Your Cell Tower Lease Enforcement & Audit Attorney
Is your carrier actually paying what your lease requires? Many aren’t.
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Cell Tower Lease Enforcement & Audits
Signing a favorable lease is only half the battle. Over the life of a long-term cell tower agreement, carriers routinely fail to comply with their obligations, whether through inadvertent oversight, deliberate underpayment, or unauthorized expansion of their operations. Because these leases run for decades and involve complex rent structures, the cumulative financial impact of non-compliance can be substantial.
Coastal Tower Law helps property owners audit their existing leases for compliance, identify breaches and underpayments, and enforce their rights.
Common Lease Violations
In our experience, compliance failures fall into several recurring categories:
- Rent underpayment: failure to correctly apply annual escalation clauses, resulting in years of below-contract payments
- CPI miscalculation: incorrect application of Consumer Price Index adjustments or use of the wrong index
- Additional tenant revenue sharing: failure to pay landlords their contractual share of revenue when subtenants are added to the site
- Unauthorized expansion: installation of equipment outside the boundaries of the defined lease premises
- Unauthorized modifications: upgrades, additions, or structural changes made without required landlord consent
- Access violations: use of the property beyond permitted hours or areas without authorization
Our Audit Process
We begin with a comprehensive review of your lease agreement, all amendments, and available payment records. Where records are incomplete, we can assist in demanding documentation from the carrier. We then analyze the lease terms against actual performance to identify gaps, calculate damages, and advise on the most effective enforcement strategy.
Many property owners assume their carrier is paying correctly because rent deposits have continued without interruption. A payment that arrives on time is not necessarily a payment that is correct. Annual escalation errors alone can result in significant cumulative underpayments that carriers are obligated to make right.
If you have never audited your cell tower lease for compliance, now is the time. Contact Coastal Tower Law to schedule a lease review.