Do I need a timber cruise before I sell?
No. No Virginia statute requires a timber cruise before land is sold. The Virginia Department of Forestry still advises that anyone selling timber have a good estimate of its value and volume before the sale, and timber buyers survey the woods before they make an offer. Where the trees are part of what is being sold, an independent estimate keeps the owner from negotiating without numbers.
No statute asks for a cruise, but the Department of Forestry's advice does
A tract with woods on it can be listed, sold and deeded without anyone measuring a single tree. No Virginia statute makes a timber cruise a condition of that sale, and nothing in the appraiser licensing law requires a seller to order an appraisal first.
The advice runs the other way once the trees themselves are being sold. The Virginia Department of Forestry's publication on timber sales puts it in one sentence:
Regardless of the sale method, the seller should have a good estimate of the value and volume of the timber to be removed prior to the sale.
Virginia Department of Forestry, Timber Sales
The same publication says VDOF recommends that a landowner have a forest management plan before selling timber, and the department's glossary defines that plan as "A working guide for maintaining forest land to meet the owner's objectives." Both are recommendations, not requirements, and both are written for a sale of timber. A sale of the land with the trees still standing on it is a different transaction, which is why the question is a judgment call rather than a rule.
What a cruise actually measures, and what the cruiser records along the way, is set out under timber cruise in the glossary.
Timber buyers count the trees before they make an offer
Virginia Cooperative Extension says buyers of timber survey the woods before they make an offer, and that survey is often called a timber cruise. It measures individual trees and weighs the ground they stand on as well as the timber.
So when timber is part of what changes hands, the side that buys timber for a living tends to arrive with its own count. That count rests on choices a seller cannot check without figures of their own: which trees are pulpwood and which are sawtimber, which Extension says contain significantly more value, and which log rule turns a log into board feet. Extension says the widely used log rules give different volumes for the same log, and that buyer and seller should agree openly on the rule used.
The value of standing trees is commonly called stumpage value. How species, quality, log rules and markets turn into a signed timber sale is covered in how timber is valued.
Foresters make the estimate, and the Code keeps anyone from calling it an appraisal
Extension points a seller to three sources of help with a timber sale: the Virginia Department of Forestry county forester, consulting foresters and industrial foresters.
VDOF's glossary describes a consulting forester as "A forestry professional who provides fee- or commission-based services to landowners." The department's brochure lists one of those services as an inventory of the species, size, quantity and quality of standing timber in the sale area, which gives the landowner a basis for a fair market price. This page calls that a timber inventory and valuation, because of how Virginia law words it.
Va. Code 54.1-2010 A 3 exempts from appraiser licensing a person who, in the ordinary course of business, provides consulting services or consultative brokerage for a fee, which may include a valuation of standing or severed timber, provided those services "shall not be referred to as an appraisal" and are not used in connection with obtaining a loan to finance or refinance real property or standing or severed timber, or with any federally related transaction. A real estate licensee falls under A 1 of the same section, a separate exemption for a valuation or analysis of real estate provided for a fee in the ordinary course of business, which may not be referred to as an appraisal or used in lieu of one. The line between the two documents is drawn in whether a real estate valuation is an appraisal.
Four tracts, and whether an independent timber estimate earns its keep on each
The question is less about the law than about how much of the asking price is standing in the woods, and who is likely to be measuring it.
Pasture and fields with a wooded edge
The trees are a small share of what is being sold, and the price turns mostly on the open ground. A cruise measures that small share and little else.A wooded tract a timber buyer may bid on
A buyer who bids on the timber will cruise it before offering. An owner with an independent estimate in hand can compare the two counts instead of relying on the only one in the room.Timber sold before the land lists
Now VDOF's guidance applies directly: an estimate of value and volume, a forest management plan, and a written contract, including a clause requiring the buyer to notify VDOF before logging starts.Rows of Christmas trees
A cruise is built for standing timber, and a field of planted Christmas trees raises a different valuation question.Whether to cut before listing or sell the land with the trees still standing is a question for a forester and a tax adviser, with the market side of it on selling a farm with standing timber. A plantation of trees grown for sale raises its own questions, set out in how a Christmas tree farm is valued.
Selling a tract with standing timber on it?
Send the county, the acreage and roughly how much of it is in woods. Lowell will talk through the land apart from the trees, and say so when the timber question belongs with a forester first. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions this raises
Is a forest management plan the same thing as a timber cruise?
No. The Virginia Department of Forestry defines a forest management plan as a working guide for maintaining forest land to meet the owner's objectives, and a timber cruise as a survey that assesses the timber itself, usually before harvesting. VDOF recommends having a plan before selling timber and, separately, a good estimate of the timber's value and volume before the sale.
Does a timber cruise tell me what the land itself will sell for?
No. A cruise estimates the volume, value and species of the standing trees. The price of the land also turns on access, water, open ground, buildings and what a buyer can do with the tract once the timber question is settled. When a buyer's loan calls for an appraisal of the property, it is the lender's to order, and a licensed appraiser prepares it.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Timber Sales (publication dated 05/2014) Virginia Department of Forestry
- Forest Landowner's Guide to the Measurement of Timber and Logs (420-085) Virginia Cooperative Extension
- Glossary: timber cruise Virginia Department of Forestry
- Glossary: consulting forester Virginia Department of Forestry
- Glossary: forest management plan Virginia Department of Forestry
- Va. Code 54.1-2010, exemptions from appraiser licensing (A 1 and A 3) Virginia General Assembly