Maine land timber value?

[Piper2022]

I am in the market for a large parcel of land in southern Maine. I just walked a large plot that is in the process of being cut.

I know this is a very open ended question but what sort of value can the property owner expect to get paid per acre for a mixed hard and soft wood forest thinning. I know it depends on many variables(number of trees, size and species of trees, access to the property, etc). I am going to be negotiating price with the landowner and I want to know roughy what he might have got paid for the timber. Like are we talking $100/acre or more like $500/acre.

Anyone care to chime in, I am just looking for a rough assumption here.

Thanks

 

[dave1949]

I received ~$3250 for 15 acres of chip harvest clear cut @$4/ton last July. That's $216/acre. It wasn't a good stand by any means. I would say that is about the worst he could do as a baseline and depending on what is there, he could be getting a lot more.

I don't know the current going rate per ton for chips though. But assuming a stand with more volume, a lower rate per ton could be offset for the per acre return.

If you are buying land for timber investment, I would hire a forester to help determine the residual stand value and potential future harvest schedule. For income tax purposes you will eventually need to determine your timber basis value at the time of purchase.

 

[Jstpssng]

It depends on how much land you're talking about, how long it's been since the last harvest, how hard you want to have it cut.
when you say a thinning I assume that you're talking about mostly pulpwood... rough assumption, 100-200$/acre.

On the other hand if you have time to cut it yourself using my same assumptions, you can make about 500-1000$/acre cutting the same trees.

Here is the latest stumpage report put out by the Maine Forest Service, based on 2013 prices. hopefully it will give you some assistance. http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/attach.php?id=626875&an=1

You also could contact the state forester for the area you're looking at District Foresters: Forest Policy and Management: Division of Forestry: Maine ACF.
(I highly recommend this to anybody who is considering a harvest)

 

[dmccarty]

It depends on how much land you're talking about, how long it's been since the last harvest, how hard you want to have it cut.
when you say a thinning I assume that you're talking about mostly pulpwood... rough assumption, 100-200$/acre.

On the other hand if you have time to cut it yourself using my same assumptions, you can make about 500-1000$/acre cutting the same trees.

Here is the latest stumpage report put out by the Maine Forest Service, based on 2013 prices. hopefully it will give you some assistance. http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/attach.php?id=626875&an=1

You also could contact the state forester for the area you're looking at District Foresters: Forest Policy and Management: Division of Forestry: Maine ACF.
(I highly recommend this to anybody who is considering a harvest)

In NC, the state has a phone number, and I think now a website, that shows previous quarterly sale prices for timber. This was done by regions across the state so one could get a decent feel for prices. What one also needs is the price trends, are prices rising or falling?

Jstpssng's links should get you started and hopefully you can find more information. Timber prices are certainly location sensitive and depend on the tree species, size, and local market. At a minimum, the local state forester should have an idea of the state of the market.

Down here, prices are not calculated by the acre but the thousand board feet(MBF) I could work out what we were paid per acre but it would be an iffy number because one area was thick with mature pines while the rest was mostly hardwood. Hardwood and pine were the same price per MBF but you get far more MBF per acre with pine than hardwood.

I don't know of a source that tracts the timber acreage vs price. Maybe the state forester will have a guess/source.

Later,
Dan

 

[Country Geek]

In NC, the state has a phone number, and I think now a website, that shows previous quarterly sale prices for timber. This was done by regions across the state so one could get a decent feel for prices. What one also needs is the price trends, are prices rising or falling?

In NC the way smaller landowners usually sell timber is by selling a timber deed to a forestry company. These deeds are recorded at the courthouse like any other deeds so you can go look them up. That's probably where the office Dan is talking about gets the pricing.

The timber deed gives the buyer the right to come and take the timber at any time during the life of the deed (usually 1 year IIRC). So if you sell a timber deed and then the market for timber collapses and the buyer doesn't take the timber in time, you got free money. OTOH if you sell a timber deed and then the price of timber skyrockets, the buyer of your deed makes out like a bandit.

So you know what you'll get for your timber and sometimes you lose, sometimes you win.

 

[newbury]

I am in the market for a large parcel of land in southern Maine. I just walked a large plot that is in the process of being cut.

I know this is a very open ended question but what sort of value can the property owner expect to get paid per acre for a mixed hard and soft wood forest thinning. I know it depends on many variables(number of trees, size and species of trees, access to the property, etc). I am going to be negotiating price with the landowner and I want to know roughy what he might have got paid for the timber. Like are we talking $100/acre or more like $500/acre.

Anyone care to chime in, I am just looking for a rough assumption here.

Thanks

If you are thinning for $$ now (taking the good trees) I'd expect about at most a couple hundred. If you are thinning for future growth much less. If you have a large plot (several hundred acres or more) the logger can spend more time there with his equipment.

However in mixed stands of regrowth you often get a lot of "scrub trees". It might be much more cost effective to have it clearcut for pulp and replant for what you want. Sort of an "economy of scale"

In NC the way smaller landowners usually sell timber is by selling a timber deed to a forestry company. These deeds are recorded at the courthouse like any other deeds so you can go look them up. That's probably where the office Dan is talking about gets the pricing.

The timber deed gives the buyer the right to come and take the timber at any time during the life of the deed (usually 1 year IIRC). So if you sell a timber deed and then the market for timber collapses and the buyer doesn't take the timber in time, you got free money. OTOH if you sell a timber deed and then the price of timber skyrockets, the buyer of your deed makes out like a bandit.

So you know what you'll get for your timber and sometimes you lose, sometimes you win.

That's why the process is a gamble. We've one lot that's been sold twice and they haven't taken the timber off one section. You ALWAYS get what you were willing to sell it for, but may miss out on upward price spikes.

Right now in Mississippi hardwood pulpwood is going pretty good.
View attachment timber2014.pdf

/edit -
And another thing - there is a move for the big box stores to buy lumber FIRST from "qualified" or "certified" forests. That means if you have a minimal approved forest management plan and you want to sell your timber you may have some advantage over someone who doesn't. Similar to veterans preference points in federal government hiring. My local state forester did mine.

 

[dave1949]

birdman2447: Are you considering a purchase while a harvest is underway? That seems more complicated in many ways than I would want as an individual buyer.

 

[Garandman]

Our NH house was logged in the 1980's by a local with a poor reputation. He took all the valuable trees, left trails with deep ruts all over the place, left tops, branches and cuts all over the place, but at least he got paid. I know a number of folks who have had loggers take off lumber who never paid them or underpaid them, including my Brother In Law in Vermont.

I hired a local logger who also owns property in the area to take down some large trees near the house. He walked some of the property with me and advised what to do if I wanted to develop marketable trees. What's left now are some large old trees in rough shape, and a bunch of scrub.

 

[dave1949]

Our NH house was logged in the 1980's by a local with a poor reputation. He took all the valuable trees, left trails with deep ruts all over the place, left tops, branches and cuts all over the place, but at least he got paid. I know a number of folks who have had loggers take off lumber who never paid them or underpaid them, including my Brother In Law in Vermont.

I hired a local logger who also owns property in the area to take down some large trees near the house. He walked some of the property with me and advised what to do if I wanted to develop marketable trees. What's left now are some large old trees in rough shape, and a bunch of scrub.

That's a fairly common condition unfortunately. We bought our lot at the end of 2003. It had been cut pretty hard in 2000. I wouldn't say the logger was a timber liquidator exactly, but he bought a parcel that hadn't been cut in many years, took the good stuff and eventually sold the land to us after holding it long enough to avoid liquidation status.

As far as condition, they left things in reasonable shape, seed trees, not very many ruts were cut and the skidder tree wounds were limited to the lanes they used and not horrible. But, what's left is going to take many years before it is worth harvesting again. It amounts to even-aged high-grading I suppose.

What's lacking is going back in and making some stand improvement cuts. Taking out the poor species, poor examples of desirable species and releasing the good crop trees. We are talking near a lifetime of work off and on with no real net income resulting. I'm 65 years-old, how does that work? It doesn't unless I have kids who will carry on and ultimately benefit.

It's a shame but once a wood lot is allowed to get run down it takes a long time and plenty of low-paying effort to reverse that. Like many recent land buyers according to the surveys, we are more interested in conservation values than timber production. There is no reason those two goals can't co-exist. I'm not sure how things can change for the better, especially with declining markets and disappearing paper mills.

 

[Jstpssng]

That's a fairly common condition unfortunately. We bought our lot at the end of 2003. It had been cut pretty hard in 2000. I wouldn't say the logger was a timber liquidator exactly, but he bought a parcel that hadn't been cut in many years, took the good stuff and eventually sold the land to us after holding it long enough to avoid liquidation status.

As far as condition, they left things in reasonable shape, seed trees, not very many ruts were cut and the skidder tree wounds were limited to the lanes they used and not horrible. But, what's left is going to take many years before it is worth harvesting again. It amounts to even-aged high-grading I suppose.

What's lacking is going back in and making some stand improvement cuts. Taking out the poor species, poor examples of desirable species and releasing the good crop trees. We are talking near a lifetime of work off and on with no real net income resulting. I'm 65 years-old, how does that work? It doesn't unless I have kids who will carry on and ultimately benefit.

It's a shame but once a wood lot is allowed to get run down it takes a long time and plenty of low-paying effort to reverse that. Like many recent land buyers according to the surveys, we are more interested in conservation values than timber production. There is no reason those two goals can't co-exist. I'm not sure how things can change for the better, especially with declining markets and disappearing paper mills.

One of the most frustrating things I see is that people wait too long to do anything, instead letting their woodlot stagnate, when they should be creating openings for new trees to grow. While mills are dying off in this state [\b] the demand for fibre is strong... In fact one of my biggest concerns is that our low timberland prices are an incentive for people to buy strictly for the land, never visit it ( like one of my neighbors who I have never met)... and let the trees rot into the ground, whereas the same land was once used to produce timber and jobs.

I'll stop now, before I shift into "rant" mode.