Replies to post #332 on Investing in Timber

[msubaroda123]

To change the subject slightly, has anyone asked for refund? If yes, what was the response?

One possibly scenario is that TATF is a realestate play for Steve and trees are just an excuse to buy cheap farmland that is becoming more expensive by the day...

There is no excuse to be not able to sell the 13 yrs thinnings - if tree sale was a key objective, 16 yrs are more than enough to build proper sales channels.

Anyway, the real acid test is when trees are ready for the final harvest. Raleo or not, international market should be able to take that lumber. The question is whether or not TATF is really interested in giving out distributions. Why just keep 6%; why not keep 100?

Again, we hope that Steve is a nice guy and he is just running into business problems. Time is already running out to see if he can sell and distribute money to tree owners on 13 yr thinnings as that's supposed to be sold on international market. If TATF does not come through on 13 yrs thinnings, don't hold your breath for the final harvest.

Finally, it would be interesting to discuss the possibility of us selling our own lumber from 13 and in future 20 yr harvests?

[mattyo5]

When I get some time I'll do as you say, and go back and reread everything. But to belabor this point a bit, You say that Raleo is paying an average of $170k per year, maybe its $10k the first year, $20k the next, then $40, then $80, then $160k, and lastly $320k this year, or whatever, my point is that we don't KNOW at what rate its increasing, and that'd be nice to find out. sure, you can take $850k and divide by 5 (or whatever) and come up with $170k, but that doesn't really tell us anything. They may have paid out $300k last year alone, which would obviously be a substantial increase. I'm saying that there are different ways to look at this data, and just taking the raw data and inferring things from it is not necessarily the best idea. Again, if you do think its a bad investment, maybe you could get your money back, just offer your trees up for sale here on this forum (unless you already have and I missed it, forgive me) and see if anyone bites. I don't think losing the money from the thinnings is the end of the world, and if I'm going to lose the money, then I'll just have them ship me the lumber and use it for woodworking somehow :) I know that your point is that we really don't know if we'll get our money beyond 13-14yr due to growth rates... we'll see. I'm not giving up hope on that yet.

-Matt