Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And the first question comes from the line of Gail Glazerman with UBS. Please proceed.
Gail Glazerman - UBS
Hi, good morning. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about real estate, the sale in Minnesota. And I just want to also know just what that does to your overall strategy, and just to confirm, so you’re still looking for 20 to 30% sales growth in real estate, excluding the Minnesota sale? I just wanted to confirm that.
Mike Covey
Gail, that’s correct. When we originally did our company-wide stratification in 2006 of land that we felt was suitable for higher and better use opportunities or was non-strategic, this 40,000 -- a portion of this 40,000 acre piece was identified in Minnesota due to its very low productivity from a timber perspective. A very small percentage of the land base we felt was suitable for any recreational real estate or HBU outcome in the future.
So this is the most northern -- northeastern part of our Minnesota ownership, so we’ve had our eye on it for disposition for some time. And we had discussions with an investor, a local investor in Minnesota who values the property different than we do, and I don’t think this value is indicative of certainly the rest of our ownership in Minnesota or the rest of the company as Eric mentioned. I think we had 28 real estate transactions in the quarter which were at prices about 25% higher than what we executed last year, and that’s in line with what our guidance was at the start of the year.
Eric Cremers
Yes, Gail, just to give you a feel for it -- this is Eric, I mean those other transactions we had in Minnesota, they were done around $1,600 an acre. So to Mike’s point about this acreage was dramatically different than our other real estate transactions in the state, I think that pricing points that out.
Gail Glazerman - UBS
Okay. And I mean going into the year I think you were guiding towards about 18 to 22,000 acres of sales. Does that also still hold, including Minnesota, or has that gone down?
Eric Cremers
No, I think our forecast at the start of the year is -- it still holds. Just pretend that that Minnesota transaction didn’t happen, and we told you last quarter is consistent with what we’re thinking for the rest of the year.
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