Selling 22 acres of timber in Belmont, Ohio
This post illustrates how connecting with a consulting forester like us can help you turn an expensive headache into a lucrative timber sale — and improve the wildlife habitat on your land.
While all the details in this case are accurate, we’ve omitted names and addresses to protect our client’s privacy.
Step 1. Reaching out to us for help selling timber
On July 21, 2024 a woman in Belmont, Ohio reached out to us and asked us if we would be interested in buying 11 trees from her parents’ yard.
The trees were very large with long limbs overhanging their house, creating a dangerous situation when a strong storm eventually comes along. She told us that they had called several tree service companies and the lowest quote they received was $11,000.00 to remove them.
We told her that loggers typically can’t buy trees from someone’s yard, because few yards can hold enough timber value to cover the cost of equipment and labor to cut it.
But we still wanted to find a way to help her parents, and we asked her to share the address with us. The family lives on an 80-acre parcel in Belmont County.
This is what we found when we viewed a satellite image of their land.
If you have the time, you can listen to the audio version of this case study with this audio player, or continue reading below.
We could see immediately that about two thirds of their land was covered with timber, and the rest was farmed. We asked her if the woods had ever been logged and she told us that no one had logged it in the 50+ years that her family had owned it. Her family used the woods for hunting deer and wild turkeys.
Uncovering options for their timber
We offered her two options based on the timber value that we could see their land held:
Option 1 – We could mark enough timber for them to sell and cover the $11,000 expense to remove the trees around her parents’ house
Option 2 – We could evaluate the stand to find its accurate timber value, identify all the mature trees, create a selective timber harvest plan and invite loggers to bid on the timber to be harvested.
We explained that if we could offer a significant amount of timber in a potential sale, we could include the 11 problem trees around the house, and make the winning bidder take those too. Her parents would have no outlay for tree removal at all, and they were very likely to receive a nice payment from a logger instead.
She conferred with her parents, who chose the second option and asked us to send our forester out to consult with them to get it done.
Step 2: Consulting with the family on their timber sale priorities
We met with the parents who owned the land and spent time to get a thorough understanding of their objectives. They told us that their top priorities were to:
1. Get the hazardous trees removed from around their house, and to
2. Generate enough income from a timber sale to fund some farm projects planned for 2024 and 2025, and to
3. Improve the wildlife habitat for the whitetail deer and wild turkey living on the property.
We are hunting and outdoor enthusiasts, ourselves, so this project was especially interesting to us.
They authorized our forester to go into the woods to identify and mark all the mature timber that would be fit to harvest. He then took the time to create a precise harvest plan to lightly cut timber from selected areas of the forest to sell. He also designated a section to hinge cut to create bedding cover and browse for deer, and another section for a food plot for both deer and wild turkey.
This plan resulted in a timber harvest that was optimized to produce revenue, improve the timber stand’s long term viability, and improve the wildlife habitat.
It’s important to understand that we didn’t harvest ALL the mature timber on the property. We left plenty of them behind to continue to grow into good logs for future harvests.
This map shows the main harvest area we created on the property to market the stumpage to loggers and timber buyers.
Step 3: Marketing the timber to multiple loggers
Since we had an accurate timber inventory done by an experienced forester, we wrote a formal Notice of Standing Timber Sale and distributed it to multiple qualified loggers who do good work and have good business reputations.
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.
Did you notice that we invited several potential buyers, and we didn’t just ask the local sawmill to come out and take a look? Here’s why we did that:
By inviting a multiple buyers, we created a competitive bidding situation for the client’s timber. This made it a certainty that they would receive more offers at likely much higher prices than they would have if they’d just sold it to the local sawmill.
The table below shows all the timber that we selected for harvest. All volumes are calculated using the Doyle Rule.
| Timber Species | Number of Trees | Volume in board feet | Average volume per tree | Percent of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Aspen |
1 |
295 |
295 |
0.4% |
|
Basswood |
1 |
260 |
260 |
0.4% |
|
Beech |
3 |
1,022 |
340 |
1.5% |
|
Cherry |
23 |
6,803 |
295 |
9.8% |
|
Elm |
1 |
459 |
459 |
0.7% |
|
Gum |
1 |
370 |
370 |
0.5% |
|
Hard Maple |
25 |
7,739 |
309 |
11.1% |
|
Hickory |
11 |
3,459 |
314 |
5% |
|
Pine |
12 |
2,701 |
264 |
4.2% |
|
Poplar |
45 |
16,191 |
359 |
23.2% |
|
Red Oak |
28 |
13,188 |
471 |
19% |
|
Soft Maple |
47 |
13,523 |
287 |
19.4% |
|
Walnut |
11 |
2,914 |
264 |
4.2% |
|
White Oak |
1 |
658 |
658 |
0.9% |
|
|
210 |
69,582 |
381 |
100% |
Step 4: Evaluating the bids
Notice of sale went out on August 1, 2024 and all bids were due on August 16, 2024.
Loggers submitted four sealed bids in these amounts
| Bids | Amount of bid |
|---|---|
|
Top Bid |
$32,050 |
|
Next Bid |
$26,100 |
|
Next Bid |
$24,550 |
|
Next Bid |
$20,605 |
The landowners chose to accept the highest bid.
According to the terms we wrote into the notice of sale and the sales contract, the winning bidder immediately paid a deposit of 25% ($8,012.50) to the owners.
Getting paid in full before the timber harvest begins
That logger was also required by contract to pay the final 75% ($24,037.50) in full before he was allowed on the land again to begin the harvest.
The winning bidder began logging the timber stand on Sept 30, 2024 after the landowner had been paid in full.
The timber harvest took two weeks to complete and we oversaw the logging operation to ensure that all work was done as agreed, and restorations to the forest floor and staging area we made to.
We counted this as a very successful timber sale, as it turned an un-budgeted $11,000 headache into a $30,000 gain for our client.