The 3 Most Obvious Pros and Cons of Cell Tower Leases
Kevin and Steve have looked at tens of thousands of cell sites and cell tower lease agreements, and we have easily had conversations with over 30,000 cell tower landlords. We have heard it all and we have seen it all. Here’s the “top 3” lists as we see them, the good, the bad and the ugly, in our very humble telecom expert opinion:
Cell tower lease rental streams are “found money” and mailbox money every month often for the rest of your life. It’s like winning a scratch-off lottery ticket. Watch all your estranged relatives start calling you asking for money.
It’s easy being a cell site landlord. Sure I’ve heard nightmare stories and seen videos of people complaining. They almost always didn’t get the proper guidance. If your cell site lease agreement is structured properly, wireless carriers and cell tower management companies are great tenants to have and tower companies are a minimal nuisance. Sure, cell tower tenants, subtenants, contractors and tower companies can be bullies to landlords, but that is why you need to work with experts like our company who can reel them in quickly and cut through all their nonsense.
Easy to liquidate cell site and tower leases. This is why you get so many calls from people who want to purchase your cell tower lease rental payments. But of course the people calling you to buy you out won’t ask you if you ever considered renegotiating the lease before you sell it to them. Before you liquids or monetize your cell site lease and take a lease buyout offer, often times you can renegotiate the lease and potentially sell it for a significantly greater amount of money. Or just keep collecting the mailbox money every month. Yes, you can liquidate your cell tower lease quickly and we recommend that if you have decided to sell you get the proper guidance.
Never-ending headaches. We hear stories every week, and without exception all of the issues that have compounded over time and that are frustrating cell tower landlords would have been mitigated by getting proper guidance from an industry professional early on. We see a lot of issues that landlords have with cell site management practices of tower company contractors and cell site technicians. These usually are more common at residential properties where the cell tower landlord is also a resident at the property and there is more interaction, especially if it’s a rooftop cell site that has contractors coming and going at all hours unchecked.
Bully tactics. The carriers and tower companies can be very heavy-handed with property owners and landlords and bully you into submission, and you get a constant barrage of rent reduction offers, lease buyout proposals and other offers that can wear you down. We warmly and accurately refer to them (on our old 2009 website) as pig-monsters… part greedy pig and part scary monster. If you are being bullied by a wireless carrier or tower company representative, we should talk.
Cell tower remorse. Cell towers can become an unwanted encumbrance and point of frustration and liability for property owners and landlords without the proper guidance. It’s kind of like you are getting married to Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile, but you can’t divorce them. So if you sign a bad deal for 50 or 90 years, you probably won’t ever be able to get out of it. Get the proper expert help before you sign away your life.