Steel in the Air, INC.

Approached to lease your land for a cell site or cell phone tower? / HOME

Approached to lease your land for a cell site or cell phone tower?

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Many people who are contacted by a wireless provider or a cell tower company do not know how to evaluate what the fair market value should be for a cell tower on their property. That is because there is no standard answer and there is a large discrepancy between what cell tower leases command in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Furthermore, even two cell tower leases 1 mile apart can have distinctly different fair market values.

There are other web sites that claim that $1,500 a month is standard, but that is woefully inaccurate. For most landowners, if you ask for $1,500 a month, the site acquisition agent will move to the next landowner, and you will get nothing except the opportunity to look at the cell phone tower on your neighbor's property for the next 30 years. For some landowners, $1,500 a month is too little, but to get this type of money, your property must be in an urban area and must be unique in terms of zoning. Some locations can command significantly more. The problem has been that there is no reliable source for this information. If you have found this website, chances are you have already confirmed this in your research. Fortunately, at Steel in the Air, Inc., we maintain our own cell site lease rate database.

Many landowners assume that because their neighbor, friend or cousin got $xxx.xx a month for their cell tower that they should receive that amount too. But your properties are not the same. They are invariably different sizes, have different zoning classifications, and have different proximities to cities and roadways. Every property is unique, and every location has a unique fair market value.

In our evaluations of fair market value, we don't simply look at the comparable lease data from our clients and inquiries in the area to determine what the average is. Instead, we reverse engineer the process by which the cellular company came to find your site. We can do this because we used to be part owner in a wireless site acquisition firm. We examine what the wireless carrier's coverage objective is for the site. We then evaluate what other parcels in the vicinity will meet those objectives.

We assess whether your property fits in one of three situations:

1. Your property is unique and the carrier has no other option. In this case, we look to determine how much the carrier will pay before they choose not to build the site. This is where Steel in the Air really provides value.
2. Your property is preferred but there are other options. In these situations, we attempt to determine using our comparable lease data how hard you can push before the carrier moves to another property.
3. Your property is one of many properties in the area. Unfortunately, in these situations, we can't be of much assistance. The fair market value of your property is what your neighbor will accept to have the tower on the property.

Contact us for an evaluation of your property. We can provide consultation on what bonus payments or services you can ask for that most companies will give freely. We can help you decipher the technical language of the cell tower lease and how it applies to you (see our webpage on the subject of Lease Language). This is not a legal review and should never take the place of having the proposed lease reviewed by an attorney. Most importantly, we can help advise you on how hard to negotiate your cell tower lease and when to back down so that you still get the cell tower on your property and not your neighbors' property.

Our goal is to provide you with the knowledge necessary so that you can negotiate your cell tower lease on even footing and are secure in knowing what to ask for. We can help you make the lease agreement less one-sided.

Our typical consultation for a new cell tower lease takes around 2-3 hours and our hourly rate is $500/hour. We recognize that you may be hesitant to pay $1000-$1500 to find out whether your site has additional value. Thus, we will offer the following guarantee. If at the end of your consultation, you don't move forward with the lease or you don't get an increase above the current offer, we will only bill for the first hour of our services. To see why we charge $500/hour - click here

Many potential clients ask us to justify our rates. While our hourly rate may be considered high, consider the cost of your being wrong in negotiating your lease. If you leave a mere $100/mo on the table during negotiations, over 25 years, you will have passed up $40,000. See our Cell Tower Lease Rate chart that shows what you pass up over the course of a lease if you fail to negotiate properly. Do you want to spend the next 25 years wondering whether you left money on the table in the negotiations?

Please Contact Us for a free quote. We will take a quick look at your situation and will not take on a consultation unless we think we can be of assistance.