The Wireless Wise Guys Podcast. Everything you wanted to know about cell tower leases but were afraid to ask. Powered by Tower Genius, the USA’s premier cell tower lease experts.
Speaker 2:
What is a rooftop cell site worth if it’s in a luxury beach area and there are no other high rises in the area, and the area has a stringent zoning ordinance? What is that cell site worth potentially? Well, don’t expect the carriers to tell you.
Steve:
Hi, it’s Steve with Tower Genius. Maybe you’re in one of those oceanfront high-rise condominiums, and you’re in an HOA and you’re wondering, what is this oceanfront cell site lease worth? Maybe you’ve been contacted by Dish Network recently or one of the other carriers, if they’re looking for a site. What is a high-rise oceanfront cell site lease worth on the front end? What is it worth if, I don’t know, T-Mobile or AT&T is looking to extend your rooftop cell site lease?
Well, you’ll find that typically when they’re looking to extend the lease, they’ll be contacting you about five years out. Companies like MD7 and Black Dot will be calling you to try to reduce the rent significantly like 30%, 40%, 50% even, and they’re going to keep hounding you, sending you letters that have the subtle threat, these lease optimization letters that, “We might exercise our right to terminate.” And so they’ll be trying to obtain rights of first refusal and other crazy provisions in there.
But as a rule of thumb, these new cell sites, and hopefully I can get this on video if I don’t screw it up like I did in the last one. Oceanfront, basically anywhere oceanfront, right here. This is where we’re located in Fort Walton Beach. Anywhere on the oceanfront, if you have a high-rise condo, it’s worth more just because it costs the heck of a lot to live there. And it costs the carriers more to do business there. So these prime properties, they’re expensive. They have zoning ordinances. If you’re in an area like where I’m located, these oceanfront condos now they’re going gangbusters crazy with their pricing with any type of residential real estate.
No one wants a cell site there. And if they’re going to have one, actually don’t want a cell tower, they’re not allowed an ugly cell tower to go up there by their pristine high-rise condo and luxury condos. So you’re going to pay a premium if you’re a carrier. And if you’re a landlord or a homeowner’s association, you need to make sure you get the right pricing, but also the right terms. And a couple of the pitfalls as well. You could have questions maybe, you’ve considered selling the rental stream. You get these buyout offers and whatnot.
There are pitfalls, I’ve seen some horror stories with rooftop apartments and with condominium HOAs, where they sold these things and they had damage and they had issues and then no one would take responsibility. So it could cause an issue in the future, you have to weigh the cost. That’s why I recommend we can help you, we can help you figure it out. We can make heads or tails of what these offers are and help you with the values.
Dish Network is very aggressive right now in deploying and they’re going to be doing this for the next four or five, six years, aggressively looking at these rooftop sites and other carriers constantly T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, could be contacting you for a new site. But primarily it’s going to be Dish. And anyway, so if you have questions about your rooftop cell site lease value, just remember, the offer that the carrier gave you or the lease optimization company is giving you to try to reduce that rent, they’re trying to give you a price that works for them, but you want to make sure that when a property like this, when there’s a high demand for coverage in an area like this, and there’s a low supply of available sites, AKA high-rise condos, the rent’s going to be higher, but you want to get the right terms as well.
And that’s where a company like Tower Genius, Kevin Donohue, and I have been doing this working with landlords exclusively for 14 years, we have no conflicts of interest and we work for you. We only get paid by you. I can’t really say that for other people in this industry. We’ll put it in plain terms for you, easy to understand. We’ll work with your attorneys to advise them. And we do get hired all the time by attorneys as subject matter experts in this field because we have a lot of experience.
Anyway, if you’re looking for help, if you’re a homeowner association, condo association, you need to figure out, hey, do I charge Dish a thousand bucks a month, 2,000, 5,000? What is that number? Obviously, you don’t want to walk away, but you got to make sure that you’re not overpricing yourself either. Give us a call at (888) 313-9750 and talk to one of our appointment setters. We do charge 29.99 for a 30-minute initial consultation. And if you end up hiring us, we’ll back that out of your fee, we’ll deduct that. Thanks a lot. Take care. Speaker 1:
You’ve been listening to The Wireless Wise Guys Podcast.