What Are Cell Phone Tower Lease Rent Values?
The questions shouldn’t be, what are cell phone tower lease values in 2024? The question is what is your specific lease worth or what can it be worth? And why are cell phone tower lease agreements so confusing?
Need help with the calculation of cell phone tower rents in 2024?
Tower Genius has seen cell site lease rates that paid as little as $100 per year at an American Indian Casino courtesy of AT&T, and we have seen AT&T, Verizon Wireless, DISH, US Cellular, and T-Mobile cell site leases on rooftops and structures like a power company or utility transmission towers, water tanks and corporate office parks paying rents for well over $7,000 and $8,000 monthly.
These cell sites rental rates were on mature leases that likely started out paying $3,000 to $4,000 monthly.
Tower Genius has seen cell towers owned by American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications paying rents on towers for as much as $13,000 per month to $18,000 per month on multi-carrier towers — which are not apples-to-apples comparisons to rooftop cell sites.
In El Paso Texas, Tower Genius witnessed a wireless carrier walk away from a small cell antenna lease where the carrier wanted to pay zero dollars but was only willing to pay $100 monthly, and walked away in a tantrum, unwilling to pay $300 per month. In rural America, it is not uncommon to see rooftop cell site leases pay in the $800 per month range starting, to almost $3,000 per month.
Got Questions About What the True Value of Your Cell Site Lease Rate Should Be?
- What is my Verizon Wireless cell site lease worth with the rooftop equipment upgrade being proposed?
- How much is the cell site lease rate for AT&T adding a generator to their installation at my building?
- Sprint is going to decommission their site and they offered to pay us to leave the equipment there, what should the cell site lease rate be if DISH Wireless uses our rooftop and do they need Sprint’s equipment?
- T-Mobile’s representative said that they can add RRU units but my lease says differently as I read it. What should my new cell site lease rate be?
Here are some random samples of monthly cell site lease rates we have seen in various parts of the USA in 2023:
- Verizon Wireless ground lease $1,500 (macro)
- Verizon Wireless ground lease $650 (macro)
- Verizon Wireless rooftop lease $3,900 (macro)
- Verizon Wireless rooftop lease $2,300 (macro)
- Verizon Wireless tower sublease $1,400 (macro)
- Verizon Wireless substation land lease $3,000 (macro)
- AT&T ground lease $600 (macro)
- AT&T ground lease $900 (macro)
- AT&T tower sublease $1,375 (macro)
- AT&T rooftop lease $5,600 (macro)
- AT&T rooftop lease $2,700 (macro)
- T-Mobile rooftop lease $2900 (macro)
- T-Mobile rooftop lease $1,150 (macro)
- T-Mobile rooftop lease $2,950 (macro)
- T-Mobile ground lease $950 (macro)
- DISH Wireless ground lease $500 (macro)
- DISH rooftop lease $1,100 (macro)
- DISH rooftop lease $700 (macro)
- American Tower lease $1,400 (macro)
- American Tower lease $3,400 (macro)
- American Tower lease $660 (macro)
- Crown Castle lease $605 (macro)
- Crown Castle lease $1,100 (macro)
- Crown Castle lease $1,600 (macro)
- Crown Castle lease $17,000+ per month!!
- SBA Communications lease $450 (macro)
- SBA Communications lease $4,000 (macro)
- Vertical Bridge lease $2,200 (macro)
These are not apples-to-apples comparisons. Some are multi-carrier and some are single-carrier towers.
Each site must be evaluated individually as should your cell site lease.