Editor’s note: For many years Dave Sclair, retired GANews publisher and founder of Living With Your Plane, has spoken at Oshkosh about residential airparks. Some of the questions that always come up during his session year after year probably are ones you’ve wondered about, too.
Question - What’s the best form of organization and management for a residential airpark and how should the property be owned? Read the full story
Editor’s note: For many years Dave Sclair, retired GANews publisher and founder of Living With Your Plane, has spoken at Oshkosh about residential airparks. Some of the questions that always come up during his session year after year probably are ones you’ve wondered about, too.
Question - I’m trying to determine if I can successfully develop a residential airpark in my community. What do you think is the critical number of homesites needed for a fly-in community to work? Is there an optimum size of the lots and how many acres do I need for the runway and related taxiways, roads, etc? Read the full story
Bill writes in with a question:
Explain the meaning of airpark and airport and the difference. Such as Adelanto Airpark or Adelanto Airport. Both have been used. We have a California Airport Permit. Thank you for doing LWYP.
Dave’s reply: Back when I started Living With Your Plane (while living on Shady Acres airpark) I looked for official information on residential areas attached to airports. There wasn’t any that I could find, so I created the definition.
“A Residential Airpark is an airport with two or more homes or homesites located immediately adjacent to the runway, accessible to the runway by a taxiway or can be reached by a short walk (less than 10-15 minutes.)”
What makes an airport an airpark is the co-location of homes with the intended purpose of providing access to the airport. There are many airports around the country with homes adjacent, but without official, legal access to the airport. These are not airparks.
An airpark is always also an airport, but an airport isn’t necessarily an airpark. Hope this clears things up.
Reader Elaine Evans is looking for a little guidance. Post your comments below so everyone can learn. Here is a link to a prior query with comments.
We are having a problem with horses on one acre lots with homes and hangars. There is not much room for horses. A couple can have up to three horses. Any advice? Airparks with horses, how big are the lots?
I received the following note from Kurt Winker, Manager of Mid-Valley Airport (E98) in Los Lunas, New Mexico. Kurt writes:
Mid Valley is in the ground work process of arranging a lease with the County. Leasing the “airfield” to the county would allow us to obtain much needed funds to repave our runway.
Editor’s note: For many years Dave Sclair, retired GANews publisher and founder of Living With Your Plane, has spoken at Oshkosh about residential airparks. Some of the questions that always come up during his session year after year probably are ones you’ve wondered about, too.
Question - How do we handle concerns of homeowners living in the immediate vicinity of our residential airpark but aren’t part of our community? They are making comments about the noise, fear of airplanes crashing onto their homes and low-flying airplanes.
The Living With Your Plane survey on buying and selling residential airpark properties didn’t bring as many individual responses as we had hoped for but several of the ones we received apparently included both a purchase and sale.
And, in the case of some real estate professionals, multiple sales were recorded on the same form. For example, one real estate professional indicated the sale of two homes and six lots during the last year. The end result is that it appears we received information on about 35 to 40 transactions.
Our survey was designed to discover whether residential airpark properties were suffering a sales slowdown like much of the residential market in many areas of the country. We also sought information on how long a property had been on the market, how the asking and selling price compared, the price range of the property and whether there were plenty of lookers for the property. Read the full story
Dave Sclair, publisher of Living With Your Plane, regularly addresses problems affecting residential airparks. Many of the questions he addresses come up during his presentations at various aviation events around the country.
Question: I noticed a number of fly-in communities in foreign countries. I mean places like Mexico, England, Australia, South America and places in Europe. In other words, anyplace except the United States and Canada. The photos on the Living With Your Plane website and the web pages of the airparks in these foreign places really make the facilities look great. Is it safe to buy into these properties? Are these safeguards I need to consider before buying? Are Americans treated differently when buying foreign properties?
Dave Sclair, publisher of Living With Your Plane, regularly addresses problems affecting residential airparks. Many of the questions he addresses come up during his presentations at various aviation events around the country.
Question: The runway in our fly-in community isn’t a separate legal entity or tax parcel. The lots on either side of the runway go to the center of the runway and each lot owner’s deed provides an easement across their private property for the runway. This means there’s no separate tax for the runway itself since each property owner pays their tax bill which includes an equal share of the runway.
Recently we’ve been looking into obtaining liability insurance for our airpark and the question has come up about how we insure this. Is this a common practice? Have others had problems with this format? Can insurance be obtained for the runway only to be paid for by the various property owners?
With the nationwide housing market in turmoil, we are trying to determine what effect it is having on the residential airpark market. This survey will provide updated and useful information for both buyers and sellers. It might even be helpful determining the ultimate value of your property for real estate tax purposes.
Click FULL ACCESS to get all airpark detail. Just $20 per year.
