Cell Tower Lease Questions

[Sam Schrimsher]

Hello BP,

For folks who have any experience in cell tower leases. I have an opportunity to purchase significant acerage with several cell towers on it. The rents on the cell towers are below market and locked up that way until 2030, at which point I'll try and get them up to market and I believe I've got a good chance at success as the towers have already been built, and they are already on the highest piece of land in the area. I was initially going to purchase the acerage because it had  some lots on it I could have sold off to try and pull my investment back out, then just collecting rent from the towers without any money tied up in the deal. 

I've recently discovered that several key lots I was counting on are actually in a designated wetland and basically worthless (the remainder of the property is very steep and could really only be used for recreation, maybe a couple hill side homes but nothing substantial. So rather than purchase a bunch of unusable land and paying property taxes on that I would like to see if the owner will sell just the cell tower leases to me. 

1) Can I own those leases and not the land? 

2) If I do that are the cell companies likely to want to continue on with us after the lease expires?

3) Is there a formula for calculating the value of a cell tower lease based on the rental income of the towers? I'm thinking it probably has to be a higher return to mitigate the risk as there is no guarantee against cell company mergers or the cell company moving to another location. Thoughts on this?