Do What You Do Best
Experts Give Advice on How to Get the Best Return from Your Land
Spring 2022
A panel discussion at the recent Georgia Forestry Association Landowner Summit addressed how landowners can maximize the value of their investment. The following is an excerpt from that conversation. Participants are pictured below. Pictured: TODD MULLIS Vice President of Operations, Forest Resource Consultants; HUGH THOMPSON President and CEO, Pierce Timber; RENEE MCCULLOUGH President, Coldwater Timber; and GLEN WARNOCK President, Gay Wood Company.
“Imagine having a $50 million stock portfolio and not having information about what the market’s doing, what asset that you’re in. We see people with millions of dollars of timber, and they have very little information to manage their property.”
– Todd Mullis, Vice President of Operations, Forest Resource Consultants
WARNOCK: Timber is a long-term investment. If you’re not managing your tract of timber, you’re losing money. It’s easy to find help in doing that. The Georgia Forestry Commission can guide you in that direction, and there are consultants in your area. You can’t just forget about it for 15 years and then all of a sudden say, “Well, I want to cut my timber.”
THOMPSON: You’ve got to know your markets. You’ve got to know what you have. You’ve got to know how your timber is growing. Do your diligence so that when you’re selling your timber, you’re making the process easy. Have a contract. Have all your things in place. Have timetables of harvesting and wet weather clauses and things that you need. That’s what good landowners do.
MULLIS: Imagine having a $50 million stock portfolio and not having information about what the market’s doing, what asset that you’re in. We see people with millions of dollars of timber, and they have very little information to manage their property. Instead of a 3% return, you could get 6%. Instead of a 7% return, you could get 12%.
What can landowners do to position their timber more favorably?
WARNOCK: Landowners can do it themselves, but you’ve got people who do it for a living to give you advice. Connect yourself with the consultant or a wood supplier or somebody in the industry that understands the pricing. We talk to mills on a daily basis because we supply these people. We know the market.
THOMPSON: My father told me, you focus and you do what you do best and then you find people you trust, whether it’s your CPA or your lawyer or your banker or whatever. Find people that you trust and follow their guidance until they prove you otherwise. And most of the time, you’re gonna make good decisions when you do that.
MCCULLOUGH: If you’re looking at selling your timber and your neighbor or your friend has sold their timber, you might ask them who they dealt with and make sure that they were happy.
What is driving prices today?
THOMPSON: We’ve been pounded for 12 months with weather. Southeast Georgia, northeast Florida and parts of South Carolina are extremely wet. So weather is the biggest factor that we deal with in this part of the country because we’re on flat land. So it is important to have a road system on your property. Have access to your timber. If you’re selling timber, have it where [the buyers] can access it. That increases your value exponentially because being able to get in and log the whole tract while you’re there is a real big deal. With a road system, particularly when it is wet, we have the ability to log the land without rutting, without anything else. If we can’t access it, we can’t log it.
MCCULLOUGH: One thing too that’s really driving our dynamic is the lack of a labor force along with the trucking. Most of the companies are at least 35% behind where they should be as far as harvesting. We need to be where we can be competitive for workers. We’re dealing with a workforce that is diminished, and we need trained people to work in our woods and we need to pay them fairly.
WARNOCK: I’ve been in this business 39 years, but in the last 18 months, the opportunity is back like it was, to do business, like it was in 2000 and 2001 and the late ‘90s. There’s a bright spot in our industry, and they say it goes in cycles. As long as I’ve been in it, I’ve seen four or five cycles, so I’m glad I’m on this cycle right now because the other cycle that we just came through was not fun. It was difficult. ■
THOMPSON: You’ve got to know your markets. You’ve got to know what you have. You’ve got to know how your timber is growing. Do your diligence so that when you’re selling your timber, you’re making the process easy. Have a contract. Have all your things in place. Have timetables of harvesting and wet weather clauses and things that you need. That’s what good landowners do.
MULLIS: Imagine having a $50 million stock portfolio and not having information about what the market’s doing, what asset that you’re in. We see people with millions of dollars of timber, and they have very little information to manage their property. Instead of a 3% return, you could get 6%. Instead of a 7% return, you could get 12%.
What can landowners do to position their timber more favorably?
WARNOCK: Landowners can do it themselves, but you’ve got people who do it for a living to give you advice. Connect yourself with the consultant or a wood supplier or somebody in the industry that understands the pricing. We talk to mills on a daily basis because we supply these people. We know the market.
THOMPSON: My father told me, you focus and you do what you do best and then you find people you trust, whether it’s your CPA or your lawyer or your banker or whatever. Find people that you trust and follow their guidance until they prove you otherwise. And most of the time, you’re gonna make good decisions when you do that.
MCCULLOUGH: If you’re looking at selling your timber and your neighbor or your friend has sold their timber, you might ask them who they dealt with and make sure that they were happy.
What is driving prices today?
THOMPSON: We’ve been pounded for 12 months with weather. Southeast Georgia, northeast Florida and parts of South Carolina are extremely wet. So weather is the biggest factor that we deal with in this part of the country because we’re on flat land. So it is important to have a road system on your property. Have access to your timber. If you’re selling timber, have it where [the buyers] can access it. That increases your value exponentially because being able to get in and log the whole tract while you’re there is a real big deal. With a road system, particularly when it is wet, we have the ability to log the land without rutting, without anything else. If we can’t access it, we can’t log it.
MCCULLOUGH: One thing too that’s really driving our dynamic is the lack of a labor force along with the trucking. Most of the companies are at least 35% behind where they should be as far as harvesting. We need to be where we can be competitive for workers. We’re dealing with a workforce that is diminished, and we need trained people to work in our woods and we need to pay them fairly.
WARNOCK: I’ve been in this business 39 years, but in the last 18 months, the opportunity is back like it was, to do business, like it was in 2000 and 2001 and the late ‘90s. There’s a bright spot in our industry, and they say it goes in cycles. As long as I’ve been in it, I’ve seen four or five cycles, so I’m glad I’m on this cycle right now because the other cycle that we just came through was not fun. It was difficult. ■
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