Does Money Grow on Trees? I Own 40 Acres of Them. Here’s the Math.

Land & TimberTestedI own this one. Estimates are labeled as estimates.

People ask me whether timberland is a good investment. Usually right after they find out I own some, and usually in the tone you’d use to ask whether someone’s boat was a good idea.

Fair question. I bought forty acres of Arkansas pine land in 2007, paid it off on a five-year bank note, and I’ve owned it ever since. In nineteen years I have never once sat down and done the full math on it. That is a strange thing for a finance guy to admit, so let’s fix it. Real numbers where I have them, sourced estimates where I don’t, and a clear label on which is which.

What I paid

Roughly $1,100 an acre. Forty acres, so call it $44,000 before closing costs.

That sounds cheap, and it was. But 2007 dollars aren’t today’s dollars. Run $1,100 through the government’s consumer price index and it comes out to about $1,788 in September 2026 money. So the bar for “did this make money” isn’t $1,100 an acre. It’s $1,788. Anything less and the trees just held their breath while inflation walked past.

I financed it with a five-year note from a bank. Interest is a real cost, and it goes on the bill. Paying it off in five years instead of stretching it out is its own post (Week 6), but the short version: it was the least fun money I’ve ever spent and the best.

What it costs to keep: almost embarrassing

Here’s the part that surprised me when I actually looked it up. Arkansas taxes timberland on what the land can grow, not on what it would sell for. The state’s 2026 valuation tables put pine timberland between about $85 and $156 an acre for tax purposes, depending on region and how good the soil is.

Assess that at the state’s 20% rate, apply a typical 50-mill tax rate, add the state’s 20-cent-per-acre fire protection tax, and you land somewhere around $1 to $1.75 an acre per year. On forty acres, that’s roughly $42 to $70 a year.

Read that again. Forty acres, taxed for about what it costs to fill up a pickup. Meanwhile somebody’s brokerage app charges them more than that in a quarter and sends a push notification to celebrate.

The other costs were one-time. I built roads and added a small bridge. Those don’t come back every year, but they count. They’re also what makes the land usable, leasable and sellable. A tract you can’t drive into is a tract a buyer discounts, politely, by a lot.

What it pays me while I wait

This is the part people forget about land. Mine is leased for hunting.

Listing data puts Arkansas hunting leases at around $15 to $20 an acre a year on average. On forty acres, that would be $600 to $800 annually.

Even at the low end of that range, the lease covers the property tax many times over. The land doesn’t cost me money to hold. It pays me a little to hold it. That is not a sentence most investments can say with a straight face.

What the trees are doing

The pines went in in 2010, which makes them about sixteen growing seasons old. According to the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, a pine plantation’s first commercial thinning usually happens between ages 12 and 18. Translation: I’m in the window now.

Here’s the wrinkle. A first thinning mostly produces pulpwood, the small stuff that goes to paper mills. And pulpwood is the one product in Arkansas that has been falling. The Arkansas Timber Price Report had statewide pine stumpage at these prices at the end of 2025:

Pine product (Q4 2025)	Price per ton on the stump	vs. a year earlier
Pulpwood (small trees)	$3.67	down about 25%
Chip-n-saw (mid-size)	$14.49	up about 14%
Sawtimber (big logs)	$23.90	up about 4%

So the first check is going to be small. That’s not a disaster; it’s the design. Thinning isn’t the payday. It’s how you get the payday. You pull out the crowded, crooked and suppressed trees so the best ones have room to put on diameter. Give the survivors another decade or so and they cross into sawtimber, which in that same report was worth about six and a half times what pulpwood is per ton.

Standing timber value is the one number I can’t give you yet. It depends on how many tons are actually out there, and the only honest way to know is a timber cruise by a forester.

The scorecard

	2007	2026
Land, per acre	$1,100	about $2,400 to $3,500 (estimate)
Land, 40 acres	$44,000	about $96,000 to $140,000 (estimate)
What $44,000 is in today’s dollars		about $71,500
Property tax per year		about $42 to $70 (estimate)
Hunting lease per year		about $600 to $800 (typical range)
Standing timber	Planted 2010	Pending a forester’s cruise

Where the land value range comes from: Arkansas timberland sold for roughly $2,370 to $2,400 an acre in central and south Arkansas in 2025, and closer to $4,800 in north Arkansas, according to a statewide land-sales report. USDA put Arkansas pasture at $3,500 an acre in 2026. My forty acres isn’t any of those exactly, so treat this as a range, not an appraisal.

On land value alone, that works out to a gain of somewhere around 4.2% to 6.3% a year since 2007. After inflation, roughly 1.6% to 3.6% a year.

That’s the dirt only. It doesn’t count the lease money coming in, and it doesn’t count the timber growing on top, which is the whole reason you’d own pine land instead of a field.

Is that better than an index fund? On land value alone, probably not, and I’ll do that comparison properly in a few weeks instead of waving my hands at it here. But this land was never supposed to win a drag race. It was supposed to be the thing that’s still there. (Also, an index fund has never once let me walk around in it.)

So, does money grow on trees?

Slowly. Annoyingly slowly. But yes.

The honest answer is that this land makes money three ways, and none of them is exciting on its own. The dirt has roughly kept ahead of inflation. The lease more than pays the tax. And the timber pays in lumps, once every decade or so, with the biggest lump at the end.

Put together, it’s an asset that costs almost nothing to hold, pays me while I wait, can’t be margin-called, and doesn’t care what the Fed said this morning. I’ll take that trade.

Next week: the full yearly cost of owning an acre of timberland, line by line, including the stuff nobody puts in the listing.

Quick answers

Is timberland a good investment?

It can be a solid, boring one. Land value tends to hold up against inflation, taxes on timberland are often very low, and you can earn income from hunting leases and timber sales along the way. It is not fast money, and it’s harder to sell quickly than a stock.

How much is property tax on timberland in Arkansas?

Often very little. Arkansas values timberland for tax purposes by its productive capacity, and the state’s 2026 tables put pine land between about $85 and $156 an acre. At a typical 50-mill rate plus the 20-cent fire tax, that’s roughly $1 to $1.75 an acre a year. Check your county’s millage for the real number.

When do you first thin a pine plantation?

Usually between ages 12 and 18, when the trees reach pulpwood size, according to the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. Get a forester to mark it.

Sources

Education, not financial advice. I’m not a financial advisor or a forester. Your land, your taxes and your timber market will be different. See the disclaimer.