When I bought my first 80 acres back in the late 90s, I was fixated on price per acre and overlooked a single paragraph buried in the chain of title — a timber deed reservation from 1961 that gave a paper company harvesting rights on any timber over 8 inches DBH for another 12 years. I closed anyway thinking it was a formality. It wasn't. I watched a logging crew take the cream of that stand two years later, fully within their legal rights, and there was nothing I could do.
Since then I tell every buyer I consult with: pull the full chain of title back at least 60 years specifically looking for timber reservations, severance deeds, and cutting rights. Your real estate attorney may not flag it unless you ask directly. Title insurance typically won't cover timber value loss either.
This is especially common in the Ozarks and Appalachian corridors where timber companies were active mid-century. Anyone else run into regional patterns where these old reservations still surface regularly?