VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

THE TOUGHEST COMPETITORS IN TIMBER SELLING AND HOW TO BEAT THEM

All landowners want top dollar for their timber.  Those whose timber we’ve sold since 1951 have understood the vital importance of creating competition between timber buyers by asking for sealed bids.  We have reported the often-startling results dozens of times in our newsletters.  Public agencies and forestry associations urge competitive bidding, and all timber buyers talk about the competitive world they operate in.

But all of this misses the most important competition of all: the competition from other landowners.  You can see why by looking at figures from JMV&CO records.  The mailing list for our quarterly Green Sheet contains 118,960 names.  We got them from county ad valorem tax rolls of all areas that can be served by a JMV&CO office.  These persons own 40+ timbered acres and, unless they are clients, have not been on our list longer than three years.  Therefore, we estimate that the total number of non-industrial landowners (another term for timber sellers) in our operating area alone is at least 150,000.

Since selling timber has always been a major part of our practice, we work constantly and hard to maintain an accurate, up-to-date mailing list of timber buyers.  The number of buyers on our list is now 3,476.  Consequently, arithmetic shows that sellers outnumber buyers by more than 40 to 1.  Although most sellers are amateurs, this is still big-league competition.

Although we never receive more than 20 bids on a sale, we cannot know the needs of each buyer, so we mail announcements of each sale to between 150 and 250.  These documents go into great detail.  We measure the DBH of 100% of sawtimber trees and include a tally of the number by DBH and species.  Each contains an accurate map of the tract and a road map to enable buyers to find it with no additional work.  With these data in hand, a buyer can decide within ten minutes of opening the envelope whether to spend his limited time preparing a bid on it.  Producing these facts requires lots of work and is expensive, but it is necessary to display the merchandise and assures top dollar net to the seller in competition with the host of other sellers.

We didn’t realize how little this was understood until we launched www.se-timbersales.com and offered free listings of timber and timberland to everyone.  You wouldn’t believe some statements we hear from sellers: “I don’t know the legal description; they can get it from the court house.”  “A registered forester estimated volumes to be so many thousand board feet, but I can’t reveal his name, and I don’t know what procedure he followed.”  “I won’t tell the volume I’m selling because I want to give them a chance to make a mistake.”  Most tracts owned by persons with these attitudes never make it to our site, but browsing the site will show you how little information is provided by some sellers.  And you can imagine what consideration such offerings receive from timber buyers under constant pressure to buy the minimum volume to supply their mills.

We also didn’t realize how many transactions such sellers make until timber buyers began to re-sell their purchases by posting them on our site.  The original owners trashed the chance to get top dollar.  These buyers seized it by employing hard work, skill, and money.  They earned their fees like we earn ours, and theirs are usually higher because their capital is invested and ours isn’t.  We are pleased to help them.

The Internet is an excellent tool for a timber buyer.  With clicks of a mouse, he can study every tract offered for sale in any area he chooses.  With so many choices, he won’t chase after unknown quantities.  He can communicate instantly with associates who help in bidding or sellers who forgot to spell out some details.  And submitting bids can be a snap.

For the timber seller, however, the Internet can be a near-perfect tool.  He can offer his tract to the whole world and do it free on our site.  He need not know the name and address of a single buyer.  He can communicate almost instantly with interested parties at little cost.

But he will throw away his advantages over his competitors unless he displays his merchandise properly.  Road maps and tract maps are the least he can do.  We’ll prepare them for a small cost.  Timber estimates containing the number and volume of trees by species, the name of the estimator, and the procedure he followed are nearly essential and often increase the number of bids by 50%.  If all this is too much trouble, turn on your computer, and watch www.se-timbersales.com.  You may see your tract posted by the person you sold it to.