Nothing wrong with the Cessnas - I owned a Cessna A152 and thoroughly enjoyed it. The reason that I bought a TC’ed airplane was so my son-in-law would have something to learn to fly in. Finding a qualified instructor for an E-AB where he was would have been difficult.Thanks for all the good leads.
I insist on building my own plane. If I buy a plane, it will be a Cessna 150/152 or similar. I can't see myself paying the same amount of money for an experimental that only the builder knows well enough to inspect and maintain.
But don’t automatically eliminate buying an E-AB. Doing so would be to exclude lots of perfectly good homebuilts, especially the more common ones such as the RVs, Rans, Zenith, and others. Unless you are in a remote location, aviation wise, there are plenty of A&Ps fully qualified to perform inspections and maintenance.
BJC