I have a question about extending our Crown Castle lease. How can I determine what a fair price is in Upstate New York? Also why would Crown not want to give us 3% yearly rental escalations but be willing to pay us several thousand dollars as a signing bonus?
Extending Your Crown Castle Lease by: Tower Genius
Negotiating a Crown Castle lease extension is a complicated process if you wish to get a fair deal. Don't expect Crown Castle to tell you what ten items need to be adjusted in your lease to protect you. Don't expect the cell tower manager to give you the "comp list" of Crown Castle cell tower lease rates. And of course, don't expect Crown Castle to tell you how to structure your Crown lease so that you can get a competitive cell tower lease buyout offer from one of their competitors, from a third party, or directly from them if you want to cash out of your Crown lease.
Crown Castle has a process in place that is overseen by cell tower managers who negotiate on crown's behalf to get the best possible deal for Crown - not for you the Landlord. Here they are in a nutshell.
Step 1. CROWN LETTER AGREEMENT - Crown's term sheet or Letter Agreement is their document that they want you to sign so they can hold your feet to the fire on lease terms. By no means should ANYBODY sign a Crown letter agreement with out having Tower Genius review and provide you with feedback. Once a letter agreement / term sheet is agreed to, they send the landlord an executable document to sign and return.
Step 2. CROWN CASTLE PROPERTY COMMITTEE - Crown's Property Committee is kind of like a like a secret society. Nobody knows who the members are outside of Crown.Who knows, maybe they have a secret handshake or initiation process to get into the club??? They often seem to hide behind the tower managers who do not give access to the Committer to the common folk, aka the landlord or their consultants to discuss matters in the lease that Crown tower managers may not full grasp or understand. The property committee then votes on your deal. Either thumbs up or thumbs down, like the Roman Emperor in the movie Gladiator. If your deal is approved you move onto step 3. If it is rejected, you need to go back and continue negotiations on the Letter Agreement.
Step 3. Wait about a month (or more -- or a lot more) for their legal department to send you a draft Crown Castle Lease Amendment.
Step 4. Often times Crown will wait until you've been negotiating for 6 months to pull title. This is like waterboarding to get the prisoner to break down. hang in there. Don't give up. This can set you back a few weeks if they discover anything that needs to be addressed.
Step 5. If they need an SNDA - Subordination Non Disturbance Agreement with your Bank or Lender, they will probably have you try to obtain this. This can take anywhere from a few weeks, to even 4-6 months if you have to deal with the wonderful professionals at Chase or other big slow institutions.
Step 6. If all the stars align your amendment will be ready to sign the Crown Castle Lease Extension.
Hopefully you will see the value that Tower Genius can add to this process. There is a reason why we think deep down inside could be the reason Crown Castle does not invite us to their Holiday Party or take us golfing.
By the way. We are happy to sell them our company for a healthy 7-figure check if they want us to buy us out and no longer be a thorn in their side :D !!
Tower Genius 1-888-313-9750
Jul 06, 2012 Rating
NY Crown lease extension by: Tower Genius
Negotiating Crown Castle lease extensions should not have to be so difficult but they make you think it is. We first need to take a look at your tower to determine how much leverage we have in the negotiation and also look at the lease to determine how much time you have left on the back end of the deal. We also want to find out who the wireless carrier tenants are on the cell tower that Crown is leasing space to (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile etc.).
The Crown representatives will choose how we handle them in the negotiations. We can deal with them with sugar or we can beat them like a pinata, it's really that simple.
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