Investing in Timber

[schaef]

fawtsc -

The response to this in the past has been that by saying "post 10-year thinning" they are not saying that the trees have actually been thinned, just that your purchase will be applied to trees after their eventual thinning. That way you receive the full number of trees and you only receive trees that were not culled in some thinning process that takes place in the future.

But that sounds a little pie-in-the-sky to me. How do they know how many trees they have available to sell until the thinning process has happened? Will the number of trees sold determine how many trees can be considered culls?

And what would happen if there were a storm or other event that wiped out large numbers of trees after you buy trees but still pre-thinning? Would those trees be considered to have been "thinned", or would they then continue with the eventual thinning process, still assign you a full complement of trees for your purchase and take the entire loss themselves?

That's something I hadn't thought about before.

Establishing a "post-thinning" contract with them on trees that haven't been thinned yet incents them to be less critical of the bad trees and less generous with light and space for the good trees.