If you can get it, do it. Maybe offer $1500/acre. all they can say is "no." In your case, I would not look at it as an investment as far as timber goes. More of a recreational tract. If you can live with that, go for it. If you're wanting a ROI of any kind, you will need to pony up more $ for the timber already on a tract. Oh, an by all means (and this might be a deal breaker) make sure you have a deeded easement to the tract. That would be a non-negotiable thing for me. Things change. People change. Land changes hands. The last thing you want to deal with is to have a piece of property and not be able to access it due to some issue with the adjoining landowners. There are plenty of horror stories out there on this kind of thing.

Av rate on the dirt is around 1250/acre + the timber value for land locked property with no deeded access. 1500/acre on dirt with access

If it was around here that price is too high. Maybe they will negotiate

Is there deeded access ? Seems steep for cutover with no road frontage.

How does whatever your monthly payment works out to compare to club dues. Get the payments strung out as long as you can. The payment you make 10 years from now ain’t gonna be worth half of what it is now thanks to Biden.

I lease 120 ac total for $1200. I have 5 green fields and nice shooting houses. I pay the landowners son, my best friend, $1000 to bushhog and plant my fields. This year my total costs were

Lease $1200
Bush Hog/Planting - $1000
Seed/Fert - $575

Total = $2775

Bushog and planting is not going away.

Call me cheap, but I’m not paying that for cutover.

Used an online loan calculator for these numbers:

If you purchase for $140,000 and put 20,000 down and pay 10,000 per year for the next 12 years and you got a loan for 5% the interest you would pay over the 12 years would total $39,821. So if you get this loan at zero interest then you are saving $39,821 in interest if you had to pay 5% on loan (I don't know what the going rate is for a land only loan). So this may help you decide if the price of land is OK when you consider zero interest.

Think about it this way if you can afford the payments. You'll never get a better opportunity to buy land with the owner financing and they quit making land a while back so get it while you can.

I was just quoted 8.75% interest for 20 years with excellent credit!

What would you pay for cutover? Are there properties available at that price point?
0% interest makes this a unique circumstance though

I wouldn’t pay that for the area and being clearcut beside the ntfrst having to go through two other properties. Maybe $1400 acre max.

Another consideration is the cost to spray and replant in pines. That will be $100+ per acre.

...Holy Crap!...

Buy it

Nah. Not any more. That’s 2018 prices. Good luck finding that now.

Go for it. I bought an 80 beside mine and got rid of a deeded acess through 3/4 of a mile of my land I had been putting up with for 46 years. I bought the dirt in April for $1600 an acre.
Land is worth what you are willing to pay. Remember the saying. If you don’t, some one else will.
Land in Marengo county is selling for 5 to 6 per acre for open land and is hard to find!

No deeded access, no deal.

If you can swing it, buy it. From my experience, buying land isn’t like shopping for the perfect car and then you get to negotiate the price. Either you strike a deal you can live with or it will be gone and probably never have the opportunity again. Seems like the hard part is over with an offer to purchase at a reasonable price.

This. I know I’m a couple of states to the right of you guys but bare dirt is hard to find under 4K an acre here. Heck there’s a lot of places in SC they are asking 10k+ an acre for unimproved land. Again, to the OP, that’s a hell of a deal even if you are just going to use it for recreation.