"Jay Honeck" wrote
I agree with you that it takes knowledge to evaluate aircraft and homes.
(Which is why a pre-buy inspection -- of both -- by a qualified
professional, is essential.)

Absolutely.

But I will stand by my statement that appearance matters.

You can stand by it, but it's still wrong. You can't judge a book by
the cover.

If a home-owner
doesn't care enough to keep the gutters functional and proper, God only
knows what they will have done to keep the furnace and water heater going.

Just as likely, he noticed that the water heater was showing early
warning signs of a problem (for example, increased fuel use without
increased load) and decided that it was more important to fix this now
(before it got expensive) than to deal with the gutters, and put the
gutters off. That probably doesn't carry much weight if you live out
in the middle of nowhere and consider a house built twenty years ago
old, since there's not much to go wrong in a new house if it's built
well, but check out some houses on the East Coast (where an 1800 sq ft
A-frame built in the 1950's will bring well over $300K - a situation
that has much in common with the used airplane market) and you will
see that this is a major issue.

Although there are, of course, exceptions to every rule, the same thing goes
with an aircraft. In my opinion, if an owner doesn't care about the
interior and paint to keep things looking nice, God only knows what else
they've skated on.

You've said it before - and all you're doing is showing your
ignorance. It's the owner that has the time to mess with paint and
interior that is probably skating - and doesn't even know it. Then,
when he has a big bill down the road, it will be just one of those
things that happens in airplane ownership.

It may indicate that they simply couldn't afford to
keep an aircraft, which means that these will be the same guys who get
el-cheapo, "spray paint" annual inspections, or they may do their own
repairs without proper sign-offs.

The former happens, but those are the guys who will get a paint and
interior to sell the plane.

The latter happens too - but remember, it's not the paperwork that
keeps the airplane safe. Usually, the issue isn't getting a signoff -
the people doing the maintenance competently can find someone to sign
it off. The issue is doing the work competently - and incompetent
repairs stand out like a sore thumb on a prepurchase.

These are gross generalizations, to be sure. And, of course, a thorough
pre-buy inspection will separate these dogs from the good buys -- but not
always.

Actually, a good pre-purchase inspection will ALWAYS separate out the
ones that are worth buying from the ones that are not. It might miss
one or thwo things, but a plane that only has one or two things wrong
is rare - and if the owner has been skating on maintenance,
nonexistent. The key is getting a good prepurchase inspection. First
clue - if the mechanic so much as mentions paint and interior, odds
are that you're NOT getting a good one.

In reality, a good pre-purchase is tough to find - and the moment you
start talking about any sort of guarantee or an annual as a
prepurchase, it becomes impossible as every sensible mechanic quickly
figures out what kind of customer he is dealing with and becomes too
busy.

Either way, a great looking plane will sell for significantly more, not
because the buyers are ignorant, but because it costs many thousands of
dollars to paint a plane, and thousands more to re-do an interior.

In reality, a crappy airplane with good paint and interior will
generally sell for more than it would cost to buy a crappy airplane
and have paint and interior done. That's because you can usually
convince some ignorant buyer that the airplane is in good condition
even though it's what experienced owners call a polished turd.

Michael