makes me feel better about my 6000 hour plane still having some life in her.
 
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The finalization of the bolt hole AD (remember, it's still an interim, even all these years later) may change that valuation of life balance (and resale value by proxy) dramatically. Go look at seminole prices pre and post wing spar time out. That's coming to some 32s and 28s.

Of course then we'll start to hear the commander tribe styled cope, "well, by the time i reach that hour ill be dead so...". I no longer have a dog in that fight thank odin, but i wouldn't go near anything -28/-32 circa 12k airframe time (my guess where theyre gonna life limit the spar) , and would consider the value of anything above 10k as functionally the engine core value only.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
There is lots of variability in the models and there isn't enough of them in the market (low N) in order to create some stability. Archer, Acclaim, Sierra, Debonairs, Musketeers (which I dropped)... They've all had low N and been bumpy.
Unfortunately there's not many ways around it unless I manually curate the listings that are included with each series, which I don't think I should do.

For instance... All it takes to swing the Archer market above is like 3 guys to list a late 70s Archer with a good glass panel and newer SMOH times and you're going to see a huge spike in prices. I'm not really in a position to say that shouldn't be counted. Same for Malibus. I've seen "avg" swings of 100k because 5 people have 80s models for sale and 2 people list a >=2012 model year PA46. That market is so small that 1-2 listings does legitimately swing the aggregate asking prices.

The solution (to me) is that I frankly don't really give hardly any attention to low N series. If I see N less than 15-20 I figure it's going to be an erratic series. Thankfully because of their low prominence in the data they make very little impact on the aggregate market stats at the bottom.
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Any chance of normalizing the list prices? For example factoring in the year, a crude way would be price/year.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Any chance of normalizing the list prices? For example factoring in the year, a crude way would be price/year.
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For a handful of the big N series aircraft (172/182/arrow/PA28/M20/SR22...) I could setup an index benchmark, standardized to only include 1 or 2 model years, if that would be helpful? That would give some standardization for the aircraft series.
I can also backfill history for that since I still have the raw data behind it.

But that method may only help standardize for major series. The small N series I can't do that b/c too few (or no) aircraft would pass whatever criteria I establish.
 
The solution is simple, stop paying these crazy prices and they will start coming back down. I am sure there are exceptions but I certainly have noticed planes I am interested in aren't selling or take months to find the right buyer at the price they are asking.
 
Over the past month the median price drop was pretty significant (-5.7%), the average was (-0.8%). Total listing counts increased about +3%.

Notes:
- SR22 + C206 + "35 Bo" pricing strength helped insulate the average price from dropping. The huge price tags of SR22/C206 gives them outsized influence on average pricing.
- SR20 listing turnover hit a wall. Normally it's in the 30s%+, but inexplicably dropped to 17%.
- Focusing on median price changes of reasonable sized categories: PA28s , PA24s (Comanches), M20s, Cessna 182s/210s and A36 Bo's all led the way with downward prices. The noteworthy thing that caught my eye about those is they're regular GA, NOT flight school categories.
- No idea if the price changes are seasonal and people trying to get rid of their plane for the flying season or something else.

Since I don't have the curated series prices yet for major N numbers as MooneyDriver suggested, I put in a "average model year listed" section so you can see if there was a shift.
A +/- 1 or 2 year shift in Cessna 172s doesn't make much of a difference. In SR22s it can be muy grande.

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DeadStick said:
Coming into this post 2 years later and seeing how prices just kept on climbing is really depressing.
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Parts and labor? Sure. Airframe resale prices? No, that hasn't been my observational experience since fall of 2023. Certainly not inflation adjusted. But I'm not following all aircraft types, just a small sliver of it (trike FG acro 2-seater EAB).

We have no reliable mechanism for disclosing completed sales (mine wasn't, other than self-disclosing on social media). So the notion that prices "have gone up" in what the statement seeks to imply (completed sales), is facts not in evidence.

Listing prices are just like anything, a wish. Even then, listing prices have flattened to slightly decreased in the types I've been looking at. Inventory is starting to pick up. Some people still living in 2020 list for the moon, don't get bites (or pearl-clutch when one comes in with an under asking offer) and pull the listing. Based on my recent experience as a passive buyer, lots unserious sellers chaffing up the listings, merely trolling the market. I'm not chucking from the cheap seats, I was a seller in 2023 and completed in 14 days, and my available market was way more limited mind you (AOG sale). It's not just airplanes, even housing suffers from that dynamic in present circumstances; my clown neighbor for instance, still there sitting unsold.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Parts and labor? Sure. Airframe resale prices? No, that hasn't been my observational experience since fall of 2023. Certainly not inflation adjusted. But I'm not following all aircraft types, just a small sliver of it (trike FG acro 2-seater EAB).

We have no reliable mechanism for disclosing completed sales (mine wasn't, other than self-disclosing on social media). So the notion that prices "have gone up" in what the statement seeks to imply (completed sales), is facts not in evidence.

Listing prices are just like anything, a wish. Even then, listing prices have flattened to slightly decreased in the types I've been looking at. Inventory is starting to pick up. Some people still living in 2020 list for the moon, don't get bites (or pearl-clutch when one comes in with an under asking offer) and pull the listing. Based on my recent experience as a passive buyer, lots unserious sellers chaffing up the listings, merely trolling the market. I'm not chucking from the cheap seats, I was a seller in 2023 and completed in 14 days, and my available market was way more limited mind you (AOG sale). It's not just airplanes, even housing suffers from that dynamic in present circumstances; my clown neighbor for instance, still there sitting unsold.
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EDIT: I'M A CLOWN! I posted data without checking the data. Whoops! :p

To wrap some numbers around those people who aren't serious sellers...
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Personally, I like this trend of 172 prices being relatively stable while the prices of aircraft I'd like to get next decreasing.
Thanks for gathering the data.
 
Interesting price moves - big increase on the universe (+7.9% avg, +6.1% median) but with a lot of conflicting moves across each series.
If you exclude Cirrus from the data the market was essentially flat (+1%). They have an enormous impact on pricing stats, both avg/median.

Overall turnover activity steady at 36%. In other words just over 1/3 of airplanes are sold/delisted compared to 1 month ago.

Highlights:
(+) SR20 prices spiked big but the %turnover is half the normal levels - indicating that they're not really selling. Price spike due to newer model year listings. Note: last month I flagged the plummeting turnover too. It hasn't recovered.
(+) SR22 prices got approx +5% median price increase but the turnover for these remains low (20%) compared to a couple months ago (~30%). Indicating they're not selling as quickly as before.
(+) 172s continue to crush it with near all-time-high asking prices
(-) Mooney M20 series have continued getting beaten up (-10% 1mo chg, -17% 2 mo chg)
(-) 150s have dive-bombed in price but with remarkably high sales/turnover (-16% 1mo price chg.... but 64% of the Cessna 152s that were listed last month have sold/delisted)
(-) PA28s continued sliding, nearly 17% off their recent highs set in March.

EDIT: Also worth noting the number of SR22s for sale grew by 21%. That's a lot of growth given that SR22s are the biggest series in the data! (and the most expensive)
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I track just the Mooney M20J, since April 9 the average price has gone up slightly. I don’t know how sophisticated your data mining is, but 1 example is one of the M20J listings is for a fractional ownership, so the price is 1/2 of the value of the plane. So if counting it without adjusting makes for a 3% difference in the average price.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
I track just the Mooney M20J, since April 9 the average price has gone up slightly. I don’t know how sophisticated your data mining is, but 1 example is one of the M20J listings is for a fractional ownership, so the price is 1/2 of the value of the plane. So if counting it without adjusting makes for a 3% difference in the average price.
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My process will not collect data for aircraft listings filed as fractional/partial ownership. But if it's listed as a normal sale and the posting itself has text buried in it saying that it's a fractional/partnership share, then that would make it into the data. The only way I'd catch it is downstream when I manually investigate outliers and then eject them from the data.

And while I do grab data for the M20J and aggregate it as a part of the M20 series, I don't display it as its own line item because it's too small a universe. I just manually checked each of my M20J listings of out of curiosity and I did not see any cases where the listings were fractional.
I did however find this gem that, if anything, will cause M20J *average* prices to show a huge increase: Anyone want to buy a $348k M20J?
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Thought this was a relevant article (WSJ) despite covering other recreational markets...
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Yup. Knew it would be the case in 3-5 years for all of them. New toy feeling wears off by year 3, they realize they aren't using it much anymore and are having to foot the bill for storage $200+ each month. By year 4 they want out of it and by year 5 the market it saturated with toys of similar kinds so demand/supply results in prices falling pretty quickly. Good way to grab end-of-season deals on boats and rvs that previously sold for $65K and are now $40K.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Yup. Knew it would be the case in 3-5 years for all of them. New toy feeling wears off by year 3, they realize they aren't using it much anymore and are having to foot the bill for storage $200+ each month. By year 4 they want out of it and by year 5 the market it saturated with toys of similar kinds so demand/supply results in prices falling pretty quickly. Good way to grab end-of-season deals on boats and rvs that previously sold for $65K and are now $40K.
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My FIL is right there right now with a bass boat he bought 2 yrs ago. He offered it to me if I just took over the payments.

It’s a decent enough new bass boat with less than 50hrs on it, but I’m not into it, especially for $33K left on the note.
 
TCABM said:
My FIL is right there right now with a bass boat he bought 2 yrs ago. He offered it to me if I just took over the payments.

It’s a decent enough new bass boat with less than 50hrs on it, but I’m not into it, especially for $33K left on the note.
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Yeah, we've got an old 20' bowrider that runs just fine. We only take it out a few times per year due to busy weekends with sports as well as a FIL who already has a boat and docks on the water. I'd love to upgrade, but it doesn't make a ton of sense to do so. I also get free storage for my toys in my father's shop, so I don't fret too much about storage fees like most do.
 
kaiser said:
@ArrowFlyer86 how do you track listing age? By tail number? Or if planes keep popping up?
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That field is tracked by tail #, and if it goes more than 6 months without a listing and pops up again then it's considered a new listing again.

Reminds me, I'm overdue to cobble together some more data on price moves...
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
That field is tracked by tail #, and if it goes more than 6 months without a listing and pops up again then it's considered a new listing again.

Reminds me, I'm overdue to cobble together some more data on price moves...
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Looking forward to see what the data says…
 
Data Notes:
- Note: the time period for this report is not the typical ~1 month interval, it's nearly 3 months! (I've been busy :))
- Turnover figures have been removed from this report because of the irregular data report interval (much longer) makes them not comparable (compared to previous monthly frequency)

Observations:
- +9% increase in total listings. There's more people looking to sell now compared to May.
- Median pricing down -5.7% over the period, avg pricing down -3.1% with only a few series bucked that trend.
- As shown before lower priced models sell faster. Not a shocker. That trend continues.
- 172s got roughed up a little. There's 12% more for sale, they're selling for less (-8% median px chg) and they're taking almost a month longer to sell than in spring.
- There's 40 percent more Cherokee PA28s for sale now than in spring (this category does not include Warriors btw) and they're taking about a month longer to sell. Price hasn't moved much.
- I love Arrows as much as anyone (evidence: see username) but some of the owners just aren't serious. A simple search of this category's asking prices reveals many owners are residents of Clown Town.

Listing Age observations - a more interesting item right now, prescient for Kaiser to ask about it...
- The average listing age extended from ~90 days in May to ~112 days now. The median increased from 69 to 77. That's a big increase. It indicates things aren't selling as quickly across the universe.
- High end of the market still has lower turnover than expected and its also reflected in the lengthening listing age: SR22s, 36Bo's and PA46s. (SR22 87-> 111 days, 36 Bo's 84 days ->125 days, Malibu 121 days -> 201 days).

Data:
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Decent uptick in the number of aircraft for sale (and even more just within the last week since I ran this).
Maybe a seasonal artifact. The trend continues that things are taking a while to sell.
Not much change in aggregate pricing

Archer/Malibu pricing stats might be a little misleading. Notes at bottom.
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ArrowFlyer86 said:
Decent uptick in the number of aircraft for sale (and even more just within the last week since I ran this).
Maybe a seasonal artifact. The trend continues that things are taking a while to sell.
Not much change in aggregate pricing

Archer/Malibu pricing stats might be a little misleading. Notes at bottom.
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can i speak to the seasonality of sales? when are the most planes on the market.
 
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