"oh, that's common practice"

When you buy a house you generally put up some "earnest money" so that
the seller takes the house off the market while you arrange a
prepurchase inspection. You can walk away from the deal after the
inspection, but you forfiet the money. Or you can go forward with the
deal, but negotiate who's going to pay for fixing what. You can use
the inspection as leverage to lower the sale price. That's common
practice - in real estate.

Never came across it in buying used motor vehicles, though.

On 20 Jan 2006 14:13:32 -0800, "CB" wrote:

When you buy a house you generally put up some "earnest money" so that
the seller takes the house off the market while you arrange a
prepurchase inspection. You can walk away from the deal after the
inspection, but you forfiet the money. Or you can go forward with the
deal, but negotiate who's going to pay for fixing what. You can use
the inspection as leverage to lower the sale price. That's common
practice - in real estate.

Corrie, by what the original poster said, that wasn't the purpose of the
deposit: "The owner said he'd need a $500 non-refundable deposit before anyone
did the inspection. "they might nick the prop, or drop a sparkplug
or...."....

That's quite a bit difference from earnest money. The guy wanted $500 just to
allow anything more than a visual inspection of the exterior. Indeed, a signal
to run.

Ron Wanttaja

When you put down earnest money and do an home inspection, you have the
right to back out if the inspection fails. If you go through with the
deal the money goes toward the purchase. Never is the money an
absolute give away.

I also wonder if the owner is tired of tire kickers who want a free
ride or spend half the day chatting. The $500 may be to weed out
gabbers who are not really serious buyers.

If you are serious you might suggest to the owner you will put the $500
in an escrow with the local bank and the owner would have to prove that
you damaged anything.

----------------------------------------------------------------
SQ2000 canard http://www.abri.com/sq2000

In article . com,
"abripl" wrote:

I also wonder if the owner is tired of tire kickers who want a free
ride or spend half the day chatting. The $500 may be to weed out
gabbers who are not really serious buyers.

Tire kickers don't hire an A&P to do an inspection, do they?

Mike Beede

On 20 Jan 2006 15:23:36 -0800, "abripl"
wrote:

If you are serious you might suggest to the owner you will put the $500
in an escrow with the local bank and the owner would have to prove that
you damaged anything.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Now THAT is an excellent idea.- Mike

Mike Beede wrote:
In article . com,
"abripl" wrote:


I also wonder if the owner is tired of tire kickers who want a free
ride or spend half the day chatting. The $500 may be to weed out
gabbers who are not really serious buyers.


Tire kickers don't hire an A&P to do an inspection, do they?

Mike Beede
Thats what I thought.. a pre-buy is a pretty serious event in my mind.

Dave

Walk away, heck run away. You are the buyer, you control the fund. He
needs to be flexible to your needs.

With that said, I'm sure he'll get a few suckers. They always do...

The Monk

Exactly, having sold over 30 planes and rotorcraft I can assure you,
the vast MAJORITY will show up wanting to talk or get a ride. You can
weed out tire kickers on the phone. I typically ask how they intend to
pay for the plane or heli and do they intend to buy NOW. Your Tcraft
guy may have had a month of tire kickers to deal with. I have required
a pre buy deposit to be refunded off purchase. It saved me a hell of a
lot of time and it has NEVER killed a sale. Tell the guy you aren't a
tire kicker and offer to escrow the money. Chances are, if he thinks
you are serious, and let's face it, it's not a King Air, he's going to
forget about the deposit.

In article .com,
" wrote:

Exactly, having sold over 30 planes and rotorcraft I can assure you,
the vast MAJORITY will show up wanting to talk or get a ride. You can
weed out tire kickers on the phone. I typically ask how they intend to
pay for the plane or heli and do they intend to buy NOW. Your Tcraft
guy may have had a month of tire kickers to deal with. I have required
a pre buy deposit to be refunded off purchase. It saved me a hell of a
lot of time and it has NEVER killed a sale. Tell the guy you aren't a
tire kicker and offer to escrow the money. Chances are, if he thinks
you are serious, and let's face it, it's not a King Air, he's going to
forget about the deposit.

If your M.O. works for you, I see no reason to change it. But, I wonder
how you know that your policies have never killed a sale.

It seems to me that buying an airplane is kind of like buying a car or a
house. The first stage is research, learning what's available, what the
prices are like, what your options are, what you like and don't like. I
wonder how many people who are serious about buying a plane know exactly
what they're looking for before they start looking.

I'd be pretty surprised if the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth
person that came to look (and test drive) my used car that I'm selling,
bought it. How many houses does a real estate agent show before he sells
one? If a seller can't deal with lookers, he should turn the sale over
to someone who's a professional and knows and accepts the odds.

Sure, the prospective buyer wants to talk. He wants to figure out
whether you're a man to be trusted. Your attitude is more important than
the choice of topic of conversation. When I rented my investment house,
I handed the key over to a gentleman whom I'd met the day before. He
gave me an out of town check and I drove 600 miles back home and went to
sleep easy. We had talked about his career. It was a handshake deal, no
lease, no written rental agreement. I checked no references. That was
three years ago, and I've had no problems whatsoever.

If I were to buy a plane, I'd look at many, and I'd want to fly several
of them. I don't have a lot of experience with different airplanes, so
it would take me a fair amount of field research to narrow my choices
down to one or a few make, model, and year ranges. Yep, I'd take up a
lot of the seller's time, asking a lot of questions, and poking around
as much as I could. If the seller was offended by that, or thought I was
wasting his time, I wouldn't buy from him, period.