Large land owners

[Barndog56]

For any of you who don't know who to leave your hunting land to......... I'm currently up for adoption......

 

[bwoods11]

Just read about Biden's "billionaire tax" where people with net worth of 100 mil plus would get hit with a 20% annual tax on UNRECOGNIZED gains. Not sure how the hell they'd assess that on land but seems land would be a possible place to park that $ if it took an exodus from stocks. Seems outrageous. No way that thing passes though.

It’s already dead according to Manchin. You can’t tax unrealized gains? You’d have to appraise everything you have ? How dumb is this guy.. ?

 

[hillrunner]

In the late 1990's I was CEO and majority owner of an automation company that I sold to a Fortune 50 company. That created the opportunity to explore a number of dreams .

Backing up I started hunting in Mexico in the mid 80's and became friends with a family that owned 250,000 acres. The Patron died in 1992 leaving the ranch to the relatively large Catholic family. In the mid 90's Mexico saw interest rates go to 90% and the peso devalued from $1.00 to .10cents The Family needed to sell land to survive. Unfortunately it was illegal for U.S. citizens to buy ranches in Mexico plus the area along the Rio Grande was called the prohibited zone. Complicated.

I hired an international law firm and after 1 1/2 years they figured out a legal way for me to buy some of the property. { Moral; give lawyers enough money and the usually can find a way} The risk of course was that irrespective any legalities at the time Mexico had a history of expropriation typical of socialist societies. Nonetheless I rolled the dice.

Now the good part. I bought 6000 acres for $65 acre. Within 6 months I had the opportunity to buy another 8000 contiguous acres at $90 acre but chickened out. Then other Americans saw what I had done and recognizing the incredible potential and economics of the area started buying up property . Feeling safer with a Mexican President warming up to the U.S I ultimately bought another 19,000 acres . 25 years later U.S ownership of ranches in the neighborhood is common, land prices have increased significantly and quality management has created some of the most wildlife rich property in North America. Going price for ranch land around me now runs from $500-$1000 acre if you can find it.

25,000 acres! Wow! It's hard to imagine managing at that scale.

 

[yoderjac]

25,000 acres! Wow! It's hard to imagine managing at that scale.

And that is another thing that guys aspiring to manage on their own land should consider. Unless the land is significant income producing, there are the costs, both in $ and time, associated with management. The more land you have, the greater the scale of the equipment and time required. You can spend your wad on acquiring land, and then fall short when it comes to managing it.

There are lots of moving parts in this.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[buckdeer1]

Does anyone have any suggestions for deeding a piece of property that will eventually be inherited in order to have equity for a down payment on land?

My dad had purchased 30 acres when I bought an 80 next to it,he just did a transfer upon death and when he passed I just filed at courthouse and they changed everything over

 

[Triple C]

And that is another thing that guys aspiring to manage on their own land should consider. Unless the land is significant income producing, there are the costs, both in $ and time, associated with management. The more land you have, the greater the scale of the equipment and time required. You can spend your wad on acquiring land, and then fall short when it comes to managing it.

There are lots of moving parts in this.

Thanks,

Jack

Jack - Great point and one I've thought about often. Feel like I'm about maxed out at 287 acres with all the maintenance and upkeep. More acreage means more input costs and equipment costs. Higher taxes. Higher insurance. Bigger stuff. Bigger toys, more stands, etc. I've been eyeing my neighbors 110 for years but then as I get older I wonder if I'd really want to take on the upkeep, maintenance & carrying costs of more land.

 

[yoderjac]

Jack - Great point and one I've thought about often. Feel like I'm about maxed out at 287 acres with all the maintenance and upkeep. More acreage means more input costs and equipment costs. Higher taxes. Higher insurance. Bigger stuff. Bigger toys, more stands, etc. I've been eyeing my neighbors 110 for years but then as I get older I wonder if I'd really want to take on the upkeep, maintenance & carrying costs of more land.

That is one reason I like the pine farm/LLC approach. It does have its downsides. All the partners have to be and stay like minded, but you have that risk in any partnership. The member agreement has to spell out a lot of conditions that could occur that we don't think about. Having said that, there are several advantages. The cost is shared both of purchase and maintenance. The IRS looks at many small businesses as a "hobby" rather than a business if they go a number of years without showing a profit. Timbering cycles can be 20 years or more so long periods of losses before a profit are not a problem with the IRS. Smart timbering operations can both be a wildlife management tool and generate income. It is sort of like buying farm land and leasing most to a farmer but at a much lower acquisition cost on a per acre basis. While the income from timber sales will never overshadow our purchase price in my lifetime, it does cover a large percentage of our maintenance cost over time.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Triple C]

Same way I roll down here. 1st priority is pine production with recreation n hunting a nice bonus.

Under contract for my 2nd harvest this summer n run it like a business. Great way to acquire nice land in rural GA n produce revenue.

 

[Foggy47]

It’s already dead according to Manchin. You can’t tax unrealized gains? You’d have to appraise everything you have ? How dumb is this guy.. ?

That proposal is not "tax"....it's a confiscation of assets. FJB

 

[yoderjac]

Same way I roll down here. 1st priority is pine production with recreation n hunting a nice bonus.

Under contract for my 2nd harvest this summer n run it like a business. Great way to acquire nice land in rural GA n produce revenue.
View attachment 42064

For us, it is a balancing act. When you put pine production first, you end up with a large monoculture and once the canopy closes it becomes a food desert for deer. We try to balance between timber and wildlife. We sacrifice some timber income on a per acre basis. We've divided our property into management areas. For example, we had a couple low quality hardwood ridges that were shallow rooted and we were beginning to lose in high winds. Mostly scarlet oaks. We had them clear cut, We then let the stumps sprout, hit them with herbicide to kill the stumps, and executed a controlled burn. We continue to burn these areas every few years to keep it in early succession. These two 10 acre sections work well as bedding areas for us, but that is 20 acres that could be producing pines. This worked so well, that we have identified another 5 acre section of pines that we are having clear-cut during our upcoming thinning that we plan to keep in early succession. We do use some USDA/NRCS programs that help offset the loss of pine income. In one of our management zones we are doing a high rate thinning to create savannah like habitat. Again, we are sacrificing some long-term pine production for a wildlife goal.

We are balancing lots of things with our property.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Tree Spud]

Large land owners, how’d you do it? If you have a large amount of land (200+ acres), that wasn’t handed down to you and you’re not a doctor or make a crazy amount of money for your regular job, how’d you get to where you are? Was it by investing into land and selling to eventually get where you are? Did you buy little pieces at a time? Did you go into a large amount of debt? With land prices where they are today it seems very difficult for the blue collar guy to acquire large amounts of land without thinking outside of the box. I’d like to hear your stories and how you got to where you are in terms of land/acreage.

Thought I would get back the OP's questions ... how did you do it?

The easy part is the "how" ... the difficult part is the discipline ... Unless you are a trust fund baby or win the lottery, you will probably have to do a long term plan and make some sacrifices.

For me I started with 20 acres of mostly marsh with about 5 acres of woods about 25 years ago. Learned real quick how neighbors negatively impacted my hunting. Paid about $800/a. Bought a different property, paid it off in 10 years, then used the equity to buy an adjoining parcel. Did that until I had 250 acres.

Then used that property, which had no debt on it, to buy our current property which is over 350 acres. It is now debt free.

The key is high equity/no or low debt, and cash. Identify what you want, then make lifestyle & financial changes to achieve the plan. Build a discipline to save money ... and live below your means. This allows you to move on a property when it becomes available or to make other good financial investments.

I have had people tell me there is no way they can be debt free, I tell them you are making the wrong financial choices. Nobody needs $8 coffees, $15 burrito & coke lunches, 5 streaming services, or finance a new truck every other year.

 

[roymunson]

Thought I would get back the OP's questions ... how did you do it?

The easy part in the "how" ... the difficult part is the discipline ... Unless you are a trust fund baby or win the lottery, you will probably have to do a long term plan and make some sacrifices.

For me I started with 20 acres of mostly marsh with about 5 acres of woods about 25 years ago. Learned real quick how neighbors negatively impacted my hunting. Paid about $800/a. Bought a different property, paid it off in 10 years, then used the equity to buy an adjoining parcel. Did that until I had 250 acres.

Then used that property, which had no debt on it, to buy our current property which is over 350 acres. It is now debt free.

The key is high equity/no or low debt, and cash. Identify what you want, then make lifestyle & financial changes to achieve the plan. Build a discipline to save money ... and live below your means. This allows you to move on a property when it becomes available or to make other good financial investments.

I have had people tell me there is no way they can be debt free, I tell them you are making the wrong financial choices. Nobody needs $8 coffees, $15 burrito & coke lunches, 5 streaming services, or finance a new truck every other year.

BORING!

And thats exactly why it's so effective. Spud, your story is exactly what ticks me off when people say "well yeah, i'd do that too if I had 350 acres" but they don't realize what you did to get that land. Same with the Drury folks for example. Or Lakoskies. Or Winke. They started with nothing, made sacrifices until they had a snowball rolling and then made good decisions which led them to where they are (speaking only land wise, the other aspects of their outfit can be discussed later).

Land, investment, and realizing where land values are going are HUGE to obtaining big tracts. Of course, when you make those decisions and hang onto cash, you're ready to strike when a deal happens. I love it!

 

[KJS-ND]

The 'how'd you do it?' answer is certainly dependent on your location.

What's worked for our family has been buying land that does generate a reasonable income - think tillable land or pasture land as no trees in my state ; ) Pasture land can always hold deer at least occasionally and most tillable land isn't 100% tillable (or at least you can find some that has some tree rows, cattail sloughs, abandoned farmyards where you can do a little habitat work/hunting/recreating). You used to be able to generate maybe 4% cash return on land - ie - you paid $100,000 for land and it would generate $4K in income. If you put down 25-30% (which is tough to save, but certainly possible if you want to make it happen) - with the low rates we had until recently, the income would cover the interest, property taxes and maybe even some of the principal right off the bat - then over time, rents increase and eventually the property breaks even and then eventually creates additional income, which you can either plow back into the principal or invest for the next down payment.

We were fortunate/lucky that over the 15 years we made our purchases interest rates went from maybe 7.5% in 2007 down to about 3% in 2020 - which is what caused a lot of the increase in values over those years as other than a short blip/increase in commodity prices one years - it just became cheaper to borrow - same issue drove a lot of the housing increases IMHO.

The issue now is that prices have increased so much the last couple years that now you'll be lucky to get 2% cash return along with the now rising interest rates makes it much tougher than just a year or two ago. We've bought 5 properties over the last 15 years and only 1 of those times did I think I was getting a great price - the rest all seemed expensive, but now make me look smarter than I am. For us buying land has been an incredible investment along w/ the hunting/habitat work enjoyment, but I don't think this model works in the current inflated value / rising interest rate period.

Nobody knows the future - in 5 years land prices will either be up, down, or the same.

 

[Triple C]

For us, it is a balancing act. When you put pine production first, you end up with a large monoculture and once the canopy closes it becomes a food desert for deer. We try to balance between timber and wildlife. We sacrifice some timber income on a per acre basis. We've divided our property into management areas. For example, we had a couple low quality hardwood ridges that were shallow rooted and we were beginning to lose in high winds. Mostly scarlet oaks. We had them clear cut, We then let the stumps sprout, hit them with herbicide to kill the stumps, and executed a controlled burn. We continue to burn these areas every few years to keep it in early succession. These two 10 acre sections work well as bedding areas for us, but that is 20 acres that could be producing pines. This worked so well, that we have identified another 5 acre section of pines that we are having clear-cut during our upcoming thinning that we plan to keep in early succession. We do use some USDA/NRCS programs that help offset the loss of pine income. In one of our management zones we are doing a high rate thinning to create savannah like habitat. Again, we are sacrificing some long-term pine production for a wildlife goal.

We are balancing lots of things with our property.

Thanks,

Jack

Quite the contrary. Planted southern pine (loblolly in my case), remains a deer desert only from about age 10 when it canopies to 15 or 16 at first thinning. Once thinned, it producers more cover, browse n forbs than the hardwood stands. Waist to chest high honeysuckle, greenbrier, beauty bush, ragweed, blackberry, poke weed, n so on.

At age 16 just before thinning it is a deer desert.


Same stand 1 yr later after thinning it’s a deer mecca with food n cover. I had to mow a lane thru one of the thinned rows to access a hardwood stand.

I have 120ish acres of mixed hardwood with ample acorn producers. Fun to hunt when acorns are on the ground.

But when it comes to high quality deer habitat that deer use year round for both food and cover, in this area a well managed stand of pine reigns supreme. And produces incredible deer numbers as evidenced by a 4 month long firearm season n 10 antlerless tags per hunter to keep the deer density in check.

 

[chad.williams]

Swamp, what you can do was kind of mentioned but you can put in trust that if any of the 3 want to sell the others get first chance at 500.00 per acre.I divided mine between my 2 daughters and did that.Another option is to give the land to the one that wants it and take insurance out and leave that to the others for the cash value

Good advice. Quick question—for your first option, what is the reasoning behind setting the selling price, rather than giving first right of refusal at market rates? Just seeking to understand. Thanks!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[yoderjac]

Quite the contrary. Planted southern pine (loblolly in my case), remains a deer desert only from about age 10 when it canopies to 15 or 16 at first thinning. Once thinned, it producers more cover, browse n forbs than the hardwood stands. Waist to chest high honeysuckle, greenbrier, beauty bush, ragweed, blackberry, poke weed, n so on.

At age 16 just before thinning it is a deer desert.
View attachment 42069

Same stand 1 yr later after thinning it’s a deer mecca with food n cover. I had to mow a lane thru one of the thinned rows to access a hardwood stand.
View attachment 42070
I have 120ish acres of mixed hardwood with ample acorn producers. Fun to hunt when acorns are on the ground.

But when it comes to high quality deer habitat that deer use year round for both food and cover, in this area a well managed stand of pine reigns supreme. And produces incredible deer numbers as evidenced by a 4 month long firearm season n 10 antlerless tags per hunter to keep the deer density in check.

I agree. Conducting a burn increases that even more, but it is not long until much of that gets out of reach of deer unless you burn regularly. However, thinning (which we do) is probably not the most profitable. I think the most efficient is the one big block approach. We are getting ready for a second thinning of our loblolly as well. There is still plenty of cover but the food quality has dropped significantly.

My point is that when each decision along the way is aimed at maximizing profit, Deer have feast or famine. Using smaller management units keeping each in different stages benefits wildlife much more without the feast and famine cycle.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[roosterstraw]

I enjoyed reading all your stories. There were some creative thinking and ways of acquiring land. If there are more, please share.

 

[SwampCat]

Quite the contrary. Planted southern pine (loblolly in my case), remains a deer desert only from about age 10 when it canopies to 15 or 16 at first thinning. Once thinned, it producers more cover, browse n forbs than the hardwood stands. Waist to chest high honeysuckle, greenbrier, beauty bush, ragweed, blackberry, poke weed, n so on.

At age 16 just before thinning it is a deer desert.
View attachment 42069

Same stand 1 yr later after thinning it’s a deer mecca with food n cover. I had to mow a lane thru one of the thinned rows to access a hardwood stand.
View attachment 42070
I have 120ish acres of mixed hardwood with ample acorn producers. Fun to hunt when acorns are on the ground.

But when it comes to high quality deer habitat that deer use year round for both food and cover, in this area a well managed stand of pine reigns supreme. And produces incredible deer numbers as evidenced by a 4 month long firearm season n 10 antlerless tags per hunter to keep the deer density in check.

I have killed a ton of turkeys out of pine stands in that 10 to 16 yr old stage when there was little undergrowth on the forest floor. Turkeys can see you a long ways off in those clean pine plantations. That is why they are in there - they can see predators a long ways off.

 

[SwampCat]

Swamp, what you can do was kind of mentioned but you can put in trust that if any of the 3 want to sell the others get first chance at 500.00 per acre.I divided mine between my 2 daughters and did that.Another option is to give the land to the one that wants it and take insurance out and leave that to the others for the cash value

The problem I see with that, is I want to be fair to both my kids. I dont care if they sell the land. When I am dead and gone, one, or both may live a thousand miles away and want to buy land near their home. If my land appraises at $5000 per acre, and the trust allows one kid to buy if from the other at $500 an acre, the kid that sells is getting screwed out of $4500 per acre. If that were to happen, one kid could buy the other kids half of my 300 acres for $75,000, and then turn around in a couple of years and sell that same 150 acres for $750,000. The first kid that sold out just lost $675, 000. The only way I see to be fair to both is leave them as much money as you can (if you are concerned about this), to ease the financial burden if one wants to buyout the other’s half share of land.

Not to mention, God only knows what these tax hungry folks now in power may do - the path they are on, they may make all inheritance taxable.

 

[yoderjac]

I have killed a ton of turkeys out of pine stands in that 10 to 16 yr old stage when there was little undergrowth on the forest floor. Turkeys can see you a long ways off in those clean pine plantations. That is why they are in there - they can see predators a long ways off.

Yep, what can be food desert for one species can hold a bounty of food for another and also have characteristics that keep it safe.