Is there a market in flipping airplanes?

What actions do these engineers do on them?

It can’t be the installation of avionics or new/overhauled engines (or anything else for that matter ) because you never get the cost of any actual “thing” back upon a subsequent sale.

AFAICT it can be only straight labour i.e. cleaning the plane up in general.

Peter, essentially, they buy cheap hangar queens (or even heaps of parts) and get them back in the air. Also, for the types used by flight schools (most importantly, C152), there is a demand for overhauled engines. Among the types being so restored, I am personally aware of C152, PA28-161, PA28R-200, PA38, C206 and Zlin Z226, plus some exotics.

It should depend on the buyer: if he has more time, cash-flow, know how and less capital…that should be a tiny market?

This Piper6 is for those who wants to start with 20$, it will need lot of cleaning tough

PS: spotted at LFPN

But if they add in their hourly cost, they would have lost money.

There are of course some warbirds etc where the numbers do work out, but in general, no.

There is a viable model where you turn some process into a paid job, and treat it as a paid job.

Often this makes it financially possible to do something which would be impossibly expensive if you contracted a company to do it.

One example might be building a homebuilt aircraft. Frankly I doubt this is a meaningful example unless you account for the (say) 3000 hours at some very low hourly rate, but you get the idea.

Many years ago you could do this with property. Buy an apartment for 5k, spend a month throwing some paint on the walls and new (cheap) carpets, and sell it for 7k. You made 2k in 1 month. So you make 24k in a year, which 40 years ago was a fortune. The guy who used to do this, starting age 18 with his mum guaranteeing the bank loans, is now a multi multi millionaire and runs a very profitable aviation dealership (not light GA).

Peter wrote:

So you make 24k in a year, which 40 years ago was a fortune

Approximately the equivalent of £120k these days, according to the Bank of England :-)

The Cessna 185 is quite unique (also the DHC2 Beaver), in that a clean, well presented example might achieve $350k. It has the useful load of the Cessna 206 (most Cessna 180 variants have relatively skinny useful load), but is versatile on both skis and floats. (Some wag famously equated the C206 on skis to pushing a turd uphill with a sharp stick.)

In Alaska this is a unique proposition and therefore the type enjoys a strong commercial application. It also has ramp appeal, so pilots will pay for ramp appeal, although a nice Cessna 195 can be found for $75k and has superior ‘ramp appeal’, oil drips form the shakey Jake being a free option.

While the PC12 holds value, and the pre NG has some attractions, am not sure they are actually appreciating!

The Super Cub can be rebuilt from a data plate through Univair for around $100-150k, so while a good repository of value it isn’t appreciating. A D-Day L4 might be appreciating but only because of its provenance.