THE INTERNET IS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO OUR TIMBER MARKET

The “store” that stocks timber is enormous, covering 15,000,000 acres in Mississippi alone and at least 100,000,000 acres in SE U.S.  Owners of the store live all over the U.S.; many of them have never seen their part of it and couldn’t find it by themselves.  Serious shoppers for timber number fewer than 5,000 and are scattered south of a line from Houston to St. Louis to Washington; each normally shops over a territory of 5,000,000+ acres.  Serious investors in timberland also live all over the U.S., and no one knows how many there are.  Affluent urbanites seeking a weekend retreat are far more numerous, but are interested only in tracts less than an hour’s drive from their residences.  All of these persons play roles in the market in SE U.S.

As The Economist pointed out, nothing came close to connecting all participants until “the current burst of innovation in information technology (IT – computers, telecoms and the internet)…The value of IT and the internet lies in their capacity to store, analyze and communicate information instantly, anywhere, at negligible cost.”  So now we have all components needed to make the best thing that ever happened to the timber market of SE U.S.

But this grand tool won’t work by itself; it will work only for your competitors until you pick it up.  By spending $20/month to hook up to an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and thereby gaining access to almost all the information you will ever need, you will make the most profitable investment (in percent) of your life.

The Economist continues, “By increasing access to information, IT helps to make markets work more efficiently…It moves the economy closer to the textbook model of perfect competition, which assumes abundant information, many buyers and sellers, zero transaction costs and no barriers to entry.”  But you must do your part.  At the very least, your maps of tracts for sale should be as good as those in JMV&CO sales.  (The worst salesman we know told us, “Buyers can look up my land’s location in the county tax office.”)  Offers to sell must include a volume estimate by a credible expert; if it doesn’t, the seller essentially tells each buyer, “Come look at my timber and make me an offer.”  Information is not “abundant,” transaction costs rise sharply because each buyer must make a separate investigation of the same facts, and you pay the bill.  This is not how Sam Walton got rich as whipping cream.

www.se-timbersales.com has been serving the seller’s side of this market for nearly a year, and our tracking report showed that 1,612 different persons visited it in September.  We are now enlarging it also to serve the buyer’s side, and you’ll see this fairly soon.  The software for it will eventually cause the site automatically to notify all listed buyers within 70 road miles whenever a seller lists a tract.