Louisiana timber prices

What are my trees worth in Louisiana?

A price list cannot answer that on its own, and any site that tells you otherwise is guessing. Three things decide what an acre brings, and only you can see them: how big the trees are, how thickly they are growing, and what species they are.

Size matters more than anything else on that list. In Louisiana the best sawtimber on this page tops out at $43.05 while pulpwood tops out at $7.6 — the same tree, grown on, is worth several times more. That is the whole argument for knowing what you have before anybody makes you an offer.

Our free timber value calculator asks those three questions and works an estimate from Louisiana's own published prices, the ones in the table on this page. It gives you a range rather than a single figure, because a range is the honest shape of the answer. It takes about a minute and it does not ask for your email to show you the number.

Worth knowing about the Louisiana market

Louisiana requires a written contract for any harvest of five acres or more, with a penalty of up to $5,000 for going without one.

How much forest Louisiana has, and who owns it

Louisiana has nearly 15 million acres of forest land — close to half the state's land area. Around 8 million acres in nonindustrial private hands.

The wood itself: Loblolly and shortleaf pine, oak-gum-cypress, oak-hickory. Species is one of the three things that decide what your acre is worth, and it is the one you cannot change.

Louisiana punishes timber trespass with three times the fair market value of the trees cut plus the owner's attorney fees — and the triple damages apply even to a good-faith cutter who should have been aware the cutting was without consent, with a five-year window to sue.

Sources: fs.usda.gov · law.justia.com

Do I need a permit to cut timber in Louisiana?

Louisiana has no statewide permit and no notification requirement to harvest timber on your own land — the state's own list of forestry licences and permits covers arborists, not timber harvesting. What Louisiana law does require is a contract. Anyone conducting a timber harvest meant to cut five acres or more of timberland must have a written contract or agreement with the owner or the purchaser, a duty the Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry enforces with civil penalties of up to five thousand dollars per violation. That written contract is also your protection, because cutting standing timber without the owner's consent exposes the cutter to three times the fair market value of the trees plus attorney fees, whether the cutting was deliberate or a good-faith mistake. On water quality, Louisiana works through recommended practice rather than a permit: the state publishes Recommended Forestry Best Management Practices for Louisiana as field guidance to keep a harvest clear of water-quality trouble, and following them is the norm even though they are recommended rather than a licence step. The short version for a landowner: there is no form to file, but for five acres or more, get the agreement in writing before any tree comes down.

The Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry can impose a civil penalty of up to $5,000 for each failure to comply, and every day the violation continues counts as a separate offence.

Source: legis.la.gov

Property tax on Louisiana timberland

Timberland is assessed on its timber-growing use value rather than market value, once the owner signs an agreement that the land will stay in that use.

Two things to check before you apply: it takes 3 acres, or an average gross annual income of at least $2,000 over the four preceding years. Programmes like this usually carry a claw-back — take the land out of forest use early and the state wants the deferred tax back — so read the terms before you sign rather than after you have cut.

Source: legis.la.gov

Free help from Louisiana's state forestry agency

The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Office of Forestry. State foresters come out and give free advice and an action plan covering seedling selection, planting, insect and disease problems and pre-harvest regeneration planning. The office also runs the Forest Productivity Program cost-share, with a 10 contiguous acre minimum and no maximum ownership size.

Worth taking. A state service forester does not bid on your timber and does not take a commission, so the advice comes without a stake in the outcome. They will not run your sale for you — that is a consulting forester's job — but they will tell you what you have before anybody makes you an offer.

Source: ldaf.la.gov

Getting the best price for your timber

The single biggest lever is competition. One buyer who turns up and makes an offer has no reason to bid against himself. A sealed-bid sale, run by a consulting forester who invites several buyers to price the same marked timber, routinely moves the final number by a wide margin — and it costs you a share of the sale rather than money up front.

Before any of that, have the timber cruised. A cruise is a forester walking your land and measuring what is actually standing, so you are selling a known quantity instead of taking somebody's word for it.

Because Louisiana timber is sold by weight, the load tickets are your receipt. Every truck that leaves is weighed at the mill, and those tickets are what your payment is calculated from. Ask to receive copies as the job runs rather than a single figure at the end — a sale you cannot check is a sale you have to take on trust.

And put the terms in writing before anybody starts: what gets cut, what stays, what the land looks like when they leave, and when you get paid.

TimberClear lists 228 Louisiana foresters, buyers, loggers and mills. Every listing is free and complete, including the phone number the business already publishes. We have not vetted, verified or endorsed any of them — the listing tells you who they are and what counties they cover, and the choosing is yours.