I'm in the market for an early Gen 3 Cirrus. Perusing all the adds on Controller or Trade-a-Plane it quickly becomes obvious that 90% or more of the listed airplanes are represented by 3 major brokers (Steel, Aerista, Lone Mountain). What gives, and what would be a good way to find it straight from owners? Does COPA have a classified forum?

COPA does have a classified. With that said, I've dealt with all 3 brokers, and have purchased from Steel & Lone Mountain. Steel has sold two of my planes. There is a much higher % of buyers and sellers that use agents for Cirri for some reason.

Neal S may be some help with info. I bought one through him, as well. And that's who I would use again, if I was in the market.

But buying outside of an agent - COPA is probably best choice. $65 well invested for an owner/potential owner, for many reasons.

Stefan,

I know two of the three firms and all have good reps as Nate said. I'd suggest at least considering someone to assist you on the buyer's side with a Cirrus. Neal, as I have said elsewhere many times can't be beat. He has helped buy and sell a lot of Cirri including mine and friends. I just had a call this morning with a friend who had a Cirrus shop do his extensive prebuy and logbook inspection. The same shop, now doing his annual said "oh, we missed the line cutter OH you need to do. And we can't do it. Sorry we missed it on the prebuy". So, now his airplane isn't airworthy and will require a ferry permit to move to the shop that can do the work. That's a PITA but the fact that no one can get to it for at least a month is worse. That is the kind of thing you have to watch and for which a buyer's rep, who is experienced in the airframe, knows to watch for.

I was mainly surprised to see how many of the Cirrus airplanes are represented by brokers compared to the rest of the fleet. It may have to do with the higher amount of money exchanging hands that is driving this, but even airplanes in the 300k range seem to be mainly in the hands of the three main companies.
I am sure they do a good job, it just seemed odd to me.
The other issue is the occasional sales tax exemption which I do not believe can be used if buying from a broker.

Buying from a broker, it can be. Unless other states are different. Buying from a dealer is not the same.

I bought my Cirrus direct from an owner (who had a "broker" but more of a friend helping him sell), then used Aerista to sell it later when I bought my M600. I will say it's more important on the sell side to use a broker than on the buy side, because those major brokers you mentioned have a lot of buy-side clients looking for aircraft with whom they can hook you up.

On the buy side, the key is to have a good pre-buy shop lined up that knows the Cirrus well in its various generations and iterations, and I also usually recommend the Savvy pre-buy service also. I don't think you need a buy-side broker on a well-known aircraft like a Cirrus with the right technical support. Just my two cents.

Also definitely join COPA; not because you'll find a lot of planes for sale there (you won't find many and the ones you do see listed by members are almost universally way overpriced because Cirrus owners think they often think they know what their plane is "worth" better than the market does), but because you will learn a lot about owning and flying them. It's a really solid forum for all things Cirrus and well worth the $65. COPA sponsors a lot of excellent training events (which is where most of the $$ goes to) that are really good and recommended.

Good luck!