Your Broker / Dealer / Consultant Experience

Any DA42 related topics.

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Jroseund
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First Name: Jonathan
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Your Broker / Dealer / Consultant Experience

Post by Jroseund »

Evening Everyone,

I want to tap into the wealth of knowledge that is in this online community about the broker / dealer / aviation consultant paths for aircraft acquisition. I have tried to look up any such information on the forums and have not been seeing many search hits.

In particular, I wanted to hear about some of your experiences in what route you took in acquiring your aircraft. Either if you did it all by yourself or chose to use a reputable dealer such as LifeStyle Aviation or Premier Aircraft Sales, or going through the OEM in Canada or Austria, or a good old fashion aircraft broker or consultant? I guess purchasing pre-owned or new would make a difference too.

There is a Broker that I do communicate with on occassion that is IADA credited, but that has not been with acquiring any aircraft. It just seems there are so many roads to take that it's easy to get overwhelmed on where to start. Just trying to see if some produce more headaches than others.

This would be my 1st aircraft acquisition so very new at this.

Fly safe everyone and thank you. :)
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AndrewM
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Re: Your Broker / Dealer / Consultant Experience

Post by AndrewM »

Jonathan,

There are quite a few posts relating to the usefulness and people's experiences of using brokers on the forum, you just need to search. I don't have the time right now to connect the links for you. I have experience working with both Lifestyle and Premier so PM me if you wish.
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cptndavid
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Re: Your Broker / Dealer / Consultant Experience

Post by cptndavid »

I purchased my DA-42 N16FA through Life Style aviation , It was a very easy and enjoyable transaction. CFI Dave did my transition training from my Baron to the easy to fly DA-42.
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Chris
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Re: Your Broker / Dealer / Consultant Experience

Post by Chris »

Most people I've talked to who used a buyers agent/consultant were happy with them. For new Diamonds, I think that's pretty much the only way to order one. You can sometimes get access to "not-yet-listed" used aircraft if you engage with an agent, so that is one benefit to consider. I expect you'd pay a premium for those since the prospective seller may just be fishing for high offers.

I've been involved in the purchase of two used aircraft, a DA40 and just recently the DA42NG. I didn't use an agent for either of them. I worked directly with the seller's agent to get/review logbooks, inspect/test-fly the plane, negotiate a price, arrange a pre-buy inspection, negotiate any discrepancy repairs, deal with escrow, arrange financing, etc. It's a lot of work, and I'm not sure I saved much, if any, $$ by doing it myself, but that process fits my personality. I also got some great advice from a few other forum members who I knew had experience with DA42s and/or Austros. My guess is an agent will save you time and stress by handling some of the stuff on the front-end of the process. One who is a Diamond expert will also bring potential issues to your attention that a seller's agent won't, and which you might not know unless you've been on these forums for quite a while. E.g. the seller's agent isn't going to clue you in that the engines are due for $9k worth of AD work within the next 150 hours. The pre-buy inspection should flag that, but it's better to know that during the search process rather than the purchase process. This is less of a concern for low-time / newer models, of course.

Some of the best advice I got during this recent search was to not get too attached to any one particular listing. There will always be more options hitting the market soon. If you're not in a rush, this gives you leverage when negotiating pricing and post-inspection work.

Feel free to PM me for more info if you'd like.
Chris
N449TS / DA42-NG / 42.AC049
KHIO
Jroseund
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Re: Your Broker / Dealer / Consultant Experience

Post by Jroseund »

Thank you everyone for your responses. I did try searching initialy, but I have found I did not search with enough specific key words. I will definitely do a more in-depth search as Andrew suggested.

Thank you David. I will definitely keep them in mind.

Thank you Chris for sharing your experience again and some helpful tips and gotchas to look out for. Congratulations again on your lovely bird.
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