The decline in preowned business jet inventory, which is now 9.4 percent of the in-service fleet, has brought an end to the buyer’s market, “but it’s not quite a seller’s market, yet—it’s more of a balanced market,” Mesinger Jet Sales president and CEO Jay Mesinger told attendees yesterday at the NBAA Business Aircraft Finance, Registration, and Legal Conference. “It’s becoming hard to find good preowned airplanes,” he said.

Now that buyers and sellers are on even ground, prices of used jets have stabilized. “While business jets are still depreciating assets, preowned selling prices have firmed,” Mesinger explained. “Even if it turns back to a seller’s market, I hope we don’t get to the point again where aircraft go up in value. That’s unsustainable.”

The market has become so tight, he said, that even business jets considered “untouchable”—those based in second- or third-world countries where most U.S. buyers will not import from—just five years ago are now selling, but to other in-country buyers. These countries also are no longer interested in “junk airplanes” from the U.S. either, Mesinger added.