Cell Tower Lease Experts

Sorry, but this isn’t a service we provide.  We don’t lease property for towers, nor do we help landowners find someone to build a tower on their property.  See Cell Tower on Your Property for more details. If you submit your property to us, it will do you no good. 

The average cell tower ground lease in the United States pays approximately $1,300/month.  However, there is a wide variance in how much leases are worth.  Area of the country, value of land, zoning restrictions on placement of new towers are all factors that influence how much a specific site is worth.  

In most cases, no.  Many of these “renegotiation” requests are fishing expeditions.  The companies making them get paid a commission for convincing you to lower your rent or accept other unfavorable terms and conditions.  If your lease is less than $2,000/month, it rarely makes sense to renegotiate.  If it is higher, please reach out and we will let you know if there is anything to be worried about.

Most landowners are contacted at least once a month by some company that wants to “buy” their lease.  Sometimes, these offers come from the company leasing the property; in other cases, from third parties who buy leases.  Their motive is different depending upon the company.   

For the lessee, they just want to make sure other companies don’t buy the lease.  For third party lease buyout firms, they aggregate these leases together.  For them, aggregation leverages the risk of termination across many leases.  

You can rest assured that they would not be contacting you if they thought your lease is not worth more than what they will offer you for it.

Unlike our competitors, our pricing is clear and reasonable.  We can be engaged in a number of ways:

• Fixed fee: generally, $3,000 to $7,000 for a standard consultation.
• A contingency fee: whereby we only get paid if we help you improve your lease. Our fee is based on how much we help you improve your lease or lease buyout from existing offers you already have.  (Written offers must be provided in advance for us to provide a contingency quote.)
• A brokerage fee: Typically 6% of the gross sale price, although we will discount the % depending upon the size of the transaction.

It depends upon your lease agreement.  If your lease agreement has a revenue share clause, then yes, you should receive more rent.  If there is no revenue share clause, then unless they are expanding outside the lease area, you likely aren’t entitled to additional rent.

Unfortunately, it is becoming more typical.  Tower companies want to tie up your land for a long time, but do not offer any reciprocal commitment on their part.  We generally advise not agreeing to anything longer than 25–35 years.  See our page on negotiating a new cell tower lease.

Absolutely. 

If you are buying a piece of property with a cell tower on it, the first thing you MUST do is ask the seller how much rent the lease is paying.  Sometimes property owners have already sold the lease rights to a third-party, and you won’t receive any rent.   

Likewise, if you are selling a piece of property with a cell tower lease, you should consider offering the property inclusive of the lease and without it.  Typically, we find that traditional purchasers of real property do not value cell tower leases as highly as companies that buy cell site leases.  

In either scenario, please contact us and we can help you think through the options available to you.

Let’s put it this way- it isn’t good.  A Right of First Refusal (ROFR) clause prevents the landowner from selling the lease to a third party without the lessee having the right to match the offer.   At best, having a ROFR clause is an annoyance.  At worst, it can be combined with anti-assignment language to prevent you from selling the lease altogether.   

Most new leases include a ROFR clause and depending upon how unique (or not) your property is, you may have to agree to a ROFR clause.  See this article for more details on the Right of First Refusal clause in cell tower leases. 

We do not work for the large public tower companies or any of the wireless carriers (with 3 small exceptions over our 20 years in business). We do work with some smaller private tower companies. However, unlike some consultants, we never accept compensation from both sides.  We work solely for you and never disclose your information.

No, they won’t.  Satellite-to-cell technology is supplementary to cell towers, not a replacement for them. See our article on why satellites won’t replace cell towers anytime soon.