Transaction-Based Timberland Investment Returns

摘要

Using property-level data of 1987 quarter 1-2014 quarter 2 provided by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), transaction-based timberland indices-are constructed via the Heckman procedure. Results show that liquidity of private-equity timberland assets varies with business cycles; variance of transaction-based timberland indices is twice as large as that of the appraisal-based NCREIF Timberland Index; the role of private-equity timberland in a mixed portfolio is overstated by using the appraisal-based index; and the average of estimated ask and bid prices well captures the mean price of identified timberland sales, although timberland sellers reserve higher prices than buyers.