Selling 11 acres of timber in Blue Rock, Ohio
An elderly couple who own timbered land in Muskingum County need to raise money for advanced medical care.
Their daughter, who lives in a neighboring state, found our website and contacted us. She asked for help to find the value of their timber, and learn the feasibility of selling it to fund their upcoming medical expenses.
We were eager to go to work to help this family, and were delighted with the outcome.
By the way, you can listen to an in-depth analysis with this audio player, if you have the time, or continue reading below.
Step 1. Asking a forester to evaluate your timber
On December 10, 2024 a woman in Indiana reached out to us to ask if we could help her get an accurate evaluation of the timber on her parents’s land in Blue Rock, Ohio. She told us that her parents’ health has declined to the point that they need to enter an assisted living facility, and some significant expenses need to be paid to arrange this.
Her parents were very fortunate that she chose to contact us first, instead of just calling the local sawmills with that story. You cannot negotiate with them, and expect a good outcome, when you show a real need or weakness.
Our certified foresters have many years of experience selling timber to sawmills and loggers. It is our job to market your timber and get you full value for it.
We agreed to do a full evaluation and assured her that we’d find a way to help — no matter what value the stand held.
This is what we could see when we viewed a satellite image of their land with Google Maps.
This is two adjacent parcels of land that together amounted to just under 11.5 acres. It appeared to have plenty of mature timber growing on it, but we explained that we needed to go walk the woods to get an accurate inventory of the trees and to catalog it by species and volume.
Step 2: Evaluating the timber and establishing harvest goals
We cruised the stand and found an abundance of timber with enough value to cover the amount they needed to raise easily. We called the family with the news that afternoon.
The family asked us to plan a harvest that would yield enough income to cover their anticipated expenses, but leave plenty of trees to grow further for successive harvests in the future when needed.
So we mapped out the property and the exact trees to harvest as you see in the image below.
- The orange line marks the property’s outer boundaries;
- The red line shows the harvest area’s boundaries;
- The blue lines show where we want loggers to build skidding roads;
- The green dots show the precise locations of all 151 trees we want to sell.
Step 3: Marketing the timber to multiple loggers
Once our forester made an accurate timber inventory, we prepared our Notice of Standing Timber Sale and sent it out to qualified, honest loggers who are known for doing good work.
As with every sale we manage, our Notice contained:
• The accurate timber inventory;
• Authorization and time to visit the timber stand to inspect it;
• Clear instructions for bidding on it;
• A date certain for submitting bids.
We invited multiple loggers to bid. We didn’t just tell the local sawmill to come out, take a look, and give us his best offer.
Here’s why we did that:
The family needs to get maximum value from the harvest, so we cast our net far and wide and solicited competitive bids from several honest loggers who are qualified to buy it, and can be trusted to do good work.
This table shows all the trees we selected to be logged. All volumes are calculated using the Doyle Rule.
| Timber Species | Number of Trees | Volume in board feet | Average volume per tree | Percent of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Black Oak |
10 |
2,316 |
232 |
5% |
|
Black Cherry |
10 |
3,120 |
313 |
6% |
|
Black Walnut |
2 |
520 |
260 |
1% |
|
Chestnut Oak |
28 |
9,899 |
354 |
21% |
|
Hard Maple |
26 |
4,802 |
185 |
10% |
|
Red Oak |
51 |
17,862 |
350 |
38% |
|
Scarlet Oak |
4 |
944 |
236 |
2% |
|
Soft Maple |
1 |
180 |
20 |
.03% |
|
Sycamore |
2 |
866 |
483 |
2% |
|
White Oak |
7 |
1,900 |
271 |
4% |
|
Yellow Poplar |
10 |
4,445 |
444 |
9% |
|
|
151 |
48,683 |
371 |
100% |
Step 4: Evaluating the bids from the loggers
Notice of sale went out on December 13, 2024 and all bids were due on January 7, 2025.
The loggers were not told anything about our client’s background and needs. They saw only the terms of the sale and the data in the inventory bid sheet. They were also permitted to visit the property (but not the people) and view the trees themselves.
We generated 6 firm offers in these amounts:
| Bids | Amount of bid |
|---|---|
|
Top Bid |
$33,650 |
|
Next Bid |
$30,112 |
|
Next Bid |
$29,100 |
|
Next Bid |
$21,500 |
|
Next Bid |
$16,400 |
|
Next Bid |
$14,500 |
Our process gets you top dollar for your timber
Please look closely at the difference in the value of the bids from the lowest to the highest. All three of the low bidders severely underbid for this timber.
Now think of all the people who sell their timber just by calling their local sawmill to come out and give them their “best offer” when they want to sell. Those low bids are typically the kind of offers they get.
Our client got paid more than double the value the two lowest bidders offered, and 56% more then the next bidder’s offer. This is why we say that you should always get a forester to work on on your side. No one can steal your timber with a ridiculous low offer when you work with us.
On January 7, our client accepted the highest bid and immediately received $8424.50 as a deposit payment of 25% of the total sale. The harvest contract has been drawn up and both parties will sign it before January 17th, when she shall receive the other 75% of the sale price which is $25,273.50.