Big Pile of Slabs

[Dan Hall]

My wife and I are looking to downsize our home and get me enough lot to build a shop on. My real estate guy is a personal friend and sent me a listing for a place on 12 acres out of town a ways. He's a humorist of sorts. We could no more afford this place than we could fly to the moon. Anyway it's got a really big shop on it chock a block full of what looks like some many quarter slabs of various in there. The house is empty so I don't know if they forgot the wood and it goes with the house or not. It's nice to look at though.

The listing is on Realtor.com but I can't show it to you because of forum rules. Here's a picture though of the slabs. There is some bowl stock in those piles along with table tops and who knows what else.


Don't drool on the keyboard now.

[Mike Wilkins]

If the building and wood comes with the property, I would be searching for a way to afford this. The previous owner must been a sawmill operator or retailer.
Drool worthy.

[Flamone LaChaud]

If for some reason you didn't want any of that wood, selling it would probably put 100k back in your pocket . . .

[John K Jordan]

If the realtor showed you the inside of that building it probably goes with the house. I'd love to have a building like that on my farm!

Is the shop full of equipment too? Did it look like nothing's been used for a long time? If so, perhaps the owner died and the family didn't know what to do with everything. I've heard of kids making a bonfire from a bunch of wood.

You'd need a fork lift just to see what's there.

JKJ

[Bill Dufour]

Any idea on species or if it is labeled. Since it is in Sparks air dried is as good as kiln dried after a few years. If you ship it to the east coast they would have to wait awhile for the moisture to go up before using it. How long would that take?
Bill D.

[Dan Hall]

You know, I thought about at least taking a look. I showed the pictures from the listing to my wife and it really is a nice house. The property has a horse barn on it too with wonderful heavy wood stalls and accoutrements, a decent rent could be derived from folks wanting to keep and work horses. There is an abundance of wide open BLM land in the area too. But hear me, this is OUT of my budget. They are asking $839K for this. That's twice what our place is worth on a good day. I'm retired and definitely not going back to a house payment. I think I can show you a google maps satellite view without breaking the rules. It's a 15 minute drive from my place and probably 6 or 7 minutes to shopping for full grocery store, pharmacy, fast food, two bar & grill establishments, auto parts, the High School and several elementary and intermediate schools. I'm thinking it's going to go quick with all the high tech money flooding the area. I hope it sells to somebody who knows what's in the shop bldg. I'd love for a SMC family to get it.

I was born in the desert so this is normal for me, a lot of folks here would cringe at this kind of country but I love it. If this sounds like an advertisement it's not. I have no connection to the owners in any way. It's just a wood workers dream. The google shot was taken before the shop went in wasn't it?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/43...4d-119.6842016

[John K Jordan]

...But hear me, this is OUT of my budget. They are asking $839K for this.

That's what our farm was, out of our budget. But it sat unsold with no offers for a year the the owner was getting desperate and took much less. Depending on the situation on that place, maybe they would negotiate.

Out place is also out in the country and just a few miles from grocery, pharmacy and more. (But in the middle of eastern hardwood belt!) I feel quite blessed.

JKJ

[Peter Christensen]

Does the building have an alarm?

[Dan Hall]

Now you're making me want to cry John. Ha! Don't you believe that the gears aren't turning in my pointy little head. I have to talk to a friend about what to expect as income from boarding horses as long as I don't have to feed them. Then there would be going back to part time teaching at the local community college. You have no idea how much money is pouring into this area from California. A retired carpenter from Redwood City on the San Francisco Peninsula could sell out of his 1400 square foot 1940's box and have twice the budget needed to buy this place. It will sell. In the mean time a one acre piece with a real nice home just showed up on the radar today. We'll get there. I'm going to ask about the slabs today. Where would I store them?

[Mark Bolton]

The hard part with all those slabs is that the mere marketing and moving (not physically, but selling) them would be a ton of work. Most of the dream setups you see on the web and YouTube have built long established relationships with the Manhattan-style and other markets demand for their output. Just having a warehouse full of odd, crotch figured, or plain jane, slabs, doesnt mean they are going to fly out the door for a colossal ROI (might be why they are sitting there with the building, property, and residence).

Not being a nay sayer but the market is flooded. The big money markets are extremely flooded. Nearly every big market that moves material like this will have at least one, if not multiple, direct suppliers within 20 miles and perhaps multiples if you look out to a farther radius. There are some that have established connections that are shipping stuff like this, entire boule sawn logs, and so on into the money markets but often times you will find they have invested in relatively high dollar microwave kiln setups to dry these wide/thick slabs, as well as having a bunch of other ancillary investment.

There is no several hundred million dollar high-rise, or multi million dollar home project, that is going to treat your material as "as good as kiln dried" if it hasnt seen a kiln. They arent going to jeopardize several hundred million dollars of investment to any potential liability. Thats not to say you wouldnt move a ton of it to other outlets (the maker market is filled with people who simply dont worry about liability). High end furniture makers who are fine with AD material. And the never dying "reclaimed" market.

[John K Jordan]

Now you're making me want to cry John. Ha! Don't you believe that the gears aren't turning in my pointy little head. I have to talk to a friend about what to expect as income from boarding horses as long as I don't have to feed them. ...

That building looks big enough for an indoor arena. Someone near here has one and makes a living boarding horses, renting arena time, and renting the space for area ag and equine events. We've paid money at a similar facility to show llamas - there were at least 100 people there. Just for fun maybe check around and see what people in your area are charging for such things. The local farmer's co-ops might know, or the county agent, or 4H teacher, equine clubs, etc. I wonder if you could find someone who wants to lease that part of the property and operate it.

JKJ

[Wakahisa Shinta]

I am looking at this photo and the google map location. And I am not too far away, about 30 minutes south. Good luck with the property. If you need a buyers for some of the slabs, please PM me. I want to buy the whole warehouse but no space to store all those slabs!

[Justin Rapp]

There is some checking on a few slabs - so the entire pile will need to go into my compost pile That is one heck of a pile of wood, and who knows what is to the left or behind the person taking the picture. I saw the ad also and that building is 3852 sf. That is one heck of a shop. Horse stable is only 2 stalls. I do wonder if the owner was renting out the space to a sawmill as the ad write up doesn't mention the wood is included or excluded.

[Dan Hall]

The hard part with all those slabs is that the mere marketing and moving (not physically, but selling) them would be a ton of work. <snip> High end furniture makers who are fine with AD material. And the never dying "reclaimed" market.

I hear you Mark. If there is any principle I'm am uniquely fitted to understand it is that things are a lot easier to buy than they are to sell.

[Dan Hall]

Nice to meet you neighbor!