The Phoenix Rises
I fly a TB 20, and can offer the following comments/views relative to your £100k budget, not in any particular order of importance:
What is your objective? For VFR flight you could get something very good but slightly more basic in terms of avionics, leaving you more money to keep it running. Say a TB10 in good nick – hard to beat and way better than any PA28 etc. But for going places seriously you need IFR capability, decent avionics, and that makes £100k about the minimum level and this concerns me a bit because while you can get major-cost suprises at any level, they get bigger when you play with this sort of thing and the plane is out of warranty!
Will it be on a Public CofA or Private CofA, or N-reg? N-reg is probably the only realistic way if you want an IR (you go the FAA PPL/IR route). This affects the maintenance costs. What about VAT issues? Some planes are sold "plus VAT" others "VAT paid". Personal or ltd co. ownership? Mostly business travel perhaps?
The TB20 is a great plane. Fast, stable, high wing loading gives you a good ride in turbulence, barely matched load and range. The manufacturer is still in business and that's pretty rare. A great plane for going places, arguably unmatched until you get to the new technology e.g. DA40 at £150k+ or a Cirrus at a lot more.
I would avoid a 6-seater unless really necessary; there are few options about, most are either old or above your price range.
Every type of plane has a long list of problems; that's the nature of this game. Some individual specimens are worse than others, sometimes due to luck but more often due to poor treatment, but this is “Vauxhall Viva reliability” territory. I investigated this at great length, speaking to service shops etc. You should do the same. Make a list of candidate planes and ask for their views. Make sure that the plane you get can be serviced locally.
Be careful asking flying instructors. Sadly, most of them know very little about "decent" planes, having never flown one, and in any case they want you to self fly hire their stuff. I could tell you some quite appalling stories. Try to speak to experienced IR pilots who fly classy planes on business - a very different perspective. Looking back, the biggest problem I found when looking at your price level or above is that due to the mostly decrepit planes operated by most schools/clubs and the very limited experience of most instructors very few people know anything useful, and nearly all the advice I got for the "locals" was in retrospect a load of tosh. No use asking someone owning a 2CV about which Merc to buy. Ask further afield.
What will you get for the £3500? It seems a lot for an annual-equivalent inspection plus some basic paperwork. You can "find" yourself a plane easily enough; just read the various adverts around the place, do some web searches, and contact a few dealers (most new plane dealers also do used planes).
Don't let anyone tell you that a faster plane will get you into trouble faster. Some instructors offered similar patronising comments to me (having realised that I won't be self fly hiring their decrepit £120/hr offerings from their school much longer), and it is nonsense. That sort of plane will have a working autopilot, and an AP, together with better avionics e.g. a slaved HSI, reduces your cockpit workload drastically. Even without an AP I have a much lower workload now that in any C150, C152, PA38, PA28 I ever flew, with 120hrs in those. Especially in IMC. If your navigation and situational awareness are so c**p that you routinely bust CAS then 150kt is no diff to 90kt. The sort of plane you are looking at isn't flown with a compass and a stopwatch like the C150 in the PPL skills test; you have a GPS, radio nav (VOR/DME/ADF), and you don't fly along railways and wondering if such-and-such nondescript bunch of houses is one or another village. You can of course just potter around on nice days but for most flights it’s just extra work with much more scope for getting lost, so why bother? You fly it as if it was IFR.
Unlike with cars there is no obvious price level at which to get into this business because at every price you get something different.
For £100k you can get a TB20 but about 10-15 yrs old and you have to be very careful with the avionics, whose list price new is about £50k-£80k! Make sure it all works and look at service history (you may need to visit shops who serviced it years before as they like to retain the records; the owner/seller is most unlikely to have the complete service record with details of all work done no matter how small). Same applies to any £100k plane which is say £200k new.
Obviously get a full inspection done, this will cost you about £700+, by a licensed engineer of YOUR choice. Get a cylinder bore check done. I know of a plane being advertised (for a long time now, you may have seen it) which has major hidden problems.
Make sure you always have spare money for unexpected work, say £10-20k. This is true equally for a £30k PA28 but the latter won't have the avionics to go wrong.
At 140kt+, retractable gear is worth about 25% extra horsepower, or 25% less fuel, which is a lot. Hard to see in reality because there are few if any identical planes available with/without, for a direct comparison. In general you try to avoid operating any plane, esp. a retractable, from mucky grass strips esp. in freezing conditions. You can but the end result will be more maintenance in the long run. But a TB20 has a trailing link u/c which is great.
Re a TB plane, look at
www.socata.org for much more info.
There are other costs, e.g. £500 for a 50hr check, £1500 for a 150hr check, £2000 for the annual, £300/mo for hangarage. All plus VAT but typical inclusive of parts. You have to allow for engine fund, prop fund and other stuff. Oh and fuel also…
It cannot be done on a shoestring, but the huge upside is that you have a great plane to fly, fast, 100% availability, maintained to YOUR standard, with a marginal (direct hourly) cost no bigger than a self fly hire C150. Great for doing a lot of flying and getting really current.
I never regret owning but this is not a game for someone who is skint!
Of course there are options for reducing the cost e.g. renting it to carefully chosen people, or setting up a group around it. All with the usual caveats...
A lot of these issues get covered, with varying degrees of accuracy, in the usual magazines, but mostly from the low end and not at the level you are looking at.