If you are a landlord of a high-rise commercial property and is looking for extra income, leasing your rooftop to a cell tower should be something that you should consider. With proper negotiation, leasing out a Cell Tower can greatly boost your income without you even having to move a finger. This is also a creative way to generate a reliable and steady income.
However, before you just sign into a deal and agree to lease your rooftop, you must do a lot of research and be knowledgeable on the topic lest you end up with a contract that you do not want. This particular endeavour needs proper preparation or else you will lose on a lot of potential earnings.
You will need to get an understanding and appreciation of the value of your property’s rooftop and what it means for the wireless carrier. Moreover, you will need to prepare by being knowledgeable of any issues that should arise along the journey.
One shortcut that will improve the process is having a Cell Tower Consultant to advise you throughout the journey for your cell tower lease because he/she will be able to recognise the value of your property and also spot any avenue for a bit of extra income to boot, as well as protecting your best interest. Here are some basic examples of what you should do and prepare for:
Pay Attention to the Details
Contract leases can lock you into agreements that you do not want. For example, you might not be able to sell your property or move to a better contract with another wireless carrier. This is an issue especially with commercial properties that are in prime locations. You could be raking in twice or thrice the rent but you can’t just because you’re stuck with a contract. Before you sign, make sure to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s and be aware of any hidden restrictions and terms.
Wireless carriers should not have the authority to sublease although the equipment is theirs. You want the ability to lease to other carriers if your property can accommodate another tower, ultimately this will increase the amount of money you earn. Depending on the situation you may not have that option. Carriers may use equipment that’s more cost effective, which would make it hard to rent out any remaining space to another carrier. Iron out details like this before any signing of papers. Don’t just bend over for these wireless carriers as you will be losing a lot of potential income.
Regarding the topic of equipment, you will need to understand the nature of the equipment too. There are chances that the equipment may cause interference with other technology within close proximity to it, which may be sensitive to the effects by the cell-tower equipment. Pay attention to these as you do not want your surrounding area to be rendered uninhabitable. For example, cell towers may interfere with the equipment in a hospital due to its sensitive nature. If there are any issues that you are seeing, nip it in the bud and iron it out. You do not want to face bigger problems in the future. You also need to take into consideration what each party’s responsibilities are in relation to dealing with problems. You do not want to be the only one dealing with the problems because the contract states so.
Future Developments
A vital aspect you will need to pay attention to is your ability to develop your property. There are contracts that can make any efforts of developing your property hard because of the terms. It’s highly recommendable to sustain these rights and keep it because you maintain flexibility. Pay attention for any clauses like these as it can inhibit any future developments. Many wireless mobile carriers do not want your property to be developed so they don’t have to pay top price.
Access
Issues may surface when it comes to access, wireless carriers will aim to have 24/7 access. They will push for this during negotiations. A consultant will extremely help when it comes to a rooftop lease. With the expertise of a consultant to assist you with a rooftop lease, you have better chances of mitigating any issue that surface. Take into account how long you these contracts can be you will want to be sure on the everything prior to signing any long term contract.
Prior to any developments, expect plenty of visitors to the sites from different specialists. The types of specialists you will get a visit from range from the following: surveyors, zoning specialists, engineers, architects, power consultants, radio and telecom engineers, construction contractors and power consultants. All these visits from all the different specialists are in preparation for the designing of the site, optimized, constructed, on-air, optimized for the wireless network.
Meanwhile, with the construction of the rooftop cell tower, you can expect several members of the crew to be present daily working on the site. This can take up to six weeks. You do not have to worry as after the initial part of the construction is dealt with, the number of members of the crew will decrease. Depending on maintenance policies with the wireless carriers, they will need access regularly to attend to the equipment if should they require some fine tuning or fixing.
Although these wireless carriers maintenance staff will be regularly visiting to maintain the cell tower, depending on the kind of maintenance work it can potentially disturb the other tenants residing within your property. The best way to meet the needs of the wireless carrier and the needs of your other tenants you can give them access to the site only within business hours so that the other tenants won’t be disturbed because of the noisy equipment.
From the examples above take into careful consideration of what happens in each step, so you can prevent running into any unnecessary hassle in the future.