I looked at a cool property yesterday that I’m interested in buying, but there is one major hiccup - the timber company (that currently owns the land) wants to retain rights to perform the next thinning of the planted pines. There is probably 125 acres of 24 year old loblolly pine that is ready for thinning. This timber is worth $1800 per acre.
I’m not opposed to letting them thin. I’d actually prefer some of the pines gone and converted to fields/food plots. What I’m worried about is the mess the logging will leave. I’ve been through two logging operations on family land, and in both cases the proceeds from the timber sale was used to clean up the mess. In this case, I could be left with a huge mess without the benefit of the timber sale.
Anyone been through a land sale like this? The property is in a cool area with good neighbors, less than an hour from home, and offers great hunting opportunities (deer, turkeys, ducks). Cons - no power/water (other than a beautiful swamp), interior road system is rough, and the timber reservation.
It is all up to the contract. We hire a private forester to help with our timber sale. He took 8% and was more than worth it. We worked with him to include important things in the contract. We required the timber company to remove the top soil and save it in any area they create logging decks. They were required to decompress the deck, reapply the top soil, and then seed it with Winter Rye. It also requires them to return all logging roads back to the condition they were when they began logging. We ran down the logging roads before logging began with a video camera to document the original condition. They had to get permission from our forester for the location of each deck. We worked with our forester to put decks in locations that would work for loggers and for future food plots.
They did a reasonable job with the logging decks. They have not returned the roads to the original condition yet. There first attempt did not satisfy us. It is too wet at this time of year for them to fix them now. They said they will return when it dries out. Or forester is holding several thousand dollars of theirs in escrow. When it dries out, he will send them a letter and they will have 30 days to fix them or they lose the escrow to us. We can then fix them ourselves or use the money to hire it out.
The pine market is down. I think your estimate is high. Every place is different, but we just had a normal density 1st thinning on 115 acres of 25 year old pines and another 21 acres clear-cut for a total of 136 acres. We got just under $100K from that part of our timbering. We got about $720/ac for the first thinning. Maybe the $1800/ac is some kind of estimate of the total value of all the timber if you clearcut the entire thing. Even then, it seems high to me.
Our contract specifies a price per ton for sawlogs, pole timber, and pulp for pines and mixed hardwoods. This is a planted loblolly pine plantation, but there are always some hardwoods that grow in them.
There will be lots of debris in the pines after the logging. We got into a USDA program for firebreaks and controlled burns. So, we flagged future firebreaks and had them remove all the trees in these. USDA will pay for us to have a dozer come in and push the stumps for firebreaks and for us to conduct controlled burns. You usually have to wait for 2-3 years after the thinning to conduct a burn in the pines. The fuel load is usually too high for the first couple years.
You can talk to the local power company about getting power in to give you an idea of cost. In our area, the power company will give you 1/4 mile of wire for free if you put in a "dwelling". We finished 500 sq ft of a barn and it counts as a dwelling in our county. The question becomes how far your property is from the nearest transformer and whether the power company can get the necessary easements. If you want water and power, I'd factor this in.
I don't know what your objectives are with this place. Our objective was a balance between timber income and wildlife management. So, we divided our pines into management units. We rotate our timbering between management units so we have different age classes of succession for wildlife. This may not be practical with smaller tracts. The cost of moving logging equipment in and out is significant. Often loggers don't want to mess with small harvests. If you decide to buy it, you will want to think about how you plan to manage it.
), but now I’m on wildlife exemption which helps some on taxes. I decided to cut the pines on a 12” stump the last time because there is zero benefit to deer from pine trees, and very little benefit to me.
