We want to buy your land

[grsthegreat]

i bought the 10 acres across the road for $65k 5 years ago. i had an offer for $300K a few weeks ago. not interested. prices are nuts. i had a friend of mine get a written offer on ths house and 15 acres for 1.7 million. he did not even have it listed. no intention to sell. i coukld only imagine what i could get for a 20 acres with more and newer buildings on it if i did sell. but i have no intentions to.

i get realitors mailing me offers to sell my house every week. dont read them. dump in trash.

 

[5030]

There's only 49 acres of virgin forest in the lower peninsula of Michigan.

Under MDNR control as in government owned land. That don't take into account privately held tracts at all. We happen to own one. You can come visit anytime you want but you'll need a 4x4 to get in. John Pung also owns the one adjacent to ours and Ted Nugent's brother owns a partial tract to the east of us. Pung's abuts the Manistee National Forest land. None of them have ever been timbered and are all old growth hardwood with a smattering of spruce mixed in. Only accessable via 'seasonal road' which is extremely seasonal.

When we go and camp (I have a 4wd pickup with a pop up truck camper), we only burn deadfall for the campfires and never touch any living trees. In and out is in4L with the differentials locked even in dry weather. Hunting is via a motel and drive in and out. Excellent game land, plenty of game, from wild turkey to bear.

 

[5030]

i bought the 10 acres across the road for $65k 5 years ago. i had an offer for $300K a few weeks ago. not interested. prices are nuts. i had a friend of mine get a written offer on ths house and 15 acres for 1.7 million. he did not even have it listed. no intention to sell. i coukld only imagine what i could get for a 20 acres with more and newer buildings on it if i did sell. but i have no intentions to.

i get realitors mailing me offers to sell my house every week. dont read them. dump in trash.

Probably a good idea. Once the market gets totally upside down, the only avenue will be foreclosure.

 

[MossRoad]

Under MDNR control as in government owned land. That don't take into account privately held tracts at all. We happen to own one. You can come visit anytime you want but you'll need a 4x4 to get in. John Pung also owns the one adjacent to ours and Ted Nugent's brother owns a partial tract to the east of us. Pung's abuts the Manistee National Forest land. None of them have ever been timbered and are all old growth hardwood with a smattering of spruce mixed in. Only accessable via 'seasonal road' which is extremely seasonal.

When we go and camp (I have a 4wd pickup with a pop up truck camper), we only burn deadfall for the campfires and never touch any living trees. In and out is in4L with the differentials locked even in dry weather. Hunting is via a motel and drive in and out. Excellent game land, plenty of game, from wild turkey to bear.

That would be nice. It is very very rare to find anything that wasn't logged in the 1800s.

 

[5030]

We are 3 hours from Chicago so about 2 hours from you. Sometime you want to visit, sent me a pm and I'll meet you at the end of the pavement. Actually pretty easy with a side by side or a quad. I'll drive up to the Nugent compound with my side by side on the trailer and embark from there.

We are far enough off the lakes that we didn't get in the logging blight of the wooden ship building era that decimated Michigan's hardwood forests. Not all wooded plots escaped the sawyers but some did and we were lucky enough to be able to buy it in a private estate sale. Some of the oaks are monsters. The canopy is way up there...

I always get a kick out of the amount of acorns littering the forest floor and the deer love them.

We get offers every year to selective cut. They all go in the round file.

 

[dmccarty]

Why I won't allow logging on our virgin hardwood land. I don't live there so I cannot 'manage' it everyday they are there. I take the hardwood forest habitat very seriously. IOW, stay off, no exceptions.

If I had a virgin forest I would not logged it either. Having said that, there is very little forest that has not been logged at least once, usually more, since the Europeans arrived. I know of a few parcels in Florida and NC. There were a couple of old growth trees north of Orlando on an itty, bitty patch of land, and some idiot went and burnt down one of the trees a few years ago. Our place has been logged several times and has never been farmed. Parcel near us used to be farm land but now has some nice pines. They took out some of the pines a few years ago. I really wonder why they have not logged the rest given the high timber prices at the moment. Quite few parcels have been logged around us in the last few months because of the timber prices.

Managing the logging is not a big deal. As part of the sale, one should have a Timber Agent, who is like a real estate broker/agent, who helps manages the logging operation. The guy we hired was out watching the logging as was I. Logging does not take long with modern machines. They were done in 4-5 days best I remember for roughly 60 acres. We did not clear cut though.

Later,
Dan

 

[ponytug]

In much of the US, the bottleneck appears to be at the sawmills. Low timber prices and high lumber prices would appear to validate that.

Even if someone could pull out a portable mill, you would still need to dry the sawn boards to get to generally usable lumber. Green lumber construction is a practically lost art.

All the best,

Peter

 

[MossRoad]

If I had a virgin forest I would not logged it either. Having said that, there is very little forest that has not been logged at least once, usually more, since the Europeans arrived. I know of a few parcels in Florida and NC. There were a couple of old growth trees north of Orlando on an itty, bitty patch of land, and some idiot went and burnt down one of the trees a few years ago. Our place has been logged several times and has never been farmed. Parcel near us used to be farm land but now has some nice pines. They took out some of the pines a few years ago. I really wonder why they have not logged the rest given the high timber prices at the moment. Quite few parcels have been logged around us in the last few months because of the timber prices.

Managing the logging is not a big deal. As part of the sale, one should have a Timber Agent, who is like a real estate broker/agent, who helps manages the logging operation. The guy we hired was out watching the logging as was I. Logging does not take long with modern machines. They were done in 4-5 days best I remember for roughly 60 acres. We did not clear cut though.

Later,
Dan

You are mistaken. LUMBER prices are at record highs. TIMBER prices are at 2011 levels.

Lumber Prices Soar, But Logs Are Still Dirt Cheap

Lumber prices have soared to records. Demand for wood is skyrocketing. The shares of wood suppliers are surging.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[5030]

You are mistaken. LUMBER prices are at record highs. TIMBER prices are at 2011 levels.

Lumber Prices Soar, But Logs Are Still Dirt Cheap

Lumber prices have soared to records. Demand for wood is skyrocketing. The shares of wood suppliers are surging.

www.bloomberg.com

That is 100% correct. I know a timber estimator and timber prices are stagnant. It's the 2 big mills that are inflating the prices and the smaller mills fall in line. Weyerhauser and Georgia Pacific are driving the increases and guess who owns majority stock in one? I don't want to inject politics because I don't want the thread 'pruned' but let me just say Koch Brothers. You figure it out for yourself.

Who is making a killing. Not the timber owners, not the loggers, not the retail sales outlets.

It's an artificially inflated market for only one reason and one reason only, because they can and are greedy.

 

[5030]

I see Bloomberg fails to mention the real reason. Typical.