• Hutchinson, Sean Francis
  University of Maine Graduate School
  

Over the past two decades the Northeast United States has experienced a drastic increase in transaction volume of timberland parcels. With the change in ownership from vertically integrated forest products manufacturers to alternative investment vehicles, the valuation process for these forests has needed to adapt. The goal of this thesis is to focus on two aspects of the acquisition and disposition process with regards to timberland investment. The first aspect is the valuation of a specific timberland parcel. An effort was made to accurately predict timberland parcel sales price through developing a model based on the value of the standing timber, parcel size and the state in which the parcel is located. The results of this model for the Northeast United States showed, as expected that standing timber value positively and parcel size negatively influences timberland sales price.