iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Diameter vs. circumfrence

Started by Frickman, October 21, 2009, 10:04:48 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

SwampDonkey

They have survey engineers at our Service NB offices, maybe not all but I know a few who work at them. Our "tax offices" do more than collect the taxes and point fingers at file cabinets to search records from.  ;) We have a separate assessment bureau that does the assessments and the municipalities have a slice of that tax to. My cousin is an assessor and his sister was also one in the Toronto area until she got tired of that rat race and came home to get a nursing degree.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Frickman

I'm glad you folks know how to do all that fancy detective work. I'll hire someone like you when I need your skills. If I have all the deeds and tax maps and a known corner I can do pretty good finding lines. I'm not a surveyor but I can find all the corners if there is any shred of evidence left on the property. My specialty is putting logs on the landing and lumber out the mill. That's what I do. I'll leave all the complicated stuff to you educated fellows.
If you're not broke down once in a while, you're not working hard enough

I'm not a hillbilly. I'm an "Appalachian American"

Retired  Conventional hand-felling logging operation with cable skidder and forwarder, Frick 01 handset sawmill

Pretend farmer when I have the time

SwampDonkey

I find it odd from reading a previous post that an owner wouldn't know his property he was purchasing or has owned for years. Why even own it? Are these speculators? I've never encountered an owner that didn't know his land. There might be the odd boundary dispute because both owners are too cheap to have a survey, but they know where it's sitting. Even out of province folks that ain't been here for decades know where their land is.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Ron Scott

Yes, some are speculators, absentee owners, and those who have inherited property that they never were aware of being in the family. Most don't understand legal descriptions, nor can they explain where the property is if they have never been on it nor even in the state or country that the property has been in.

Had one awhile back where a Vietnamese girl inherited 80 acres from her father. She was in California, the property was in Michigan, and she never was in Michigan, nor on the property, couldn't understand the deed, nor the property description, nor what the property was close to. I did find the property after several telephone calls, and   days of extra time, but still not sure how her father obtained the property.

Also, just had one a couple weeks ago where a wife in Vermont just inherited 40 acres after her husband died. She had never been to Michigan, nor was ever on the property, nor knew what the location was close to. I was able to walk her through the legal description she had and found out that the property was surrounded by State forest land on all four sides and had no legal access.

Locating forest land onwnerships are not always easy. ;)
~Ron

SwampDonkey

Inheritance is a different circumstance than the actual purchaser though. ;D So I'll assume speculators with lots of money to waste. Sometimes it pays off, but usually many decades later because of regular inflation or a hot market driving prices sky high.  Just have to be in the right geographic area with a population boom. It's been a bust around here for a life time. ;) :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Phorester

At first many years ago I was amazed that so many landowners didn't know their boundary line locations.  Now I just realize that this is the way some people think (or don't think). I've had them walk right past a marked property line and not realize what those paint marks on trees, or old fences, posted signs, or a change in timber type meant. They continue on walking as if they were still on their property.  They can't intrepret aerial photos, survey plats, anything. 

I asked one landowner to locate his property lines on my aerial photo. He owned about 100 acres, but placed his property lines on the photo as encompassing well over 1,000 acres.  Couldn't understand photo scale, fields, creeks, roads on it. He just drew lines. Couldn't find his property lines in the woods either. Didn't beleive me when I would stop him far shorter than he wanted to walk when I found clear evidence of his lines.

Had one lady say that all the properties surrounding hers were surveyed, therefore hers was too.  That's a legally dangereous position to put yourself in. Had another landowner say he had a survey plat of his property, then handed me a blurry photocopy of the tax map with his parcel on it outlined with a black magic marker.  ::)

Every once in awhile I get the urge to do a detailed investigation of property line locations on particular properties.  Just something that intrigues me about it to really get down to the nitty gritty.  I've gone so far as to take the metes and bounds of surveys and map them out myself on a redi-mapper.  I've found reversed bearings, mis-measured line lengths, surveys that came nowhere close to closing, etc.

SwampDonkey

Getting back to the speculators in my previous post. I have here a "Valuation Day" appraisal  for purpose of Capital gains when selling farm land. This is Dated October 1974.

125 ac Cultivated land $150/acre
10 ac Pastured land $40/acre
115 ac Wood land $20/acre  :D This is land that actually has merchantable timber, in those days when woodlots owners didn't liquidate their woods.

Potato shed 50 x 80 $32,000. This was brand new.
Gravity Fed spring $1000
10 room House $10,000 :D

1970 MacCullough chain saw was on trade $150 :D highlight of the day.

Appraised at $73,400 including barns.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Ron Wenrich

I can't recall too many times that a landowner walked a property with me.  It didn't matter if I was doing procurement work or consulting work.  I never expected landowners to actually know their property all that well.  Most times the property came with the house or it was handed down. 

I always draw a map of the property well in advance of doing any work and quite often before I see the property.  Deed searches are easy to do and are good rainy day work.  When you go to the property and talk to the landowner, they'll see you are well prepared, and you can often tell them things about their land or the adjoiners that they didn't know.  Then, you look brilliant.   ;)

I did work for guys that worked on distressed property.  The one was an attorney that did nothing but title searches.  The man found all types of timberland that owners no longer knew they had.  Sometimes he would force them onto the tax sales and buy them.  Sometimes he would contact the owner and buy them for a low value.   And if no owner was evident, he would do a quiet title.  Quite often he found property that nobody else knew who the owner was.  He kept me busy for a couple of years just selling timber.

Another guy bought well over 1,000 acres of distressed property.  He was a state forester with a pretty high position.  He retired and then timbered the properties.  Became very wealthy.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

WH_Conley

Ron, you forgot tell what your personal opinion of this guy is.
Bill

tughill

Hi Guys,
New to FF, but grew up working in my grandfathers sawmill, and went on from there.

I'm not really surprised by people who don't really know what's on their land.  I have a neighbor, an older lady, who owns nearly 700 acres that she grew up on, but probably hasn't ever been more than 100 feet from the house/farmyard.

As far as measuring things, good luck.  It's sad, but there are plenty of folks that work in the trades that can barely use a tape measure, much less do metric/english conversions, or fractional/decimal conversions.

What does baffle me, is how much money people tie up in land, and pay taxes and all that, and don't even attempt to do any sort of management of the resources.

"Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not."- Thomas Jefferson
Local Farmer here won 10$ million in the lottery, when asked what he was going to do with his winnings, responded, "Keep on farming until that's all gone too."

Ron Wenrich

As told to me by a realtor "They're just trees". 
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

SwampDonkey

Ron they all say that here to, and $50 an acre is about all they give it. If they are selling farmland, the price on the woodlot at the back is way low. One reason why the owners liquidate before selling. But, even if it was mature timber on a farm the buyer is interested in the farmland so the woods get priced low around here. Some loggers have tried buying these farms when the timber market was hot. They would log off the lot and get stuck with the farm. Usually not a great farm, marginal in those cases. Good farmland gets sold faster than housing.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Phorester


RON: "As told to me by a realtor "They're just trees".  Yep - they have no idea as to a monetary value of trees or timber.

A couple of my realtor stories.....  Had a realtor who was talking about how many acres there were in a certain tract.  He wanted to show me he was the "land expert" in the discussion.  Looking at the plat, I couldn't come up with the same number of acres he was figuring.  It was a rectangle and we were multiplying length x width of the perimeter & dividing by the # of square feet in one acre.  Finally he puffed out his chest, stuck his nose in the air and said condescendingly; "well, you probably don't know this but there are 40,000 square feet in one acre!"  I said, "no, there are 43,560 square feet in one acre".  He stammered and blustered "well, 40 thousand's close enough!"  He was automatically increasing every one of his acreage estimates by 10%.

Another realtor, like so many, had advertised a house as having "a lawn with magnificant old oak trees towering over the property", or something like that.   We've all seen the studies that show that having a house with trees is supposed to increase the value of the house, something I've always questioned.  So I asked him if he would reduce the price of the house if there were no trees in the lawn at all.  He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world and said "No!" 
So the trees really had no value to him. 

SwampDonkey

Phorester, some realtors may be foresters, but really most of them have no training in the field of forestry and there isn't much of a course load to be a realtor.  :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Ron Wenrich

Actually, there's a bigger course load to be a realtor than to be a forester.  Lots more realtors than foresters.

I have yet to do an appraisal for a realtor.  I've pointed out the advantages of appraisals and still they go out and make appraisals of a properties value.  I've also solicited business from banks and others that deal in land.  Never got a job from them.  They all know how to value land.  They go to the courthouse and look up similar values of land that has been sold in the area.

I had one landowner that I did a management plan on a recently purchased property.  He's the only one I ever did this for.  It shows how successful our profession has been in getting our ideas across.  Anyway, his timber was worth more than what he paid for the land.  When I told the realtor he did a disservice to his client, he told me he didn't care.  He got his commission and that's all that mattered.  It must be great being right all the time.

And, there is value to landscape trees.  There's a way to figure it up, but I haven't seen a realtor that can do it.  I've used the formula and have successfully used it in court. 
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Cedarman

Realators are for selling houses.  The moral of this thread is do your homework when buying land and timber land, use the realator to push the paperwork through.  Around here most realators are women, they aren't about to get their nylons ripped.  This attitude opens the door for those women that will get out there and walk the land and woods and put them ahead of the pack.  Most of the men won't get their shoes dirty either.  Anytime I looked at land the realator gave me a map and said have at it.
I am in the pink when sawing cedar.

Onthesauk

Sometimes works out.  The realtor we bought through represented an out of state trust.  He claimed that he had the property cruised and there was no marketable timber.  I'm pretty sure we've got twice the original property cost still standing, that after trading an acre or two of timber for all the roads and site work.
John Deere 3038E
Sukuki LT-F500

Don't attribute irritating behavior to malevolence when mere stupidity will suffice as an explanation.

SwampDonkey

Realtors must be different here than down south because there is no way you could say their course load is heavier than studying forestry. Now, these people are not uneducated types. Many or most I should say do have business training, some are foresters, some customs agents, some nurses, farmers (yup I know a couple brothers who farm, have realestate, trucking and a funeral home) and so one. They often take up reastate as a side line, not a sole income. And that's true for most all I know who are into it, it's a side line business. The two farmers would be the only ones I know of that would ever ask to have an appraisal done on a lot. The rest are as you describe. I've tried soliciting from them and I got a flood of swamp land for sale, not appraisal. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Ron Wenrich

Some food for thought.  I've heard that timber is considered real estate until severed.  Then it becomes personal property.  There hasn't been a savvy realtor that has challenged the issue, but a lot of foresters would have to get their realtor's license if that would be the case.

I misspoke about the course load. 
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

SwampDonkey

I've also noticed a couple realestate outfits that brought foresters into their group all the sudden have begun using the aerial photos anyone can obtain for free off the government website. Before that, all you got was lines drawn on a map when displayed in the paper adds. Of course most are just selling houses so you have that photo. It's a little bonus, but I'm sure everyone brings something to those realtor groups. But anyway, there are a few farms that come up and some isolated and remote lots that have camps on them. Nice to have aerials of them. There is one lot I've seen on the web stuck dab into the middle of Fundy National Park. They have a huge price on the camp or lodge, but it is a big outfit with 150 acres of woods not timbered. Many of these places are foreign owned, and some may be sold off by timber companies as well. I'm sure that's the same anywhere in US or Canada.

Timber here is property, but even the judges in court don't know how to value it. Almost impossible to convict a timber thief, and they know it. Funny, if i see someone steel granny's wallet you can get convicted over $20. But, if I see someone steeling my timber, well, good luck.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Ron Scott

A number of consulting foresters here are also realtors and have land sales as part of their business. That's were they make a lot of their money. Sometimes I see it as a conflict of interest.
~Ron

WDH

It is the same down here.  Most consultants have a real estate liscense.  The economic downturn has dealt them a heavy blow.  Some have folded. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Ron Wenrich

We have a few consultants that also buy veneer logs, even off of jobs they mark.  I see that as a larger conflict of interest, but others see no problem with it.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Ron Scott

Yes, there gets to be a question of ethics with some and I don't condon to some of their practices. There gets to be a conflict with practicing "good forestry" by some, especially now with the woods business being as poor as it is.
~Ron

logwalker

Quote from: Jeff on October 22, 2009, 08:17:41 AM
This reminded me of this old thread, where I had become so jaded from hearing and seeing so many over estimations of what a property owner had. I learned to never assume after this one.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,4567.0.html

Jeff, I went back and read your original posting. I was just wondering how you prepared your crow or did you eat it raw?     :D :D
Let's all be careful out there tomorrow. Lt40hd, 22' Kenworth Flatbed rollback dump, MM45B Mitsubishi trackhoe, Clark5000lb Forklift, Kubota L2850 tractor

Thank You Sponsors!