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B. Lewis C. Peters
Lewis C. Peters, a forester/real estate appraiser, like Mr.
Young, opined on the relationship of discounts to undivided
fractional interests in timberland on behalf of petitioners. He
relied on transactions in fractional interests in timberland in
Maine and in the East Texas/Louisiana area. Mr. Peters has been
developing information on the sales of fractional interests in
timberland for a number of years, and he has found only two
markets for such property--Maine and East Texas/Louisiana. In
that regard, Maine had a more active and better established
market than the East Texas/Louisiana area.
Mr. Peter’s estimated that the mean discount attributable to
fractional interests in timberland is 55 percent. He relied on
104 transactions that occurred from 1969 through 1997. Unlike
Mr. Young, Mr. Peters did not adjust for differences that may
occur where fractional sales were actually acquisitions by a
majority holder. Instead, Mr. Peters simply used a statistical
mean or average of the sales. Like Mr. Young, Mr. Peters
obtained the full-fee fair market value by talking with owners,
collecting information about subsequent full-fee sales, and
discussing this issue with people in the timberland market.
Respondent contends that Mr. Peters’s conclusions are
unreliable because many of the alleged comparables were too
remote from the year in question. Respondent also contends that
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