HOW TO GET A CELL TOWER OR CELL SITE ON YOUR PROPERTY
We get contacted on a daily basis from individuals like yourself who have heard from their neighbor, friend, or associate that they are getting $800 a month to lease their land to a wireless company or a tower company. Their immediate question is “How can I lease my property and receive ‘mailbox money’ every month?”
Our unpopular, but accurate response is that the average landowner HAS LESS THAN A 5% CHANCE OF BEING SUCCESSFUL. Wireless carriers spend significant money and resources designing their systems around very specific radio frequency engineering standards and often target specific geographic locations. That being said, there are certain factors that may make your land more likely to be leased.
Distance to Adjacent Towers. If there is an existing cellular tower within one mile of your location, chances are not good that another will be built. The local zoning jurisdiction will require use of existing towers first. If there are no towers nearby, then your property is more desirable if:
Dense Population or High Traffic Counts. The location is surrounded by either an urban or suburban population or alternatively nearby roadways that have high traffic counts. If you are in a rural area and are not within 1/2 mile of a major highway or a town of 2,000 or more, chances are very slim that a tower will be located on your property.
Zoning1. This is where zoning or land use comes in. Many jurisdictions (counties, towns, cities) have ordinances that allow communication towers. If you have an industrial parcel surrounded by residential property, the likelihood that a wireless carrier could use your property increases. Likewise, if you have a residentially zoned property surrounded by industrial property, the likelihood decreases. Contact your local jurisdiction’s planning or community development office to find out what the requirements are for towers and if one can even be placed on your property.
Here are some scenarios that people send us often that are not likely to result in a tower:
Farmland surrounded by other farmland unless you are within 1/4 mile of a 4 lane road.
A rooftop that is not at least 30 feet taller than any building in one mile.
Residentially zoned.
Highest Point in the County.
An area that does not have any cell phone coverage (The carriers choose not to cover areas that don’t meet certain business criteria).
We can not evaluate your property for you.We provided a property analysis service previously, however people ignored the information above and then were disappointed when the analysis came back negative. So we have terminated that service.
We don’t market your property to carriers.So please don’t ask, and don’t send us an email telling us why your think your property is different. If you haven’t been contacted by a carrier, then we can’t help.
We can not provide carrier phone numbers or names of individuals to contact. For that you are on your own.
Some of the carriers and tower companies do provide websites to submit your land for possible lease. See
http://www.t-mobilerealestate.com/cell-sites
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/realestate/
and http://www.crowncastle.com/contact-us/landowner-contact.aspx
and http://www.americantower.com/atcweb/LandOwners/LandOwners.htm
You can submit a site to Sprint/Nextel via email at:
wirelesssitesfsdb@sprint.com
US Cellular
ATTN: Friendlies Administrator
5117 W Terrace Drive
Madison, WI 5317
We are unaware of ways to submit sites to Cingular.
What do we suggest? Either contact the carriers directly (which may be impossible to do) or simply wait. Place a sign on your property saying you have property for lease for a cell tower – AND THEN BE PATIENT. Don’t sign up for “property listing services” and don’t entertain site management services. You are wasting your money. None of them have the marketing staff necessary to be in every local market. Without local contacts, they are less effective at marketing your location than you are.