How a pay-as-cut timber contract made a 240 acre tract work
Worth studying as a case: 240 acres of pine in mixed-age condition, listed at 1.02M, sitting for seven months. The listing mentioned an active timber sale in one line, and few buyers had actually read the underlying contract. That contract ran 14 pages including two amendments. The seller had sold a pay-as-cut sale on 96 acres to a logging contractor in the spring, meaning the buyer pays per ton as wood is delivered and scaled at the mill, so money arrives over months instead of at signing. About 31 percent of the contracted volume had already been cut, leaving roughly 340k of gross uncut against an original contract of about 495k. Eleven months remained on the contract, and critically, an assignment clause meant the contract ran with the land unless carved out at closing, which required the timber buyer's consent. So the seller was pricing the tract as if the timber sale proceeds were his while a buyer would actually be acquiring cut-over ground obligated to deliver more timber. The contract said otherwise once the deed moved. A five week negotiation in a case like this can land at a price with the contract assigned to the buyer and the seller keeping proceeds on tons already scaled through the closing date, with a meaningful down payment. Scale ticket payments then arrive over the following months, tracking toward most of the balance by roughly a year out, subject to weather slowing the contractor's pace. The part that nearly breaks deals like this: an unsigned amendment extending the contract term in the copy provided. Running down an executed original through a title company that cares can take over a week, and if that gap were real, the contractor could walk and the purchase price would suddenly be attached to a tract with an argument on it. The broader lesson: always ask for the underlying documents on anything a listing mentions in passing. A deal like this can sit on market for months while the whole story is buried in a paragraph on page six.
