subject: Leasing Your Property For A Cell Phone Tower [print this page] Have you been approached by a wireless carrier company about putting a cell phone tower up on your property? If you are considering leasing your property out for this reason, there are some things that you need to know about what goes on when negotiations take place and when offers to land owners come through. Your goals as a land owner include maximizing your guaranteed revenue from the deal and minimize your obligations at the same time. The following are some of the things you need to keep in mind for these deals to achieve your goals when you negotiate a contract for a cell phone tower with a vertical real estate company or wireless carrier.
The first thing you need to consider is the location and the topography of your land. A wireless carrier is going to hold an investigation of your land to determine how easy it would be to put a tower up. Most of the time, if a site is relatively flat with few natural barriers that is about 2,500 square feet in area that is easily accessible it would be considered suitable.
There are many local ordinances that are common for people to be aware of to legally erect any type of a tower. Before you are even permitted to put a tower up on your property, you need to make sure you know what is required by way of ordinances. Many municipalities require that you get a variance granted or even an exception granted before a lease is signed and before construction begins. However, if you are going to need any type of special approval for things to go through, the lease agreement needs to have the carrier be responsible for getting all of the necessary permits.
You can assume that your cell phone tower lease will last for 20 to 25 years, as is the average length of time for these types of contracts. Some of them consist of five year installments, in between which different terms can be negotiated if necessary. It is not unheard of to request that rent payments increase over time. The amount of rent that is to be paid to a land owner varies a lot from one site to another. Usually people can earn between an average of $700 to up to $2000 per month from these agreements. What determines the value of the payments is the size of the property, the demand for construction of a tower in the area, if any alternative locations are available or not, and if there are any potential alternative uses for that property. Some landowners make even more rent by negotiating co locators with a cell phone tower lease, which is when more than one company uses a single tower.
