Steel in the Air, INC.

Cell Tower Leasing: Marketing your Site Effectively / HOME

Cell Tower Leasing: Why Marketing Doesn’t Work As you Think It Would

One of the more common questions that we get from people submitting forms to our website is whether Steel in the Air, Inc. can help market a cell tower on their property or a cell site on their rooftop to the carriers. If you don’t already have a wireless carrier leasing space for a tower or on your rooftop- please start with our How To Get a Tower on Your Property page. We can’t help you find tenants on your vacant property- no matter how good you think it is. If you have a tower on your property or cell sites on your rooftop, please keep reading.

To start with, there are some fundamental presumptions that a landowner who has a tower or rooftop with carriers should know about cell tower leasing. First and foremost is that if one carrier found you, other carriers are more likely to find you as well. Whether they can see the tower or they can see the cellular antennas on your rooftop, the site acquisition agents will know that you have already negotiated a lease once. They assume that you are familiar with cell tower leasing and are willing to lease in the future. Secondly, if you have a tower or a cellular antenna array on your rooftop, you most likely also have been approved by the local planning and zoning office for approval for the tower or rooftop cellular antennas. They can presume from this that it is likely that additional antenna will be approved by the local planning and zoning office.

So if you contact us and ask us whether we would market your property for a commission or for a percentage of the rent, we would say no. The honest answer is that if we wanted to – we could sign up hundreds of new clients a year and sit and wait until another carrier came to lease those towers or rooftops. We would then take a portion of the rent for doing nothing more than putting your name on our site list and sending it out a few times a year to the carriers. But we aren’t built that way and we don’t offer those services except in very rare cases where we believe that the property is unique and that we can actually help. Cell tower leasing and rooftop antenna leasing is a complicated business and the only way to be effective at it is if the cell tower leasing company has numerous sites under representation and has LOCAL AGENTS in each of those markets. Someone in California or New York or Florida cannot market sites outside of those areas.

If you have received a solicitation from a third party company who suggests that they will market your property or that they have someone ready to lease your tower, the most likely answer is that they are simply interested in a Lease Buyout. The solicitation is just a way for them to get you to respond to them. If you don’t own the tower, they can’t market the tower anyway- only the tower owner can do so. And in most cases, only the tower owner will profit if additional carriers use the site. If they are a site acquisition firm for the carriers - the letter will say specifically who they have ready to lease your property or rooftop.

Our recommendation to you is to sit tight. In cell tower leasing, patience if a virtue. No amount of marketing will get a carrier to use a property that doesn’t fit their design criteria. And since their design criteria is proprietary, you will never be able to find out if your site meets their needs. So rather than committing to give up 25% of your future revenue –just wait. Then if you need help negotiating a new lease or determining its value, see our page on Negotiating a Cell Tower Lease and we can help you with your cell tower leasing issues from there on a hourly basis.

If you have a tower that you own (not just lease land to the owner), please contact us as we might be able to help with cell tower leasing. If your interest is in marketing your tower for sale- we also offer cell tower valuation services where we can help to sell your tower.