Finding the right timber buyer often means looking beyond local community
By Jim Griffith

 I recently wrote about Ten Steps to having a Successful Timber Sale. One of those steps had to do with locating a complete buyer's list. Were it as simple as all timber buyers being equal, then anyone could contact any timber buyer they were familiar with and get what one's timber is worth.  If you wanted to be aggressive in marketing your timber, you could call all of the local timber buyers you know or heard of  and thereby increase your chances of getting a better bid through competition.

However, as we have mentioned on numerous occasions, all timber buyers are not equal.  I recently sold a timber tract for a seller who has handled his own timber in the past.  As I was going through the bids on his sale with him, he had never heard of the top two bidders.  The exciting part of this scenario is that the top bids were 32% higher than the top bid of any timber bidder that he was familiar with. Needless to say, we more than earned our fee on this sale. It’s important to keep in mind that local timber buyers are not the only potential buyers for your timber. Timber buyers will go several counties over to purchase timber.  There is no central collection point that provides a list of all timber buyers for a given county.  It takes time and energy to locate all possible timber buyers that might have an interest in your timber tract.

It is not unusual at all for a timber buyer to travel 50 miles to bid on a timber tract. As I write this article, I am currently talking to a timber buyer who is 90 miles away from home looking at a timber tract he is interested in buying.

Locating the right timber buyer is not a matter of seeing a collection of logging equipment in someone's yard and contacting them about buying your timber.  You have to expand your search much further if you want to know you have exhausted your efforts in finding all potential timber buyers.  And then, where do you go to look?

You may have heard the story of the farmer who had a problem with his harrow not working correctly in the field. When he called a repairman to come check it out, the repairman looked it over, picked up a large sledgehammer, gave it a good whack , and told the farmer that would be $300.  The farmer exclaimed in surprise, "$300?  All you did was hit it with a sledgehammer!" The mechanic said, "The charge is $100 for the sledgehammer and $200 for knowing where to hit".

All too often this is the case.  Sometimes it is worth paying for expertise that is going to make us money in the long run. Our forestry consulting business is sometimes like that.  The people we know, can often make you thousands of additional dollars.

Our Farm Bureau foresters work daily in the timber market with various timber buyers all over the state.  They are trained to help you know how to market your timber and to whom to market it.  You will want to give us a call if you are considering a sale of your timber. Jim Griffith is the general manager of the Georgia Farm Bureau Real Estate Company.