Why We Charge

We sometimes have clients inquire why our hourly rate is so high. “Our attorney doesn’t charge $500/hour” is their justification for why a client should not have to pay $500/hour. In our humble opinion, there are a number of reasons why we feel comfortable asking for more than your attorney or your CPA.

1. Cell site lease consulting is a highly specialized expertise.

   In many cases, your attorney or CPA simply doesn’t have much experience with cell tower or cell site leases. They may have dealt with only one or a handful of leases. We have assisted over 1000 clients with thousands of leases. We do this day in, day out. In fact, this is all we do.

2. Steel in the Air has assembled lease rate data from over 1000 clients plus 1000’s more of inquiries.

   We have a proprietary database of cell site lease data including lease rate, terms, renewal terms, location, etc. Steel in the Air has spent $25,000 simply on acquiring more lease data this year. We have lease data from every state in the nation. When you retain Steel in the Air, you are gaining access to one of the most comprehensive cell tower lease databases available that is not controlled by the tower companies or the wireless carriers.

3. We have more than likely assisted other cell site landowners with your exact issue.

   We admit, every once and a while, someone contacts us with a new issue that we had not heard of. Most of the time these issues are similar to another issue, but in some cases they aren’t. But for the vast majority of inquiries that come from landowners, we have already assisted someone else with that issue. Unlike your attorney or your CPA, we don’t need to spend time researching the issue or determining what are the important aspects of your issue, because we have already done so across many other clients. You don’t pay for us to research the basics; you pay us to apply our existing knowledge to your situation. Our average consultation is between 2-3 hours.

4. We have access to experts you could never find.

   We don’t purport to know everything and in 10% of our consultations we rely upon outside expertise to assist us in evaluating your issue. We regularly converse with radio frequency engineers, telecom attorneys, construction experts, tower brokers, and appraisers about wireless industry issues. These experts help guide our recommendations and have proven invaluable.

5. We have developed our own custom cell tower location database and mapping platform.

   A number of wireless carriers, tower companies, lease buyout companies, investors, tower developers, and appraisers have purchased our data. The database is currently over 125,000 actual cell sites. And it is growing every month by thousands of additional sites. Please see.

6. The vast majority of our clients easily recoup their investment from the information we provide.

   Some of our clients will receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional lease payments as a result of our advice. Some have not lost thousands of dollars from making a poor decision related to a proposal to reduce a lease. To be honest, a very small percentage (less than 5%) have not made a dime as a result of hiring us. Just look at the difference that even a $100/mo increase in your lease rate will yield over time. ($40,000 over a 25 year lease escalating at 3% annually- conservatively worth $7,000 in today’s dollars) Compare that to paying $1000 or $1500 for our services.

7. Our clients are happy with our services.

   You don’t need to take our word for it- just look at our Testimonials page. These are just a portion of the thanks we receive from our clients regularly. We know that anyone can write anything on the internet- so please don’t ever be afraid to ask for direct references that you can directly call about our services. Many of our clients are more than willing to spend a moment on the phone to explain how their consultation went. We are extremely proud of our testimonials- each one represents a client who was happy enough with our services to write or call with thoughtful comments.

If this doesn’t convince you of our value, than feel free to contact us. We are happy to discuss your issue and give you an honest assessment of whether we can help you and whether we feel that your money will be well spent.