VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

The Most Direct Link to Knowledge Workers in the Southeast Forest Economy

UNIQUE REFERENCE WORKS FOR TIMBERLAND INVESTORS

In a nearby article, we stated that we wrote the book on "How To Make Money Growing Trees." The book first appeared in 1965 because our practice, founded in 1951, served private owners of tracts from 40 to 4,000 acres from the outset. We still concentrate on their work. But even among them, we concentrate on those who are primarily interested in economic returns and are anxious to increase their returns by utilizing any modern technology that will do this. Almost without exception, these persons are extremely interested in all aspects of the development of their properties, devote very serious thought to them, and are quite familiar with competitive investment media.

No typical book can keep up with the speed of technology development, however, so to fill this gap, we began to publish Vardaman’s Green Sheet, our quarterly newsletter, in 1974. We soon developed our pine-sawtimber stumpage price index and eventually received permission to add to the graph a "Random Lengths" price index to show the relationship between timber prices and lumber prices.

Ultimately, we realized that some Green Sheet articles were of permanent interest, particularly those that contained investment advice from Warren Buffett or reported significant developments in understanding tree growth. Consequently, we began to post those published after 1986 on www.vardaman.com, our first Internet site. To read them, you need only register.

Here is a small sample of them:

Selling timber by weight in July 1991,

Re-measurement of the Leland Speed Plantation at Age 12 in June 1993 and every two years thereafter,

Correct return on timberland investments in July 1995,

Investment advice from Warren Buffett’s company in January 1996,

PTAEDA2V, the gateway to high technology in December 1996,

Several on the critical importance of establishing and thinning plantations beginning in 1998,

How diversification with timber raises return on many portfolios in 1999 plus 121 more.

More than a year ago, we began posting pine stumpage prices at each of our operating offices by the 10^th of each month, and valuable information, especially about reducing income taxes on timber sales, began to appear on our "Discussion Forum" in 12/98. While you are on-line, you can operate some of the financial return calculations with PTAEDA2V+ECONV.

But even these items didn’t cover the needed ground, so early this year we launched www.se-timbersales.com, a free service to allow sellers of timber or timberland to offer their tracts on the Internet. Several portions of it are worth examining: 1) the big differences in the manner in which various "merchants" display their merchandise, 2) the cash-flow analyses in each PPIC offering, and 3) the photos at one-year intervals to show how plantations develop. In many cases we also record sale prices.

Come see us. You’ll find many ways to increase your profits that you won’t find anywhere else.