The Scoop
The Press Room
Selling Land in Mississippi
Five months after I sold the property, the investors resold the property. The property was really nice. It was fenced and had a lake and a good bit of hardwoods on it. Last week, I sold 236 acres for a good price with some woods and a house on it. However, it will be hard to determine the exact value of the land and the house. The timber had been select cut 25-years ago, so it had a really-nice stand of hardwoods and pine timber on it. I’m noticing more people getting way from clear cutting large acres and instead choosing to select-cut timber because when you select cut, you’re just taking out the mature wood and really not destroying the integrity of the woodlot. Even pine timber has to be thinned occasionally to enable the remaining trees to grow bigger.
Land with timber on it, especially land with good timber on it, will bring higher prices for forest-recreation land than land with just bushes and shrubs and not much timber. Forest-recreation buyers are no longer just considering the land as the dirt under the trees. It now has value for growing trees and wildlife and producing an aesthetic natural habitat. The beauty of the woods now has a quantitative value. In other words, pretty woods have a higher value than ugly woods with little or no timber. People are no longer buying land to just take the timber off it with no consideration for the wildlife or the beauty of the woods, which is why more property is being select cut and fewer large acreages are being clearcut. Select cutting and small-tract clearcutting help to maintain the value of the land investment. The more you improve the wildlife as you’re managing timber, the greater the value of the property.
If you rape the land, as people have done in the past, you kill the value of the land. Nobody wants 2,000 acres of clearcut land with nothing but stumps and dirt on it. But if that same 2,000 acres has clear cut, mature timber, green fields and a fair to good population of deer, turkey and other wildlife, you’ve got an extremely-valuable piece of property. The reason the property loses its value is you not only have destroyed the aesthetics, but Mother Nature will need a long time to rehabilitate that property. Timberlands are changing, investors are changing, and land-use practices are changing. The changes are better for the land, the timber and the investor. By managing the land properly for timber and wildlife, you can derive an income and have a great time hunting and fishing on the lands you buy. You can become a steward of the land, while still making a profit from the land and increasing the value of the land.
Question: What about water? How does water help a property?
McCulley: If you have water running through a property, it doesn’t add to the value of the land. But if you have a lake on the property, the property will sell for more, especially if you have a house-site close to the lake or a camp house on the land that can be renovated. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the people who’ve bought land from our agency are hunting or riding 4-wheelers or horses on the property, and they’re entertaining their families and friends on the land. We forget that investors have families, and most of the investors use the land they invest in for hunting and family activities.
Question: Why did you decide to become a Mossy Oak Properties’ agent?
McCulley: Mossy Oak Properties is about forest-recreation land. I enjoy buying and selling forest-recreation lands and being outside much more than I do selling houses. Mossy Oak is about the outdoors, and I’m about the outdoors. So it was a natural fit.
For more information about purchasing forest-recreation lands in this area of Mississippi, call Brad McCulley at (662) 563-1802, or email him at bmcculley@mossyoakproperties.com.
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