How come most foresters don't oen timber land?

[Rod]

well it looks like that timberland increases about 16% per year.Say you borrow $100,00 for 20 years at 6%,you would of payed the bank a total of $172,000.The timber and land if it increased at 16% would be worth $334,000.The reason I pick 16% is thats what my timber and land has increasced over the last 7 years.Maybe more because the timber companies said I could keep the house which when i bought the place it came with it.

Now for insurance companies how do the make their money?Well the sale insurance on house etc and they take that money you pay them to buy stuff with so they can pay you back the part you want and they keep the difference.Insurance companies have been known to buy timberland. I haven't seen any large timber companies selling any land here in West Virginia yet.You might find some small tracts that have been cut over hard,but thats about all I've seen.

[Rod]

I picked a timber company out of the air and look at their stock.And with this chart http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/charting.asp?Symbol=PCL&IntraDay=Yes if you would of invested $100,000 in Plum creek timber company 10 yeras ago it would be worth $340,000 today.I think that works out to about and increase of about 12% per  year averge

[Rod]

WOW,I just looked over to the left at those pine trees and it says I'm a senor memeber .have I been here that long?Man time sure does fly by.I didn't signup with the AARP cause I wasn't ready to quit working yet.I still got to much to do..

[SwampDonkey]

A lot of large parcels of land have been sold here. Just recently, Fraser/Nexfor has announced they are selling off about 760,000 acres to invest in paper making technologies. Doaktown lumber sold over 26,000 acres of lands to local land owners. JD Irving sold 300,000 acres in northern Maine to a concervation group. Georgia Pacific sold land in Southern New Brunswick. We aren't talking about alot of money per acre (typically around $100-200/acre). In my area farmland is where the money is, forestland doesn't yield returns anywhere near 16 % in 10 years, more like 6 or 7% (of course it's much higher when looking at 50 year yields) and interest on barrowed money to buy land is usually 8%-12 % at our banks, unless you go through a low interest program with farm credit, maybe prime at best. I can barrow money to invest and right off the barrowing interest, and down the road get a tax break when I cash in.

The bottom line is, returns on land depositions varies by location and is just as speculative as the stock market.

Some math

$100,000 x (1 + 0.05)^20 = $265,329 (5 % for 20 years)

$2,500 x [1 - (1.05^20)] / (1-1.05) =  $82664 (invest $2500 annually at 5 % for 20 years

$2,500 x [1 - (1.05^30)] / (1-1.05) = $166,097 (invest $2500 annually at 5 % for 30 years

$500 x [1 - (1.05^40)] / (1-1.05) = $60,400 (invest $500 annually at 5 % for 40 years


Don't loose sight of the cost of the investment in the timber land and the cost to harvest it.

[SwampDonkey]

13 % and bit

[Rod]

http://www.brascancorp.com/RecentEvents/RecentEvents.html

Brascan has entered into a definitive agreement with Weyerhaeuser to purchase its BC Coastal assets for C$1.2 billion. This acquisition expands Brascan's asset management platform and allows us to launch a Timber Fund, with institutional investors, seeking long term sustainable cash flows.



Looks like someones paying big money for timberland up your way.That come out to being $1575 and ac.
 

[SwampDonkey]

There was an outfit proposing buying BC coastal doug fir woodland ,1750 ha (4322 acres), for $15 million. Never get anywhere near close that in my kneck of the woods.

Locally $500 to 1200 per acre for small woodlot parcels here (mature wooded), land woods and all. If your near a major township alot more, because of the development potential, not for woodland.

[jrdwyer]

I'm a forester and 38 and just now to the point of considering the purchase of my own woodland in the next 5 years.  It does seem with middle class wages that other things in life take precedent. It's a shame though that much good forestland is not intensively managed. Why not donate it to a decent forester and let him or her go wild (Ted Turner, are you listening?).

I do hope to own 50-100 acres before I turn 50. My plan is to buy a tract with 30-40 year old trees that have have no current timber value (PNV excluded) and then do intensive TSI and then maybe have a selective harvest before I keel over. I also hope to teach my son good forestry and pass the property on to him.  Time will tell.

jph, that beech in the center of the picture has great stem form and quality. Is it all like that? I know that Beech timber is very desired in many parts of Europe. Our markets for beech are weak at best. I have travelled in Ireland and Britian and old tracts of hardwood timber are definitely hard to find. Most of the big trees I saw where on estates and the few true woods or woodlands I saw had fairly low density with the bigger oak and beech appearing to have been more open grown at one time, i.e. branchy or wolf trees. Of course, I didn't see that much in the few times I've gone over there.  Travel is one area where I have blown some money. It keeps the wife happy though.

[Ron Wenrich]

Rod

You're starting to throw all kinds of things into the mix and they aren't necessarily comparable.  How a stock is doing doesn't reflect on how much their timber assets have grown. 

Trying to compare land value from one area to another isn't a direct route, if done properly.   You have to know how much timber is there, just for starters.  Valuing West Coast blocks vs East Coast blocks have a big differential in volume and value.  Then, you're going to have to project how well timber will grow on the land.

Plot size has a lot to do with price.  You have a lot fewer customers when you are trying to sell 1,000 acres vs 10 acres.  Lower demand will yield a lower unit price.  That's why those big blocks seem so cheap. 

When you're dealing in timber in the smaller sizes, you're getting a lot of ingrowth.  That's those polesize trees that grow into sawtimber size.  All of a sudden, you have recordable volume that wasn't there before.  But, you have to grow the tree through those poletimber sizes before you get to sawtimber, and that part of the investment doesn't look so rosy.

You also can get a jolt in value when the trees cross over from sawtimber to veneer quality.   A lot depends on when you've come on line with the value progression of a forest.

[Rod]

True Ron,I wonder if foresters put that much study when they pick funds/stocks for thier 401k plan?Also I thought 1575 ac. for timberland in BC was alot.But I really don't know whats going on in BC either.Maybe alot people are moving there,or maybe it has great timber on it.

[Rod]

Heres a link to 20 ac of cut over timber land that they want $6500 for it.

This was a lo-o-ong link

[SwampDonkey]

From the photos, it seems it was heavy logged, so I'de say the price was right from my perspective.

[Ron Wenrich]

You wouldn't be able to touch very much land in PA for that price.  I've been looking around at a few tracts, and the cheapest I've seen on cutover ground is $38K for 22.5 acres.  Most of it is in a floodplain.

You can find larger tracts for less money, but they still want a minimum of $1000/acre for land that just isn't good for much.  Some of these get to be pretty remote.

[jrdwyer]

At an auction of heavily cutover forestland a couple years ago in western KY, the tracts went for $400-$750/acre.  These were 40-80 acre tracts with all woods and no development potential. Also, these tracts were at least 90 miles from Evansville, IN the nearest large (not really) city.

[SwampDonkey]

Depending on the stocking and species of the cutover woodland, I'de pay $400/acre, but no more.

There is also a difference between what a property is listed for and what they actually get. There have been unharvested woodlots here of 100 acres that were listed for over $300,000 ,but they never get any offers near that unless it's from a nature conservancy trust.

It's been hard to find any good productive land for sale here at times. It's usually a parcel of land with alot of wetlands making it on the low end of forest productivity. And it's often times at the back end of a farm that someone wants to sell off after they flattened it. This is what I ran into 7 years ago, when the realestate company was faxing me land for sale that was mostly cedar wetlands and swamps off farms. I never even responded because I felt insulted. In my neck of the woods these realtors haven't a clue what they're selling and don't want any appraissal either. Before I even considered looking at the lots I just dug out the aerial photos at the Association and just eliminated them one by one based on covertype. Swamp, swamp, and more swamp, most of them you had to cross someones field to reach them, didn't want that neither.