An assessment of appraisals for federal and state timber sales in Minnesota, U.S.A.

The frequency of tracts of timber offered for sale that do not receive any bids, also known as no-bids, is a concern for public land managers. No-bids can delay forest management and result in lost revenue to federal and state agencies. We used data collected by the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MN DNR) to assess the impact of appraisal adjustments on the appraised value of federal and state timber tracts offered for sale in Minnesota and quantify the impact of appraisal characteristics on the likelihood of a sale. We found that Forest Service appraisers are adjusting appraisal values sufficiently to the point where buyers are indifferent between sales at different price points. However, MN DNR appraisers appear to not have had sufficient adjustments, because buyers are more likely to buy higher-valued sale offerings. This study is the first to assess adjustment factors on no-bid sales, as well as assess some sale characteristics that result in successive no-bids.