Does anybody have experience in having a cell tower placed on your land and what to expect or need to know about them? My parents have an initial meeting with AT&T in a couple days about placing a new tower on their land. Just curious what a general price to expect as far as the lease goes and any questions they may need to ask.

Also, will this require a lawyer specialized in these type of leases? What would you expect those services to cost?

I can't help here but I'd suggest cross posting this on the outdoors board as well. Some of the large tract of land ownership crowd over there is likely to have had this pop up at sometime, and might be able to help.

Know a couple of people who have them, can't recall the exact terms. They fence off an acre or more around the base of the tower and you will have regular traffic possible on your land. Lease lasts like 12 yrs or so and doesn't pay all that much. They may get a comp cell plan out of the deal, maybe they don't do that anymore.

Your cell phone won't work in close proximity in my experience. If you don't accept their terms, a neighbor probably will, so negotiations are usually minimal.

If it were me, I'd rather it be on someone else's place unless I didn't live there.

It's kind of all over the board. I can't remember the exact terms. Some are very good and some not. It depends on how much they want it.

One piece of advice would be to make sure the contract calls for them to tear down the tower and revert the land back to a condition you all want at the end of the lease or if the tower is not in use for so many months.

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Your cell phone won't work in close proximity in my experience. If you don't accept their terms, a neighbor probably will, so negotiations are usually minimal.

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This.

My grandfather was approached about putting one on his land. He gave them his price and then they talked to the neighboring ranch and ended up putting it literally on the other side of the fence for half the price. Cell reception still sucks unless you're in one of the tower blinds.

Back in 1977 we received a whopping $350/month. How would that translate into 2016?

I have three tax clients who have cell towers on their property. I just looked and one of them gets $2,000 a year, one gets just over $5,200, and I can't recall who the third one is but seems like it is less than either of these. If I recall who the other was, I will post up.

I was not involved in the negotiations so have nothing I can provide with regard to why the difference in prices. Like others have posted, I doubt there is much negotiation in that if you ask too much, they likely will just move to a nearby tract with owners willing to take less. You might ask that they pay you at least what they are paying others. The ones I have seen wind up putting in a decent rock road from the public road to the site, and a nice gate as well.

I do not know what all an attorney might suggest that the agreement contain, I would guess the language is pretty much standard but it might not hurt to have one look it over. I know with billboard agreements you really need an attorney to look at (and likely modify) what is brought to the table.

At any rate, if it isn't an eyesore, I would consider it found money.

One thing you might be able to throw in is high speed internet to the house if it is near by. The tower requires fiber to get info, so you might be able to swing a sweet connecting to your home. Just a thought.

~egon

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Know a couple of people who have them, can't recall the exact terms. They fence off an acre or more around the base of the tower and you will have regular traffic possible on your land. Lease lasts like 12 yrs or so and doesn't pay all that much. They may get a comp cell plan out of the deal, maybe they don't do that anymore.

Your cell phone won't work in close proximity in my experience. If you don't accept their terms, a neighbor probably will, so negotiations are usually minimal.

If it were me, I'd rather it be on someone else's place unless I didn't live there.

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The land is about 90 acres with ~3,000 feet of FM frontage. The letter or initial phone conversation they said a 60'x60' or maybe 75'x75' portion would be cut out (plus small road needed to access it I assume), but no guy wires on a 200' tower. The house on the property and the pens where my dad works cows is about in the middle of the property. Would that be far enough away from the tower to receive a signal if the tower was at one end of the property or the other?

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One thing you might be able to throw in is high speed internet to the house if it is near by. The tower requires fiber to get info, so you might be able to swing a sweet connecting to your home. Just a thought.

~egon

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With 90 acres in a rural place and no existing internet service out there most likely, would it still be a possibility for them to run lines? I'm assuming not since it would require 1,500-2,000 feet of fiber to reach the house, depending on where the tower goes, and they would not do it for just that one house.

They have to run the fiber to the tower. I was just wondering if the house would be close.

More of your house runs to their tower, then the tower line runs to wherever. As long as the tower has power and internet, so do you.

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I have three tax clients who have cell towers on their property. I just looked and one of them gets $2,000 a year, one gets just over $5,200, and I can't recall who the third one is but seems like it is less than either of these. If I recall who the other was, I will post up.

I was not involved in the negotiations so have nothing I can provide with regard to why the difference in prices. Like others have posted, I doubt there is much negotiation in that if you ask too much, they likely will just move to a nearby tract with owners willing to take less. You might ask that they pay you at least what they are paying others. The ones I have seen wind up putting in a decent rock road from the public road to the site, and a nice gate as well.

I do not know what all an attorney might suggest that the agreement contain, I would guess the language is pretty much standard but it might not hurt to have one look it over. I know with billboard agreements you really need an attorney to look at (and likely modify) what is brought to the table.

At any rate, if it isn't an eyesore, I would consider it found money.

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Per year?

I'm in the business and I actually negotiate leases and do land acquisition for a large, publicly traded tower company and those numbers are way low for annual rents for most of the country. Not unheard of though. I've seen a few leases which began in the 80s and the rents are really low because there was so little to base the values on at the time so the farmers who did those deals just saw that couple grand per year as found money.

Like anything else it's about location. The more rural the area with fewer restrictions on development of the tower and less carrier demand the less the rent will be. And as has been mentioned, if you get too difficult to deal with then we'll just go across the road to your neighbor.

Leverage for the landlord increases with the scarcity of sites and difficulty of stacking a tower in a specific jurisdiction.

In a rural area there won't be fiber run to the tower or your home in 99% of the cases. All the tower needs is sufficient land, access, and power. Fiber is generally limited to more densely populated areas. Also, leases which include free cell service or phone service are being phased out as those leases expire and I haven't seen a new one include that business point.

Also, the impact on your reception only matters if you've got the same cell service as the company on the tower. So if you've got AT&T and an AT&T tower you'll be in good shape or Verizon service and a Verizon tower and so on. Otherwise, if you've got AT&T service but a Verizon tower it won't matter to you as they don't share equipment. That being said, a single tower could have AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all on the same tower.

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Know a couple of people who have them, can't recall the exact terms. They fence off an acre or more around the base of the tower and you will have regular traffic possible on your land. Lease lasts like 12 yrs or so and doesn't pay all that much. They may get a comp cell plan out of the deal, maybe they don't do that anymore.

Your cell phone won't work in close proximity in my experience. If you don't accept their terms, a neighbor probably will, so negotiations are usually minimal.

If it were me, I'd rather it be on someone else's place unless I didn't live there.

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You'll almost never see an acre fenced off. Most lattice towers or monopole towers will have no more than a 100x100 foot compound at the base of the tower. A guyed tower will only have fencing at the base and then at each of the guy-wire anchors.

You'll have traffic intermittently after it's built as service needs require. But it's not going to be 24/7 unless there's an emergency or they're upgrading/swapping equipment and even then it's only for a short period of time.

Leases are a minimum of 25-30 years. And if you've got an existing lease with less than 30 years left that will be considered short-term. I negotiate 50+ year deals regularly.

If the tower can be located on a small portion of your property that's of minimal impact to the remainder, why not accept the likely $1000 per month you'll get. It's found money with almost zero risk to the landowner.

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One thing you might be able to throw in is high speed internet to the house if it is near by. The tower requires fiber to get info, so you might be able to swing a sweet connecting to your home. Just a thought.

~egon

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Incorrect. The tower does not require fiber. At least not outside the compound. It does use cable, fiber or sometimes co-ax to go from the equipment on the ground to the antennae on the tower but not to get signals from other towers.

i second the suggestion of making sure that they clean up if they tear it down

we negotiated a % profit into our lease

good luck

You also need to know if they're going to use the tower as a drain site. That is, microwave other nearby towers over to your tower to share an uplink.

I wouldn't be interested in a microwave tower on the drain site end if the property is inhabited anywhere near the tower. Way too much RF exposure on a constant basis.

We negotiate them at our firm.

Stephen@sbmoonlaw.com

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I have three tax clients who have cell towers on their property. I just looked and one of them gets $2,000 a year, one gets just over $5,200, and I can't recall who the third one is but seems like it is less than either of these. If I recall who the other was, I will post up.

I was not involved in the negotiations so have nothing I can provide with regard to why the difference in prices. Like others have posted, I doubt there is much negotiation in that if you ask too much, they likely will just move to a nearby tract with owners willing to take less. You might ask that they pay you at least what they are paying others. The ones I have seen wind up putting in a decent rock road from the public road to the site, and a nice gate as well.

I do not know what all an attorney might suggest that the agreement contain, I would guess the language is pretty much standard but it might not hurt to have one look it over. I know with billboard agreements you really need an attorney to look at (and likely modify) what is brought to the table.

At any rate, if it isn't an eyesore, I would consider it found money.

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Per year?

I'm in the business and I actually negotiate leases and do land acquisition for a large, publicly traded tower company and those numbers are way low for annual rents for most of the country. Not unheard of though. I've seen a few leases which began in the 80s and the rents are really low because there was so little to base the values on at the time so the farmers who did those deals just saw that couple grand per year as found money.

Like anything else it's about location. The more rural the area with fewer restrictions on development of the tower and less carrier demand the less the rent will be. And as has been mentioned, if you get too difficult to deal with then we'll just go across the road to your neighbor.

Leverage for the landlord increases with the scarcity of sites and difficulty of stacking a tower in a specific jurisdiction.

In a rural area there won't be fiber run to the tower or your home in 99% of the cases. All the tower needs is sufficient land, access, and power. Fiber is generally limited to more densely populated areas. Also, leases which include free cell service or phone service are being phased out as those leases expire and I haven't seen a new one include that business point.

Also, the impact on your reception only matters if you've got the same cell service as the company on the tower. So if you've got AT&T and an AT&T tower you'll be in good shape or Verizon service and a Verizon tower and so on. Otherwise, if you've got AT&T service but a Verizon tower it won't matter to you as they don't share equipment. That being said, a single tower could have AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all on the same tower.

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Yes, those are all annual amounts. As I indicated, I was not in on the negotiations and, knowing the people involved, they didn't get an attorney involved just handled it alone. One of the three is pretty savvy but they purchased their acreage with the agreement already in place.

I passed on the information in case they decide they want a lawyer to review if they get to that point. I think AT&T is talking to 5 others as well. Do you have a rough idea what your fee would be?

ita hardcto say, but it would be reasonable and in line with the results achieved (but still not a contingency). But, it wouldn't make sense for someone to come back to use if we charged $2k on a $5k job. We want long term clients.