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Tower Consultants For Landlords
Articles > How Do I Select A Qualified Cell Tower Lease Consultant?
In selecting qualified cell tower lease consultants to best represent property owners in cell tower leasing situations, property owners should look for wireless consultants who have worked inside the wireless industry for a significant duration to attain expert knowledge to qualify as a consultant. Their experience needs to be relevant to engineering, negotiating, leasing, zoning, and building cell towers.
Cell tower developments are complex. One reason is that they must fully comply with a multitude of local, state, and federal regulations. Additionally, specialists from various fields like real estate, legal, engineering, and architecture must collaborate to design, plan, negotiate and build a cell tower. With all these components in mind, it is essential to have a qualified consultant as your right hand to pull all these interests together. Suppose you are building a home, hiring an “expert negotiator” would be the last thing you want to do. Rather, you need to hire a home builder who understands excavation, framing, contracts, pricing, utilities, plumbing, etc. Likewise, you would not hire a plumber to build you the house on the basis that he’s been involved in new construction. In the wireless industry, a ‘plumber’ (which in this case, is an inexperienced lease consultant) may say they are experienced in wireless negotiations because they worked in call centers to buy wireless leases in the past. Companies that purchase cell tower leases for a low price so that they can repackage and resell for a higher price employ call center agents that often strike out on their own, advertising on the internet as “wireless consultants.” Property owners need to be mindful of cell tower lease consultants found on the internet who exaggerate their wireless experience from this call center job. It is up to you to navigate through what is real and what is an exaggeration. This happens in every field, but it is more pronounced in wireless. This is because the industry is so specialized that it is hard to decipher what is real.
Cell tower lease consultants who have worked in the wireless industry as a tower climber or lease buyout call center agent would not be qualified to address all the engineering, legal, technical and operational issues you would require to successfully negotiate and manage the cell tower project on your behalf. Only with proper depth and breadth of relevant experience can a person say with authority they truly know how to determine proper cell tower lease rates of any cell tower lease situation. If someone claims to have “the largest database of cell tower lease rates” then this should be met with the great suspicion. A competent consultant must have independent knowledge of the wireless industry to negotiate a cell tower lease based on the merits of its engineering designs, location or traffic density. That is the value and experience Terabonne delivers to all of our clients. Two towers of exact height across the street from each other can have drastically different rent rates. Only experience can explain why the different cell tower lease rates occur. Negotiations by looking-at-a-mysterious-list is not a prudent approach in which property owners should engage.
Be doubly careful with internet click baits that claim “300% improvement in rents.” It’s like a surgeon advertising “300% improvement in survival rate.” It sounds nice, but something feels very wrong with that slogan. And if you must enter your email address to get a “free rent report” then that’s a dead give away that they want your email address for a different purpose. If a report is so important, why not just post it on their website? Legitimate businesses do not trade email addresses for a “report.” And never pay some money to be on some kind of “friendly landlord” list. Having managed T-Mobile’s engineering and real estate departments and providing engineering services for other wireless carriers for decades , we have never relied on any external lists to design cell towers. Such list does not exist. If a “consultant” wants to charge you a fee to be on a list, that’s another dead giveaway that you need to leave that website.
At Terabonne, client privacy is supreme. We do not blast emails or sell email addresses. Our business is wireless consultation to clients in need of expertise in the field to protect their properties and maximize their values. We get front row seats to major tower projects, and are involved with every aspect of tower development, from initial tower designs, to zoning support, construction drawings, engineering presentations to boards/residents/commissioners, Phase I environmental reviews, tower and rooftop lease negotiations, structural engineering assessments, rooftop engineering reviews, construction management, though technology upgrades and generator adds. We confidently say we are the cell tower experts for property owners, and only work on wireless cell towers and rooftop projects for property owners. Our employees are truly wireless experts. Our president designed, engineered, negotiated, leased, constructed, and operated T-Mobile’s tower infrastructures and other wireless carriers’ cell tower networks nationwide. This is why private individuals and corporations hire Terabonne to handle all matters involving their wireless properties. You should, too.
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A ROFR grants the tower owner the right to match an offer by some third party who makes an offer to purchase your lease that you accept.
Radio Frequency engineers who specialize in the radio wave propagation. These are the engineers to define cell tower locations.
Companies who build towers and lease back to wireless carriers. These companies almost always receive Search Rings from wireless carriers defining where carriers need towers to be built.
Geographical areas depicted in a circle (ring) drawn by radio frequency (RF) engineers defining the areas requiring new cell towers and technical parameters surrounding such designs.
A person hired by the wireless carrier to contact property owners to discuss lease terms. This role has evolved to be landlord facing rather than lease negotiations.
A person who specializes in land use matters well knowledgeable in its jurisdictional requirements.
Attorneys retained by wireless carriers authorized to review legal terms but never allowed to negotiate financial nor technical terms of the lease because they lack the technincal skills.
Crown Castle, American Tower ATC, SBA Towers are the “Big Three” tower companies.
Companies that purchase cell tower leases with the purpose of repackaging (aggregating) them in a larger portfolio and selling them for a profit at a later time.