ideas

[James Carlson]

Todd Brooks writes:
> So what do you think we should do now?  I'm not seeing anyone really jumping at the idea of helping pitch in to buy a plane.   Do we want to talk some numbers or are we pushing our luck?

I think we should probably start talking numbers and options.

I did some searching on the usual sites last night, and it seems that
we can get some really quite capable aircraft in the 172 series for
around $60K -- including better navigation (some with GNS430, others
with older GPS and separate DME), and newer airplanes (around 172P is
fairly abundant).  Plus, most of them come packaged with a small
adventure (they're based somewhere else), which sounds good to me.

I've bought houses and cars, but never aircraft, so I don't know what
the "norm" is.  (E.g., offer 10% below listed price and settle
somewhere in the middle?)  That's certainly one factor.  I hope that
someone else on the list has a handle on that and can provide some
insight.

Suppose the aircraft is $60K.  If we could raise $20K in loans from a
few members, we'd need to finance $40K.  Might a bank look more
favorably on a loan (and perhaps offer different terms) when we're
able to put down 1/3?  Possibly so.  If everything went pear-shaped,
they could be first in line for $60K asset having put down only $40K.
That might reduce the need to deal with liability beyond the club's
assets.

Just making up some plausible numbers ...

$40K at 8% over 25 years is $308.73 per month.  A "small" loan from
club members of $20K at 6% over 10 years is $222.04 per month.  That
gives us a total note of $530.75 per month, or $53.08 per month for 10
members.  Is that low enough to make the rest of the costs work out?

If not, we can probably tweak things a bit.

Personally, I'd have no problem with making 6%.  That's awfully good
compared to anything else I can invest in and I have no problem
accepting the potential downside (club fails, we sell off the
airplane to pay the bank, only some fraction of the principle returned
to those lending members).

I'm in the midst of a job-related upgrade.  If that pans out as
expected, I'll have at least several kilobucks I can tie up for a
long-term loan to the club.  I won't know for certain for several
weeks, though.

-- 
James Carlson         42.703N 71.076W         <carlsonj at workingcode.com>