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How much have RVs gone in price in this market?

SwimmingDragonfly96

Well Known Member
I know lots of the certified planes doubled or even tripled in price over the past 5 years or so, but how about the RVs? Hard for me to imagine a solid RV7 selling for $60k-$70k or a 6 for much less than that. Was that the case at some point?
 
I know lots of the certified planes doubled or even tripled in price over the past 5 years or so, but how about the RVs? Hard for me to imagine a solid RV7 selling for $60k-$70k or a 6 for much less than that. Was that the case at some point?

I believe so.. I’ve delivered a really nice -7 that sold for 105k.. would swell for close to 180k now. Another nice -8 sold for 85k, would go for 155 or more now. A nice -4 or -6 could have been had for 45k, now they are 75+. Maybe not quite doubled, but severely inflated.
 
Has everyone been increasing their hull insurance to keep up with their unrealized gain in RV resale price?
 
Has everyone been increasing their hull insurance to keep up with their unrealized gain in RV resale price?

I’ve bumped mine the last the last two years. I was initially underinsured.

My hull insurance is still well under the current resale market. I don’t remember the underwriter’s name, but there was one that wasn’t playing that game. They established a hard limit about 60% of current resale. The other underwriters still seemed willing to insure at whatever value you wanted on the hull, but the premium rates reflected the increased risk to them.
 
Be careful about under insuring your aircraft. The plane you bought for 60k is now worth 100k. It’s still insured for 60k. You have a prop strike or collapse a gear and the insurance company totals your aircraft. They pay you 60k, sell the airframe for another 60k and it’s a win/win for the company.
 
My airport manager/friend asked about the value of his very nice 7A. We both said about $110k, he got $129 and it was resold after 3 months at ~$175. This is consistent with Toms post.

This was at the ramp up of the market, not sure about today.
 
Be careful about under insuring your aircraft. The plane you bought for 60k is now worth 100k. It’s still insured for 60k. You have a prop strike or collapse a gear and the insurance company totals your aircraft. They pay you 60k, sell the airframe for another 60k and it’s a win/win for the company.

While I agree that this scenario exists and one should be cautious of it, it rarely crates a windfall for the insurer and not likely to total an aicraft if the repair costs are less than 80-90% of the hull value. In your example above, the repai cost is $20K. If they total an aircraft with a repair in the area of $20K with a 60K hull value, no responsible broker would ever use them again, as that is almost criminal and would be if they are regulated by your state. If the repair cost is 50K, that is a different story. They will total it and pay the 60K. However, they are only likely to get $10-20K for the resale (guy who rebuilds it needs a profit not to mention market reduction due to major damage history, so it is not worth $100k after repair). SO not large sums here worth messing with their reputation.

The insurance industry has a standard for the threshhold at which it is reasonable to total relative to insured value and most reputable firms follow it. Sorry, don't know the percentage, but believe it is in the neighborhood of 90%. Good brokers will weed out the un reputable firms that will not follow these guidelines. In the large areas, like auto insurance, all of this is regulated by the states, so not as much to worry about.

If all you want is your investment back, under insuring if fine. If the market is rising, like ours is, and your goal is to replace the plane with like kind, under insuring can create real misery for owners.
 
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60%

Having recently gone through the claims process for a prop strike I can say insuring for just your investment value will put you dangerously close to the airplane being totaled in a prop strike claim. My insurance company said claims of around 60% of hull value likely result in being totaled.

The estimated cost of repairs for my prop strike for insurance purposes is around $46,500. There are costs not covered by insurance such as wear and tear expenses on certain engine parts during the tear down inspection/rebuild. Additionally, since the engine was apart it just made sense to inspect cylinder valve guides since these often show wear around 500+ hours. I also used this opportunity to upgrade to PMags since my Slick magnetos are required to be replaced according to Lycoming inspection guidelines (net cost of upgrading is above Slick magnetos but cheaper than doing the upgrade at a later date.) Of course adding to the repair costs was a new propeller.

A few additional cosmetic repairs are being done since the prop strike also requires replacement of the nose gear assembly and two wheel fairings - good time to do some paint touch up work. All told, I expect to see another $6-9K additional charges - not covered by insurance. Repair timeline is exceeding six months. But hopefully it will be better than new!

My point being, repairs aren’t cheap. Insure appropriately.
 
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My insurance company refuses to insure my 2019 RV-14A hull for more than $200K. The airplane has a full Garmin panel (dual G3X's, GTN750, etc) and an IO-390. I've seen lesser equipped -14s sell for more. What to do?
 
We have an rv6a with full garmin panel and a new thunderbolt (plus any other mod/upgrade available and pretty nice p&i). We are insured at $150k, and I doubt we could replace (especially since most similarly equipped planes are -7’s) for that. I don’t know that we would necessarily get $150k cash if sold (I’m not in the market to sell), but I know I haven’t seen much under about $175k that I would think compares.
 
My insurance company refuses to insure my 2019 RV-14A hull for more than $200K. The airplane has a full Garmin panel (dual G3X's, GTN750, etc) and an IO-390. I've seen lesser equipped -14s sell for more. What to do?

I've been told underwriters don't consider the value of the avionics in the airplane as those are removable and not considered part of the 'hull'. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

My experience a few years back now was a club airplane that had a prop strike on landing. Took 2 inches off each end of a 2 blade MT prop.

Prop was totaled. Engine required teardown for sudden stoppage inspection and since it was only 400 hours away from TBO, we decided to just have it overhauled.

Aircraft was a 1963 P172D (rare bird) hull valued at 25K with about 28K worth of Garmin avionics in it and a STC'd O-360.

There was no damage to the hull. All damage was to the prop and engine. Underwriter totaled the aircraft and we ended up buying it back at the top salvage bid price they received for it.

So we got a check for 25K and then still ended up spending another 15k to get it airworthy again including the cost of buying it back.

They would never insure the hull for more than 25K, we asked multiple times. Probably should have shopped around but try getting insurance on a club airplane these days when you have multiple airplanes in a club and pilots of all different experience levels.

YMMV
 
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Prices seem to have really gone stupid on these. I bought my current plane just before covid, paid 45 grand for my RV4. Ironically, my last RV was also a 4 and I bought it back in 2006ish, and paid 42 grand and in comparison both planes were in about the same shape.

I have not followed the market closely for many years, but have paid attention since 2019/ 2020 or so and seems like everything went up a ton. Not just on RV's but on most aircraft.

Cessna 150's that were selling for 15-18 grand are now 25-35 grand. 172's have seen a major price increase.

I don't think we have doubled the price of planes, but we have seen some planes go up 25-50 percent or even more.

You can find RV4's now for 45 grand again. You can find RV6's in the 50-60 grand range again. So prices are either dropping or some sellers didn't get the memo that prices have gone up.

I have my hull value set at 45 grand. Never really considered asking for more as I paid 45 grand and would be happy to just have my investment covered. might be worth asking how much more my policy would be if I bumped up the hull value by ten grand.

I would say if your wanting to sell your plane soon, do it now because in my opinion the prices will be falling back anytime now if not already. If your wanting to buy a plane, you might be best to wait a little longer.
 
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