Taking a loss on your present airplane when you decide to move up will only eat into the available funds for the new airplane. The same is true if you skimp on maintenance while you own your airplane and it catches up with you during a pre-sale inspection. You are always better off to take an interest in your airplane while you own it and see to it that the maintenance is done properly. If you don't fly your airplane enough to keep the systems working properly, you could also face a heavy-duty bill at sale time. That's a heavy-duty loss that usually can be avoided by flying the airplane for an hour or so once or twice a month.
Most buyers are willing to pay the going price for a good, well-maintained airplane.
Generally speaking, it is a lot of little things that add up to a major repair bill that usually kill a sale. The seller can avoid the loss of the sale by taking care of all known discrepancies before advertising the airplane. With the known problems out of the way, it makes dealing with the unknown ones much more palatable. He has been flying since 1970, and earned most of his certificates and ratings on the East Coast in the early 1970s. His first aviation employment was as sales manager at Air Worcester, Inc., an FBO in Massachusetts.