# How stumpage is appraised > Stumpage is appraised before a sale is advertised, and the appraised value becomes the minimum bid. Methods differ by agency: Oregon works residually from mill pond value minus logging cost, and the Forest Service runs transaction evidence appraisal against a published base index. Washington and Montana set an appraised value the winning bid has to clear by statute. _Updated Aug 13, 2026._ Stumpage is appraised before a sale is ever advertised, and the appraised value becomes the minimum bid. Two families of method do the work. A residual appraisal starts at what the logs are worth delivered to a mill and subtracts what it costs to cut them and haul them there. A transaction evidence appraisal starts at what comparable sales have recently been paying and adjusts from there. Oregon uses the first, the Forest Service uses the second, and the difference changes what the number means. This guide covers the step before the auction. For the auction itself, the packet, the sealed or oral bidding and the award, see [how public timber auctions work](/guides/how-public-timber-auctions-work). ## The appraisal is the floor, by law Every agency on this site has to appraise before it sells, and the appraisal sets the floor. In Oregon, [ORS 530.059](https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_530.059) requires the State Forester to have forest products appraised before they are offered and requires the sale notice to state the minimum price. In Washington, [RCW 79.15.120](https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=79.15.120) lets DNR confirm a sale only when the purchaser was the high bidder and the bid was not less than the appraised value. In Montana, [MCA 77-5-204](https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0770/chapter_0050/part_0020/section_0040/0770-0050-0020-0040.html) requires the timber be appraised under the department's direction before the land board grants a sale, requires the appraisal to state the per-unit value of the merchantable products, and forbids selling live timber below full market value. The Forest Service publishes an advertised rate per species from its appraisal and floors it at a regional minimum rate. The units are not interchangeable. State sales are appraised and bid per thousand board feet, Forest Service sales per hundred cubic feet, and some Idaho and Montana sales per ton. A minimum in one unit says nothing about a minimum in another, and nothing on this site is blended across them. ## Oregon: pond value minus logging cost The Oregon Department of Forestry appraises residually, and its work papers show the subtraction directly. Its appraisal for the [Buck Ridge sale in the Southwest district](https://apps.odf.oregon.gov/Divisions/management/asset_management/Prospectus/15-88%20Attachments.pdf) sets the grand fir and other conifers rate at $200 per MBF, being a $550 per MBF pond value less a $350 per MBF logging cost, and repeats the same structure for the pines and the cedars. Pond value is what a local mill is paying for logs of that species and grade. It is a market price, taken from the log market rather than from other people's bids. The cost side is not one number. It is a stack, built per logging system and weighted by how much of the volume each system moves, with separate per-MBF add-ons for road maintenance, scaling, slash disposal and haul, plus a margin for profit and risk. On Buck Ridge those ran to $3.78 per MBF for road maintenance, $5.00 per MBF for scaling and a 13 percent profit and risk allowance. Multiply each species rate by its cruised volume, sum them for a gross sale value, subtract the project work the purchaser will perform such as road construction, culverts and slash piling, and what remains is the advertised value. On that sale, $76,354.32 gross less $19,580.00 of project work advertised at $56,774.32. Two things follow. A residual minimum moves with the mill, so it tracks the log and lumber market on a lag rather than tracking recent auctions. And a hard logging show appraises lower for identical wood, because steep ground, cable yarding and a long haul make the number being subtracted bigger. One caveat about reading Oregon on this site. ODF publishes the winning bid in its results tables but not the minimum the sale was advertised at, so no Oregon sale here carries a premium over minimum, and the [ODF district rollup](/region/odf) reports bidder counts instead. ## Washington: the value the bid has to clear Washington DNR sells trust timber, and the statute makes the appraisal binding rather than advisory. RCW 79.15.120 permits confirmation only when the high bid meets the appraised value, and it adds a second test: DNR must also be satisfied that re-advertising would not bring at least ten percent more than the apparent high bid. That is a statute written by people who expect winning bids to run over the minimum. On the notice the appraisal arrives as a table. The [Q West Fork Sorts notice of sale](https://dnr.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2025-06/psl_ts_2506_qwestfork.pdf), agreement 30-108104, heads it "Minimum Bid and Estimated Log Volumes" and prints a minimum bid price against the estimated volume and then a total appraised value: $70.00 per ton across 3,349 tons, $234,430.00 appraised, with a ten percent deposit on the total bid. That particular sale is a sort, a delivered-log sale where DNR arranges the harvest and mills bid a delivered price, so its figure is a delivered price and not a stumpage rate. The cost logic underneath is visible on the same page anyway, in the forest excise tax formula the notice prints: taxable stumpage is the total delivered value less harvest cost, estimated haul cost and the ARRF, stated on that sale as $30.48 per ton and $26.00 per MBF. Delivered value minus the cost of getting there is the residual shape again, arrived at for tax rather than for appraisal. Worth being straight about the limit of that: unlike ODF, DNR does not publish a per-sale appraisal work paper, so what can be verified from the public record is the output and the statutory floor rather than a documented recipe. ## Montana: appraised to full market value Montana's statute is brief on method and firm on result. [MCA 77-5-201](https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0770/chapter_0050/part_0020/section_0010/0770-0050-0020-0010.html) allows state trust timber to be sold by a stumpage method, by a lump-sum method or through contract harvesting. MCA 77-5-204 requires the appraisal, the per-unit value of the merchantable products, and no sale of live timber below full market value. It does not name a method, and DNRC publishes no appraisal manual we can cite. What can be shown is how the resulting numbers behave. The Montana Department of Revenue's [forest lands valuation report](https://revenue.mt.gov/files/Resources/Government/Forest-Land-Taxation-Advisory-Committee/Handouts-and-Attachments/Montana-Forest-Lands-Valuation-Report.pdf) treats DNRC's competitive sales as market prices and uses them as its benchmark, and it finds bid prices moving with the university BBER quarterly mill log price index by species and zone and falling with the cost of logging and hauling, more skyline yarding, longer haul, more unpaved miles. That is the behavior of a residual calculation. It is a tax study describing DNRC results from the outside, not DNRC describing its own method, and it is worth holding it as the weaker of the two kinds of evidence on this page. The same report puts ten-year average implied stumpage at $222.96 per MBF in the northwest zone against $46.07 per MBF in the east, which is a fair warning about how far one state's number spreads. ## The Forest Service: transaction evidence The Forest Service works the other way round, from evidence of what timber has actually been selling for. Its appraisal summaries carry the appraisal type on the face of the form and the Region 5 worksheet is titled transaction evidence appraisal. Two real Shasta-Trinity sales show the whole run: [Rainbow Thin](https://fs.usda.gov/media/134790), appraised December 2023, and [Rattle Thin](https://fs.usda.gov/media/135200), appraised December 2024. The chain per species is short. Start at a quality value in dollars per CCF, drawn from a named base index over a stated base period, which is the transaction evidence itself. Subtract the sale costs per CCF, which cover fire protection, stump-to-truck logging, hauling, slash work, erosion control, road construction and maintenance, plus the required deposits. What is left is the conversion return. Subtract a rollback adjustment, ten percent on both of those sales, and the result is the indicated advertised rate. Reconcile that against the regional base and minimum rate, publish an advertised rate per species, multiply by volume and sum. Rainbow Thin came out at $205,911.70 total sale value and Rattle Thin at $8,310.21. The rollback is the part that anticipates the auction. [FSH 2409.18](https://www.fs.usda.gov/spf/tribalrelations/documents/handbooks/wo_2409-18_80.pdf) directs appraisers not to include a rollback factor where only one responsible operator exists, because the sale will be noncompetitive. Read backwards, that says what the rollback is for: it discounts the appraisal for the bid-up a competitive auction is expected to produce. The same handbook lists transaction evidence appraisal alongside analytical appraisal, comparison appraisal and independent estimates as valid ways to reach fair market value, so transaction evidence is the practice rather than the only permitted method. The other number to know is the floor. Both appraisal summaries print a regional minimum rate and base rate of $0.25 per CCF, and the handbook sets that same figure as the rate to advertise at when appraised value falls below minimum rates on a sale run to protect or improve the forest. A quarter per CCF is why a deck, product or stewardship sale can bid to a four-digit premium and mean nothing by it. This site classes those sales separately and caps their displayed premium for that exact reason, rather than letting a $0.25 floor set the market read. ## Reading an appraised value against the market [Chart: Green sawtimber bidding heat (%)](https://stumpage.news/board/recent-results) ([data](https://stumpage.news/board/recent-results.md) — chart image: https://stumpage.news/charts/board/recent-results/chart.png) The gap between the appraised minimum and the winning bid is the number worth watching, and it is wide. Across the completed auctions this site tracks, 114 green sawtimber sales publish both an appraised minimum and a winning bid, and the median ran 43 percent over the minimum. That median sits in the middle of a long spread: a quarter of those sales finished within 15 percent of the minimum, a quarter finished more than 76 percent above it, and eight sold at exactly the minimum. Washington DNR sales ran a median 48 percent over across 54 results and Montana DNRC 43 percent over across 45. Those are Stumpage's own tracked sales as of August 2026. The Idaho and Forest Service samples here are too small to characterize, and Oregon publishes no minimum to measure against on 151 sold sawtimber sales. What moves the gap is competition, not the appraisal. The 83 sales with more than one bidder ran a median 51 percent over minimum. The 18 with a single bidder ran a median 7 percent. A well-judged appraisal and a tract nobody else wanted produce the same near-minimum result, and the bidder count is what tells them apart, which is why [the board](/board/recent-results) carries it beside the premium. Read any single appraised value with the same care. It is one agency's estimate of one tract under one set of assumed costs, and the cruise that fed it is an estimate too, which is why every packet tells bidders to examine the timber themselves. Stumpage reports what agencies appraised and what buyers paid. It does not appraise tracts, forecast prices or say what a sale is worth to anyone. [Table: Upcoming timber auctions](https://stumpage.news/calendar/upcoming) ([data](https://stumpage.news/calendar/upcoming.md)) The calendar above carries the appraised minimum for each advertised sale where the notice publishes one, which is the number to hold against the result when it posts. ## Related data + guides - [The public timber board](https://stumpage.news/board/recent-results) - [Upcoming auctions and their minimums](https://stumpage.news/calendar/upcoming) - [Oregon Department of Forestry districts](https://stumpage.news/region/odf) - [Olympic Region, WA DNR](https://stumpage.news/region/wadnr-olympic) - [How public timber auctions work](https://stumpage.news/guides/how-public-timber-auctions-work) ## Common questions ### How is stumpage appraised? By one of two families of method, depending on the agency. A residual appraisal starts from what the logs are worth at the mill and subtracts logging, haul and other sale costs, which is how the Oregon Department of Forestry works. A transaction evidence appraisal starts from a published index of what comparable sales have been paying and subtracts sale costs and a rollback, which is how the Forest Service works. Either way the result becomes the minimum bid the sale is advertised at. ### Is the appraised value the same as the minimum bid? In practice yes, and by statute the minimum cannot be lower. Oregon requires the sale notice to state the minimum price, Washington permits a sale to be confirmed only when the high bid is at least the appraised value, and Montana forbids selling live timber below full market value. The Forest Service publishes the appraisal as an advertised rate per species, floored at a regional minimum rate. ### Does the Forest Service use transaction evidence appraisal? Yes. Its Region 5 appraisal summaries name the appraisal type on the face of the form and the worksheet behind them is titled transaction evidence appraisal. The chain runs from a quality value per CCF drawn from a named base index, minus the sale costs, minus a rollback adjustment, to an advertised rate per species. The handbook also lists analytical appraisal, comparison appraisal and independent estimates as valid methods, so transaction evidence is the standard practice rather than the only permitted one. ### How much over the appraised minimum do timber sales sell for? Across the 114 completed green sawtimber sales this site tracks that publish both an appraised minimum and a winning bid, the median winning bid ran 43 percent over the minimum, with a quarter of sales inside 15 percent of it and a quarter more than 76 percent above it. Competition is what moves that figure: sales with more than one bidder ran a median 51 percent over, sales with a single bidder a median 7 percent. Site's own tracked sales as of August 2026. ### Why do Oregon timber sales show no premium over the minimum? Because ODF's published results report the winning bid but not the appraised minimum the sale was advertised at. Without the minimum there is no premium to compute, so every Oregon sale on this site shows a blank in that column rather than a guessed number. Bidder count is the competitive read Oregon does publish, on every sold sale, and that is what the Oregon district pages carry instead. --- Canonical URL: https://stumpage.news/guides/how-stumpage-is-appraised