A recorded easement I never expected on a hunting tract I bought at 78k

This one started as a parcel I wanted to keep. 40 acres, mixed hardwood and about 11 acres of old pasture, two years of delinquent taxes at roughly 4,100 including interest, seller is an out of state heir who has never walked it. Under contract at 78,000 with a 45 day feasibility period, 2,500 earnest, assignable.

A recreational buyer who owns the tract to the north offered 112,000 within a week of me putting feelers out, which told me I bought it too cheap and also told me something about the north neighbor's motive.

Then the commitment showed a conservation easement recorded in 2004 running to a regional land trust. I've read it twice. It caps the property at one residential building envelope, prohibits further subdivision, and requires written approval for any new road or pond. There is also a separate timber deed from 2019 giving a third party the right to cut merchantable pine through 2026, and there is standing pine.

So the parcel I priced as a divisible rec tract is a permanent single homestead tract with someone else's saw rights on it for at least another season. Whether the easement terms bind the way I'm reading them is a question for a real estate attorney in that state and I have a call scheduled.

What's actually on my desk: the rec buyer to the north almost certainly knows about the easement, since it borders him and he's been there since before 2004. His 112 may already price it. If I assign at 112 I make 34k and hand him a tract he wanted anyway. If I close it myself, the easement is close to what I'd have voluntarily done with the land, and 78k for 40 acres with a building envelope and no subdivision pressure is a hold I'd be happy with for twenty years, except I don't have 78k sitting idle and the money would come from a line I'd rather not draw.

The timber deed is the piece I can't price. If the pine gets cut in the spring the aesthetic value to a rec buyer drops and my 112 might not survive it. If it doesn't get cut, whoever owns the land in 2027 keeps standing timber that someone else paid for.

Day 12 of 45.