The Asking Price Is Disappearing From the Biggest Jets on the Market

The published average asking price for a business jet fell roughly 30% in the year to the second quarter of 2026, and almost none of that is a fall in price. It is a fall in disclosure. The most expensive aircraft on the market have stopped printing a number at all and now list as "make offer", which pulls them out of the average and drags the published figure down while the aircraft themselves get more expensive.

Jet Match, which publishes quarterly market intelligence on the preowned fleet, set out the mechanics in an analysis on 25 August 2026, and the trade press picked it up in early September. Where a clean model-by-model comparison still exists, prices moved the other way. Jet Match records the Gulfstream G650 up as much as 20% in a matter of months, the Dassault Falcon 7X up 10%, and the Bombardier Global Express up 6%. A handful of models softened by single digits to the mid teens. The composite average went one way and the constituents went the other, which is the clearest sign available that the composite is measuring the sample rather than the market.

What the inventory numbers actually say

The supply data explains why sellers feel no obligation to publish. Across all jets, Jet Match counts 1,673 aircraft for sale, down 9.4% year on year, representing 6.49% of the fleet, a drop of 87 basis points and the lowest ratio since the middle of 2023. Resale transactions reached 664, up 15.5% and the strongest second quarter since 2022. That leaves 7.6 months of supply against a pre-2020 average of 13.4 months.

At the top of the market the squeeze is sharper. The ultra long range segment shows 114 aircraft for sale, down 30.9% year on year, at 3.61% of the fleet, a fall of 195 basis points. Resale transactions in the April to June quarter reached 84, up 44.8% and the highest second quarter reading in the series. Months of supply sits at 4.1, against a pre-2020 average of 11.8.

Four months of supply is not a market in which a seller needs to advertise a price to attract attention. It is a market in which publishing a number can only cost the seller money, because any figure written down in April is stale by June and becomes the ceiling a buyer negotiates down from. Luiz Sandler, the founder of Jet Match, put the consequence bluntly in comments to Corporate Jet Investor: "The average asking price has stopped meaning much."

The two halves of the market are moving apart

Buried inside the same dataset is a tension worth pausing on. Days on market across all jets rose 20.4% to 378 days. In the ultra long range segment, days on market fell 2.5% to 197. The broad market is getting slower while the top of it is getting faster.

That is what a barbell looks like. Demand is concentrating in the largest, newest, longest legged aircraft, where inventory has fallen by nearly a third in a year and anything genuinely clean trades quickly. Further down the size curve buyers can afford to be patient, and aircraft with damage history, engines off programme or an awkward maintenance position sit. The 378 day average is dragged upward by listings that are not really for sale at the price being asked.

Seller behaviour reflects this. Corporate Jet Investor reports sellers testing inflated prices to gauge absorption, resisting thorough inspections and holding firm through negotiation. One broker acknowledged pricing an aircraft above fair value on the expectation that a United States buyer would take it anyway to capture year end tax depreciation. Where supply is this thin, that bet is often correct.

What it costs the buyer

For anyone shopping at the top of the market, the practical effect is that a public listing no longer does work it used to do for free. The asking price was never an appraisal, but it was a starting coordinate: a way to establish roughly where a serial number sat before spending money on advisers. Remove it and the buyer walks in without one.

What replaces it is paid, private and slower. An appraisal establishes value against a specification, a maintenance status and a damage record. A broker with transaction data knows what comparable aircraft actually closed at, as distinct from what they were listed at. Sandler makes the same point, noting that the spread of make offer listings "have made market research and intelligence far more important" and that "the gap between an asking price and a seller's true expectation is harder to read".

Timelines compound the cost. Corporate Jet Investor puts the average closing time at five to seven months for aircraft that do sell. A buyer who spends the first two of those working out what an aircraft is worth is buying into a market that has moved by the time the pre-purchase inspection is scheduled. Knowing what that inspection involves and what it catches before entering the market, rather than during it, is now part of the pricing work itself.

This confirms an argument, it does not start one

None of this is a valuation story, and it is worth being precise about that. The model level moves Jet Match records are consistent with what AVNET set out in examining why a seven year old jet has barely depreciated: residuals in this cycle have held far better than the traditional curves assumed, because the supply those curves were built on no longer exists.

What is new here is not that values are holding. It is that the market has stopped saying so in public. Price discovery has moved off the listing page and into private conversation, which advantages the party with better data, and in a market at four months of supply that party is the seller.

Jet Match publishes its third quarter intelligence in late October, and NBAA-BACE will reset the conversation shortly after. The number to watch is not the average asking price, which now measures its own sample. It is the share of ultra long range listings carrying any price at all.