The excitement of receiving a cell tower lease from a cell tower developer is quickly replaced in many cases once the owner realizes that the friendly person talking to them does not have the best for them in mind. They are not interested in selecting the best site from a zoning and coverage perspective, they are only looking for which owner will accept the lowest and worst offer.
There is a dearth of professionalism among tower developers and they are interested in the fact that in today’s bad economy, many homeowners are too scared to walk away from a low-end offering, which is generally in the $ 500 range. month with rent. increments ranging from 0% to 10% every 5-year period. They are not surprised when the property owner asks them the simple question of why they would encumber their beautiful land with a tower for that small amount of money. The bottom feeding parasite … um … the cell tower leasing rep usually smiles and crosses the street or looks for a spot next door, leaving the landlord scratching his head and wondering what went wrong as now they are forced to look into the cell tower for the next 25 years instead of collecting the rent.
One of the buzzwords for tower developers is that they can get you a better rental price if you pay them back a “clean lease”, that is, a “clean lease” is a cell tower lease that is not marked, has little or no change, it is completely one-sided in favor of cell phone tower companies, and that usually takes advantage of the property owner. The sales tactic used by most of these tower developers is fear. It’s not illegal, just disgusting. It is mostly practiced in Central America, and now even some of the major airlines are getting away with rental rates that are below fair market value.
Most of these small cell tower development companies have owners or partners that grew out of one of the big carriers like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile or Sprint, and they are trying to capitalize on the cell tower boom. mobile. Many of them have friends still working on the inside who provide them with private information from the inside and some silent partners or private investors have returned. they are told where the open “search areas” are where carriers need to build a tower (again, not public information) and they build some towers as cheaply as possible with as many “clean leases” as possible, and they change their tower companies and Small tower portfolios to your friends at the larger tower companies, and they walk away with seven figures.
When a tower developer offers you just $ 500 (or less) per month to load your property with a cell tower, and they kick and scream when you tell them you want a portion of the income from the sublease, you should know that they are making money delivered in your site, and they are only paying you a very small portion of what they are making with all the tenants of your cell phone provider.
What can a property owner do if they are approached by a local cell phone tower developer and presented with a low cell tower lease offer? They can tell the rep that if they don’t reconsider their offer, that as soon as they leave, they will contact other major tower developers like Crown Castle, SBA, American Tower, or GTP, who are more likely to make a friendly offer. Also, many times the cell tower lease rate will be slightly negotiable, but not much. Homeowners face the dilemma of hiring an expensive attorney to review the lease for a few thousand dollars that they may not even get, as the tower acquisition representative is trying to get the owner to hurry up and sign. The lease.
Last year we negotiated a cell tower lease for an East Coast owner with a major wireless service provider within a large city at a critical coverage site. The site acquisition representative originally offered the owner $ 500 for a cell tower land lease, the owner wanted $ 1,500 but was willing to accept $ 1,250, but the hauler was only willing to go up to $ 1,000 and walked away from the He tried, and he actually had a tantrum like a two-year-old would have when he doesn’t get his way. The purpose of the cell tower site was to cover a 70,000-seat NFL stadium. Instead, the carrier ended up spending nearly $ 10,000 per home game plus land rent (nearly $ 100,000 in 2010) to provide a temporary COW cell on wheels to make sure the venue was adequately covered. Yes, they spent $ 100,000 because the leasing representative was haggling over $ 250. The hauler went back to the owner this year and the first question they asked was, “We still like your property, are you going to work with a tower consultant? Cell phone? Here’s a clean lease. ” Well, I guess you can’t fix the stupid one.