The 3 Most Obvious Pros and Cons of Cell Tower Leases
Kevin and Steve from Tower Genius 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” list of pros and cons 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 when your location is selected for a cell tower and the rent commences. 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, especially that self storage guy, give me a break he probably used one of our competitors come to think of it. 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 cell tower companies are a minimal nuisance if you have done your homework. Sure, cell tower tenants, subtenants, contractors and tower companies can be bullies toward landlords, but that is why you need to work with cell tower lease experts like our company who can reel them in quickly and cut through all their nonsense.
Easy to liquidate cell site leases and cell tower leases. This is the reason why you get so many sales calls and sales letters from people and companies who want to purchase your future 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 liquidate or monetize your cell site lease and take a lease buyout offer, often times you can renegotiate the lease agreement 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.
Landlords often end up with 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 property owners and 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.
The wireless industry uses bully tactics. The cellular carriers and cell tower development and 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. We’ve had executives of these companies tell us they are not bullying our clients while doing the exact thing they are denying. If you are being bullied by a wireless carrier or tower company representative, we should talk.
Cell tower landlord 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.
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