Communation Tower Lease's

Greenmountain Farmer · Feb 21, 2009

Looking to find a fair value for lease's on towers. We have close to a dozen towers on our hill that vary from 15' to 250' which we are going to write new lease's on, as old ones hardly cover the taxes on the land. Many of the tower owner's have sub leases off of the towers. Note this is the only tower site in the county. Any info will be greatly appreciated.

Tom in Vermont

Robert_in_NY · Feb 21, 2009

I think your best bet is to talk to a lawyer on this one. I know Verizion was offering to buy some of our land to put a tower on. We didn't like the wording of the contract, made some changes and sent it back. They built the tower down the road instead. We didn't lose any sleep over it and don't have to worry about people driving out on our land all the time. As it is now we only have the electric company that really has any business out there and we have a good relationship with them. Anyone else goes down there is trespassing and is easy to keep track of.

I have not heard of anyone leasing around here for communication towers. The price I recall being offered was $20k for them to buy our land.

Greenmountain Farmer · Feb 21, 2009

Robert_in_NY said:
I think your best bet is to talk to a lawyer on this one. I know Verizion was offering to buy some of our land to put a tower on. We didn't like the wording of the contract, made some changes and sent it back. They built the tower down the road instead. We didn't lose any sleep over it and don't have to worry about people driving out on our land all the time. As it is now we only have the electric company that really has any business out there and we have a good relationship with them. Anyone else goes down there is trespassing and is easy to keep track of.

I have not heard of anyone leasing around here for communication towers. The price I recall being offered was $20k for them to buy our land.

We have a lawyer and have enlisted the service of a consultant who has made a offer to manage tower site for a percentage of income, we are just trying to get a value of the site in mind to see if would make since to have an outside manager. The towers are all there now with nowhere else to go.

Tom in Vermont

2manyrocks · Feb 21, 2009

You say you have the only site. How much cell business in your area depends on them having your site and how much cell business has to go through your site to be transmitted onto another location?

If you have the only site for this and their service area is dependent on it, then you would seem to have a valuable item on your hands --depending on how much profit they are making. In theory, you wouldn't price them out of business and you wouldn't price them to a point that they couldn't operate at a profit, but the middle ground would seem open to negotiation.

MACDABS · Feb 21, 2009

Tom,
I manage and own several sites , the value is determined by the length of the lease and the particular market the equipment on the tower serves. If you have just ground leases and do not own the tower or shelter it is easy to determine a ground lease. The changing technology and new tower standards has made many sites empty. We had states impose property taxes as if every tower is a cash cow, and many are small wi-fi companies or two -way paging just staying a float. With the 4 -G services many of the high mountain sites are just good for microwave .
The key is a fair escalator, and a long term lease that protects you or your heirs. If you PM me I will give you my day work # to help with any question you may have.

Macdabs