You can read the listing for the technical details.
https://www.realestateone.com/home-for-sale/13526-29-Mile-Rd-Albion-MI-49224/53020022127-MIRC
The location is pretty great, not far from the highway or the town, but also in the country. It’s 10 acres and mostly covered with woods.
The realtor insisted we could make a bunch of money by selling some of our trees to loggers. Sounds optimistic, but would anyone like to research this?
The building is right in the middle of the lot, so we wouldn’t be bumping up against anyone, and we’re not near the road either. There’s enough land that we could consider maybe our own green cemetery in the future. Would someone like to research this? (but don’t ask the township about it yet, not until they approve of our building plans.)
The building that’s there is not pretty, but it’s functional. It was built in the 80s and hasn’t been updated since then I’d guess. Mike C, Luke, and Billy D and I inspected it and found most everything to be in working order, but there are a few repairs we’d have to make. If we decide to buy, we should order a septic and well inspection before going through with it, besides whatever else the township makes us do for a building permit. I’ve already discovered that there is no official map for the septic on file, so we have to find it and dig it up. It’s right outside the kitchen door somewhere, you can see the pipe for it. Would someone like to go over there with a shovel and find the lid? Talk to me and I’ll set it up.
It could use a thorough cleaning. The kitchen is nice and big. All the chairs and tables and fridge and stove (and bar!) are included. But the place could really really use some windows though. Are there restrictions on what kind and how many windows we can put in? Do we need a permit to do that? What would that cost to buy them?
Would we want to spruce it up and try to make some money off of renting it out? Is there still a market for that? What would we have to do legally to have a business like that? Someone want to research that? Would we have parishioners who want to help with this? The current manager of the hall, Frank, said that, even in its current state, he rented it out 25-30 times last year, at $400 per rental. If that’s true, say it’s 25, and we did likewise, that would be 10K per year, ie, a good bit more than our mortgage payment would be. Would someone want to look into this?
Would we want to use it ourselves? Seems unlikely that we’d all want to drive over there for lunch on a typical Sunday, but maybe at Pascha?
Comments???
I will do some looking into selling some of the trees to loggers.
I have reached out a couple of foresters who can assess the trees, calculate their volume and get bids from multiple loggers for the logging contract. They also provide other services during the actual logging process to make sure the loggers do their job right/respectfully.
So far, I have heard back from one company. There is a nominal fee (mileage, time and tree marking paint to do an initial assessment. This probably costs in the neighborhood of $200. The forester himself takes 10% of the lumber value (or a minimum $1,500) for their services.The forester would love to put their clients on a ~15 year logging schedule so the woodlot will continue to generate money over time.
One forester gave me some historical data from his records. For 10 sales on woodlots 15 acres or less the average sale price was almost $11,000 (before the minimum $1,500 forester fee). Species of tree is a major factor – if there are a lot of good walnut trees to harvest, the value goes up considerably.
If we log soon and again every 15 years, this forester guessed (it depends a lot) that over time the number of trees worth cutting would go down a bit but the value per tree could increase a lot.
From my short hike around the property, there were some black walnut, but lots of cherry, maple and a few elm. I would need to go talk around again. I didn’t go very far into the woods, but there are a number of quite large straight trees.
I am a little crazy and think that if we could build with the wood from the property, it would be worth more to us than it would to sell it. But I am dreaming of seeing if a few people would go to a timber framing workshop to learn the ropes to see if it would even be feasible.
The research I have done so far assumed we would want more convenience and lower risk… this assumption may not be valid. There are other options including selling trees directly to a logger, or doing everything ourselves. I didn’t look into either of these options too much.
A good analogy is selling a house. A real estate agent takes a cut of a sale, but most people think the convenience is worth it. The best fee structure I found for this service is http://www.DarlingForestry.com
A forester would also be able to mark trees that would have a high market value and let us cut them (and/or use them) ourselves.
The Afternooner DJ services would offer discounted rates to all events that took place in the new hall. Just FYI. Call Brent for details.