If you have made the decision to sell your HondaJet in today’s unprecedented seller’s market, you should rightfully expect to get top dollar for your airplane, and even in some cases more than you paid for it if you purchased your HondaJet right before to the market boom took off. However what you may not be aware of as a seller is, you are not the only one looking to profit in today’s red hot market. Aircraft Brokers and Dealers are also attempting to capitalize in this market, and often times at your expense.
By now I am sure you have received multiple phone calls and emails from Brokers and Dealers offering not just their services to sell your airplane for you, but also telling you they have a buyer for it already, and offering you an off-market sale. However the reality is these Brokers are likely attempting to run their own back to back deal by convincing both you and a buyer to accept an off-market transaction.
You may have heard the term “back to back” used before in aircraft sales. With factory new aircraft sales this is common practice for an airplane model like the HondaJet which still maintains a Dealer Network, whereby the Dealer purchases an aircraft from the manufacturer, and then turns around and sells that aircraft directly to you, retaining their Dealer margin profit. However in the pre-owned aircraft market, a back to back sale orchestrated through a Broker or Dealer may not always be the safest and most profitable route for you to take to sell your HondaJet.
In an off-market back to back transaction, a Broker has the ability to take advantage of a seller who may be less familiar with the current market conditions and the true value of their aircraft. The Broker can convince a seller to take a lower price than a buyer is actually willing to pay, and profit themselves on the margin. And furthermore in some cases, particularly in today’s inflated market, a Broker may even be double dipping, meaning charging you a commission fee to sell your HondaJet off-market, while also retaining additional profit themselves. That should be money in your pocket!
When you elect to hire a knowledgeable Broker, and instruct that Broker to list your airplane on the public market for sale, the transaction is then 100% transparent. You and your Broker work out a brokerage fee in advance, either a flat rate or a percentage of the selling price of the aircraft, and you pay that fee to your Broker at closing. When you use an Escrow Agency you as the seller have visibility to every aspect of the transaction, including where all of your buyer’s funds are dispersed at closing. Therefore, your Broker cannot hide anything from you, nor attempt to retain more profit in the sale by telling you that the purchase price for your aircraft is lower than the buyer has actually agreed to pay.
Hiring a creditable Broker to sell your HondaJet is therefore the smartest path to take. This ensures not only full transparency between you and your Broker with regard to your Broker’s commission fee, but also visibility to the offers that your Broker receives. While that other Broker might have told you that your HondaJet is worth 5 million dollars and not a penny more, a buyer half way across the world or even a few houses down the street from you might be willing to pay 6 million for it. And you would never have known this had you agreed to the off-market deal presented to you. So instead, sleep easy and hire an honest Broker to list your airplane for sale on the open worldwide market.
