How to Sell Timber on Your Land: The Order the Steps Go In

Most of the money in a timber sale is decided in the first three steps, before a single tree comes down. The order:

1. Find out what you own and where the lines are.
2. Find out what is standing on it.
3. Decide whether you want a consulting forester representing you.
4. Get a timber cruise, so somebody who is not the buyer has measured your wood.
5. Choose between a lump sum sale and a pay-as-cut sale.
6. Put the timber in front of more than one buyer.
7. Sign a written contract.
8. Watch the job while it runs.
9. Collect the money and check it against the tickets.
10. Deal with the tax, and with what is left standing.

That order holds in every state. Where the rules inside a step change at the state line, this guide says so.

Most people sell timber once or twice in a lifetime. There is no reason you would know any of this. And nothing here has to happen this week, whatever the person in your driveway told you.

Step 1: What do you own, and where are the lines?

Get a copy of your deed from the county office where deeds are recorded. In North Carolina that is the Register of Deeds. Find out how many acres you have and who is on the title.

This trips more sales than any other single thing. If your parents' names are still on the deed and there are four siblings, you do not have a sale yet. You have an ownership question to settle first, covered in selling timber on heirs' property. If you inherited recently and all of this feels like too much at once, start at what to do first with inherited land.

Then the boundaries. Almost every timber trespass case starts with lines nobody could find on the ground. How to find your property lines covers the deed, county GIS, and when you need a surveyor.

Step 2: Is anything ready to sell?

Not every stand is a sale, and a good year to cut may not be this year.

How long trees take depends on the species, the soil and where you are. The N.C. Forest Service, on its Selling Your Timber page (revised Jan. 9, 2025), gives rough times for North Carolina: well-managed pine on fertile soil "could be thinned for pulpwood in as little as 12 to 15 years and could produce sawlogs in 25 to 30 years," while oak "may take 60 to 80 years to reach merchantable size."

One lump number for your timber hides the product split, and the split is where the money is. Big pine and small pine come off the same tract into two different markets at two different prices. Are my hardwood trees worth anything sets out that ladder of products.

If your pines went in fifteen years ago, the question may be a thinning rather than a harvest. See when to thin a pine stand. If your tract is small and you wonder whether anybody will even come, how many acres of timber is worth selling works through what makes a crew say yes.

Step 3: Do I need a consulting forester?

A consulting forester works for you. The buyer's forester works for the buyer. What credentials either one carries depends on your state.

The N.C. Forest Service says "most landowners will find that the services of a consulting forester are needed and beneficial." NC State Extension's planning guide (Bardon, published June 2, 2015, revised March 25, 2025) puts it harder: "Do not rely on the timber buyer to assure you fair market value; their interests are not your interests."

• Foresters. The Society of American Foresters lists forester licensing or registration boards in 15 states. North Carolina is one: Chapter 89B makes it unlawful to use the designation "forester" or "registered forester" without registering. That is a title law, not a practice license. If your state has a board, ask for the number and check it.
• Loggers. North Carolina does not license loggers, so there is no license number to ask for there. Elsewhere, ask your state forestry agency. See what rules loggers follow in North Carolina and in South Carolina.

Do not expect a state agency to name a firm. NCFS guidance sheet FM #2 (July 2012) says it "cannot make references or specific referrals to individual consultants." It will hand you the list for your area. TimberClear lists timber businesses and routes introductions. We have not vetted, verified or endorsed anybody on this site. Ask for references and call them. What consultants do, and the ways they charge, is laid out in whether you need a forestry consultant.

Step 4: Get a timber cruise before anybody makes you an offer

A timber cruise is a measured estimate of what is standing on your land, by species, size and product. Somebody walks measured plots, records diameter and merchantable height, and works the volume up by product from the sample.

Penn State Extension's "Valuing Standing Timber" (updated June 18, 2020) says the part everybody needs to hear: "Timber should never be sold unless its owner has an independent estimate of its worth. That estimate should not be made by the buyer."

Without a cruise you cannot compare two offers, because you do not know what either is buying. How timber is measured explains the units a cruise comes back in, and what stumpage value is explains how those units turn into a dollar figure.

Step 5: Lump sum or pay-as-cut?

Two ways to sell, and they carry different risk.

	Lump sum	Pay-as-cut, also called a per-unit sale
Price	One agreed price for all the timber in a defined area	A price per ton, cord or thousand board feet, on what is cut
When you are paid	Before harvest begins	As the wood moves, over the life of the job
Who carries the risk of storm, fire or theft	The buyer, who owns the timber	You, until it is harvested and paid for
What you must track	That they cut only what they bought	Every load, every ticket, every scale weight

Those risk points come from NC State's planning guide: on a pay-as-cut sale, "landowners own per-unit timber until it is harvested and payment is received," and the seller keeps the risks of destruction, acts of nature and theft.

Load ticket law depends on your state. In North Carolina, G.S. 14-135.1 requires a timber buyer to furnish wood load tickets to the seller, but the statute exempts lump sum sales. Sell lump sum there and that law is not your protection. Elsewhere, ask your state forestry agency or an attorney what your state requires. Read load tickets and what left your land before you choose.

Step 6: Put it in front of more than one buyer

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that moves the number.

The USDA Forest Service's price unit says "you should obtain as many offers as possible for your timber." NCFS sets a floor for North Carolina landowners: "we recommend obtaining a minimum of three bids on a clearly defined boundary of timber." NC State's planning guide describes sending written invitations to bid to qualified buyers and allowing at least a month for them to examine the tract before bids are opened. That month is buyers walking your woods and deciding what they can pay.

Before you read the bids, check what standing timber is bringing in your state on our timber prices by state page. There are deeper guides for North Carolina and South Carolina. Read how not to get ripped off by a timber buyer too, because the pressure usually arrives right about now. You can find buyers and foresters working your area in our state-by-state directory.

Step 7: Get it in writing, and read it

NCFS puts it in one line: "Never sell timber without a written timber sale agreement."

NC State Extension's contract publication (Lambert and Megalos, published April 15, 2019, revised April 25, 2019) lists what belongs in one: buyer and seller and whether the job can be handed to somebody else, start and end dates, a legal description and tract map, which timber is sold and in what units, price and payment terms, performance bond and liability insurance, 24 to 48 hours notice when the operation starts and stops, road and deck restoration at the buyer's expense, best management practices with a harvest map, penalties for cutting outside the line, and who carries the risk of fire or disaster. It also recommends recording the contract at the courthouse.

In North Carolina, NCFS publishes a free sample timber sale agreement for private landowners, headed by a line in capital letters recommending that landowners work with a registered forester before selling. Ask whether your state agency has one. Use any sample as a checklist, and have an attorney in your state read whatever you are handed. What should be in a timber sale contract goes clause by clause.

Some states want notice before a harvest starts. Maine, for example, requires a Forest Operations Notification in most cases. Ask your state forestry agency, and write into the contract who files it. Our permit guides cover North Carolina and South Carolina.

The contract is the only part of this you control completely. Once the equipment is on the ground, everything you wish you had written down is a conversation instead of a term.

Step 8: Watch the job while it runs

Go look. Not to supervise the crew, and not to stand in the way of a skidder, but so you know what is happening on your place.

Water quality rules for logging, called best management practices or BMPs, are set state by state. The National Association of State Foresters says "there are no federal laws requiring specific BMPs," and "no two states have the same set of standards." Ask your state forestry agency what yours require, and who to call if something looks wrong.

In North Carolina, for example, the Forest Practice Guidelines Related to Water Quality are mandatory rules, not suggestions, and they apply statewide at all times. The state's Sustainable Forestry Initiative implementation committee runs an inconsistent practices hotline at 877-271-6531 for water quality concerns, listed on the NCFS logging FAQ.

Keep your own count of loads if you sold pay-as-cut. If you find cut stumps on the wrong side of the line, document everything before anybody moves it, and read someone cut timber on my land without permission.

Step 9: Get paid, then handle the tax

Match the money to the paper. On a pay-as-cut sale that means tickets against the check. On a lump sum sale it means the agreed price arrived before the harvest started.

Then the part that arrives in January. Federal tax is the same in every state. Standing timber held more than one year usually qualifies for long-term capital gain rates rather than ordinary income rates, according to the USDA Forest Service's "Tax Tips for Forest Landowners" (FS-1275, January 2026, for the 2025 tax year). That publication states both lump sum and pay-as-cut sales can qualify under section 631(b), and that the gain is not subject to self-employment tax. It also lists state or local severance, harvest or yield taxes among the costs you subtract, so ask whether your state charges one.

Your basis is the other half of the bill, and on inherited land it is often the difference between owing a lot and owing very little. Start with do I pay taxes on a timber sale, then what timber basis is. This is general information, not tax advice. Find a preparer who has filed a Form T before.

Step 10: Decide what happens to the land next

The day the last truck leaves is not the end of the job. Somebody has to decide whether the stand comes back on its own or gets replanted, and the contract should already say who pays. See who pays to replant after a timber harvest and what happens to your land after the loggers leave.

Then property tax, which differs by state. The National Timber Tax Website's state-by-state reference shows some states taxing forest land by value, some by a flat amount per acre, and some taxing the timber when it is cut. If your land is in a special forest or farm tax program, talk to your county before you cut, not after. In North Carolina that program is present-use value, and selling timber and present-use value covers its acreage and ownership tests and what triggers rollback.

Pull the deed, then make one phone call

Start with the deed. Then call your state forestry agency. If you do not know which one that is, start at stateforesters.org, the National Association of State Foresters. Ask three things: for a list of consulting foresters for your county, whether a forester will come look at your stand and tell you what stage it is in, and what, if anything, that visit costs.

Here is the script. "I own about ___ acres in ___ County. I have never sold timber. I want to know what is on it before anybody makes me an offer." That call puts you ahead of most people who sign in the driveway.