View Single Post
  #5  
Old June 7th 13, 12:51 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
noel.wade
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 681
Default Why do Finance Companies Hate Sailplanes?

On Jun 6, 2:21*pm, son_of_flubber wrote:

A club that I know first hand recently placed notes (loans) with multiple members for $3000 each at 4% to finance a new glider.


Sure, this works if your club is healthy and of a certain size, and is
looking for sailplanes within a certain range of prices.

But how many $3000 loans do you need to get, to afford a new (or
slightly-used) 2-seat trainer?
How long are those loan-terms? My guess is that they're on a 10-year
time-scale (or more)...

Your method is a viable option for some; but my point is that the
market already has other solutions for powered aircraft. Why aren't
those solutions available for sailplanes?

This is both a rhetorical question I'm shouting into the ether, and a
real question (I'm curious if any of the sages here on RAS can point
to something that happened in the past, or something obvious I'm
overlooking).

--Noel
P.S. Called AOPA Aircraft Finance. They also expressed puzzlement
about the lack of sailplane financing options - and since they act as
a broker they had to state that they couldn't help me because none of
their partners/vendors do glider loans. They _did_ say that if more
people called and asked, it would give AOPA some info to take to
lenders to try to get the market opened up. *shrug*