The Deleveraging of America

Late in the month of May I was invited to attend a one day meeting of commercial real estate professionals. The meeting was held on June 18th in Washington, D.C. with the 40 attendees representing 20 different commercial real estate entities.

The real estate brokerage professionals were geographically balanced from around the country. At the same time, the breadth of the organizations represented was phenomenal.

For new and existing timberland owners, a timber cruise is a rather inexpensive first step in determining the current volume of merchantable timber on your property and its market value.  A timber cruise is normally completed by a consulting forester prior to the timber being sold; however, it's also done in conjunction with a forest management plan as baseline data for short- and long-term forest planning.

“Money still grows on trees” as a recent article in the Wall Street Journal mentioned (“For Some, Sound of Profit Is Timber”). As a long term investment, timberland has out-preformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index. Pension funds, insurance companies and investment trusts, among others, have increased their holdings in timberland dramatically over the last 25 – 30 years because of this realization.

There are several factors that play a role in making timberland an attractive asset.

Congratulations for visiting our new Web site.  After our January 2009 newsletter entitled "Whew, that was close", we heard loud and clear that our readers wanted market information and perspective more frequently than quarterly.   Hence, we changed our website to address your requests.

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