Page 7 - March 2022

negotiating were gone. The market was speaking and if we didn’t listen, we’d be left behind. We had a conference call with my client and his wife, and she asked, “What’s it going to take?”
I suggested a best and final offer that would end the negotiations, we submitted it, I leaned hard on the broker to not let it become a bidding war and we got the airplane. That airplane is easily worth half a million dollars more in today’s market than what we paid for it. What seemed at the time to be paying retail, ended up being a great buy. The best part is our client loves the airplane. The King Air B200 is better for his growing family than the C90B would have been, and they couldn’t be happier.
That was the last good buy on a B200 that we made in 2021. Despite our best efforts, the inventory has been sparce and we’ve been unable to find airplanes at a price that made any sense at all. I convinced
a B200 client who has a full-time pilot that the smart move was the King Air 350 – that market seemed to be lagging behind. That
deal worked out great, especially when an owner of a really nice model 350 called us to see if we were interested in buying it. That’s one advantage of only representing buyers: owners who want a person- to-person deal without listing the airplane will actually call us! We were just in time on the King Air 350; that market has come from behind and surpassed everything else in levels of absurdity. We are seeing $1 million or more in price increases from just a year ago.
“That airplane is easily worth half a million dollars more in today’s market than what we paid for it.”
The summer months of 2021 were tough – inventory levels plum- meted and prices skyrocketed. It’s important to note that while I’m
MARCH 2022
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 5