Property with adjacent private forest area

It's a difficult situation. As you already wrote, you have to buy it anyway if you want the plot of land. If the price per square meter is right there, you might be able to live with it. However, it is true that the seller is trying to sell his woodland at exorbitantly inflated prices, which he otherwise would hardly or not at all get rid of. If he were totally sure it would become building land, he would wait it out and sell it himself in 10 years for double the price.

Of course, a small private woodland within the town with a barbecue hut, etc., should not be underestimated. Maybe you can also fence it in peu a peu or let a thorn hedge grow all around. If you then design your garden accordingly, you almost have a stately property. And of course, significantly more work.

On the one hand, old beech and maple trees, provided the wood quality is good, already bring in more money than a boring spruce, and then there's the new price per m². I believe with beech, for example, the root system is also interesting because in luxury cars, some kind of dashboard trims are made from it. But it could also have been oak :)

It is hardly possible to sell a single tree from this stand to a wood processing plant; at best, you might get firewood out of it, because:

1. First, no forestry worker will come by for a single tree unless it is a hazard felling. Then, theoretically, you get €100 for the tree, but the felling costs €1000.
2. But nobody will pick up this single tree to take it to a wood processing plant, because the minimum transport quantity should be at least 10 cubic meters – better 20 cubic meters. So, you pay another €100 to deliver a tree worth €100 to a wood processing plant, whose felling already cost €1000.
3. Even if you managed to gather a truckload together with some neighbors, the quality would be far too poor and it would at best be processed into pellets, etc., and on top of that,
4. ... you have no certification for the wood from this stand, and
5. ... almost everything in this forest consists of edge trees and was additionally more or less used as a forest garden. No wood processor will accept that, because if someone nailed a fence to a tree 50 years ago and the saw blade hits one of those nails, the machine will be down for several hours.

Ergo: hope that no windthrows occur, use it as a forest garden, and if wood falls, best carry it directly to your own fireplace or give it away to neighbors. Everything else is unfortunately absurd in this situation, so no huge sums should be paid for it.

Best regards
Dirk Grafe

: The problem is that the current owner is already older (about 77) and can no longer take care of his hinterland. Accordingly, he wants to sell it. However, he does not want to give it away, as he assumes that it will become building land. But in his opinion, he probably won't witness that anymore.

: The small forest is already fenced in with chain-link fencing. So that is already done. To the east along the property boundary, there is also a public path that runs from the street to the new development area. People occasionally walk their dogs there.

: The problem is that the current owner is already older (about 77) and can no longer take care of his hinterland. Accordingly, he wants to sell it. But he also does not want to give it away, as he assumes it will become building land. However, he probably won’t live to see that (in his opinion).

That is and remains the core question: will it become building land? Is there a realistic chance that it will become building land in 10 years? If yes, the price is okay – if not, it’s an expensive piece of garden.

But it can also be viewed as a mixed calculation including the building land. Let’s assume the 1500m² of forest is only worth €10 per m². Then the following remains:

Total purchase price €145,000
less forest €15,000
Building land €130,000, corresponding to €200 per m² building land (650m²)

Then you have to/can decide whether €200 in that location is completely off the mark or if you can still justify it. That would be the worst case – if you buy the forest for €26 and it becomes building land next year, then that’s a bargain.

Best regards
Dirk Grafe

Hello everyone!

In the meantime, we have decided to buy the property including the forest! The financing is also in place, and we have our notary appointment coming up soon. Today, I spoke with the notary, and he asked me why the property still needs to be divided? This concerns the division of the part of the property to be purchased into 650m² of building land and 1500m² of forest.

I assumed that the property still needs to be measured and divided into forest and building land so that the entire property area is not taxed at the higher rate (forest/wasteland is cheaper). The notary said that such a division is not necessary since it is already recorded as two areas (forest + building land) in the land register. Now I am wondering if there might be other advantages or disadvantages if the property is divided this way?