Not unlike other regions in the US, commercial timberland ownership has changed in the past 15 to 20 years, as timberlands have moved from industrial ownership (forest product companies; such as pulp and paper mills, sawmills, etc.) to institutional organizations (TIMO, REIT, etc.).
Today a significant portion of the commercial timberland ownership in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is owned by institutional investors. Steigerwaldt Land Services has closely tracked ownership trends and found that industrial ownership dropped by over 90 percent from 1999 to 2012, while institutional ownership grew by nearly the same percentage during that period.
The following figures provide a snap-shot of large timberland transactions (2,100 acres and greater) in the Lake States region. These figures do not represent all land sales with aforementioned criteria, but include significant timberland sales that tracked in our in-house database.
