Commercial Investment Real Estate is the magazine of the CCIM Institute, the leading provider of commercial real estate education. CIRE covers market trends, current developments, and business strategies within the commercial real estate field.
Issue link: http://cire.epubxp.com/i/897832
COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE 10 November | December 2017 I n the U.S., consumers collectively look at their smart devices more than 9 billion times a day — up 13 percent from 2016. Smartphone sales continue to be strong, with penetration up 10 percent annually, mostly with the con- sumers over 45 years old. Smartwatches have penetrated 12 percent of the mobile U.S. consumer market, according to Deloitte. Their growth is affect- ing all telecomm subsectors, including cell tower leasing and infrastructure. Unlike the traditional phone industry, the wireless telecom- munications industry is less centralized and more complex. It also has its own lingo. For example, the installations are referred to as cell tower leases but also may be termed ground leases or rooftop leases. The wire- less telecommunications agreements typically are referred to as cell tower leases. For this article, the installations will be called cell towers, and the agreements will be referred to as cell tower leases. The cell tower lease marketplace is a fragmented group of disconnected transactions, which often is related to a real estate transaction. This property niche is riddled with limited resources, is purposely disorganized, and suffers from an almost complete absence of reliable industry-specific information. Organizing Chaos At a time when people nationwide can go online and locate numerous qualified, interested, and competing parties for the purchase, sale, or management of a piece of property, this has not been true for completing a cell tower leasing deal. This applies to the purchase, sale, or management of this lease. Here are the four most common reasons why. Carriers and tower companies guard proprietary informa- tion. Tower companies and carriers manage the majority of real- time information about cell tower leases, including monthly or annual lease rates, annual or periodic escalators, or variations Cylonphoto/Getty Images MARKET FO R ECA S T Taming Anarchy Smartphones and smartwatches increase the need for a centralized U.S. marketplace of cell tower leasing. by James Kennedy