
The wireless real estate and asset management firm TowerPoint has approached North Yarmouth about becoming the “landlord” of its cell tower located near the town’s Public Works garage. Contributed / Town of North Yarmouth
An investment firm that specializes in acquiring digital infrastructure has proposed buying North Yarmouth’s interest in the master lease agreement on a cellular tower near the Public Works garage for $850,000.
Five tenants pay rent to the town to operate out of the tower: UScellular, Dish Network, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. Tower owner UScellular is the sole party listed on the lease and forwards rent payments from the other carriers to the town.
The wireless real estate and asset management firm TowerPoint Acquisitions LLC pitched the purchase deal as a way for the town to make some quick cash and reduce its overall “risk” when dealing with the various tenants – but at least one Select Board member didn’t seem totally sold during a meeting earlier this month.
TowerPoint owns roughly 5,000 cell tower leases across the United States, according to one of its vice presidents of acquisitions, Connor Jacobson, who walked the town through the proposal. The deal with North Yarmouth would be perpetual and grant an easement for 99 years.
Jacobson also disclosed that the firm did a similar transaction with Yarmouth in 2021. According to Yarmouth town meeting notes, that year the town accepted a buyout and extension of its cell tower lease agreement for $615,000 from TowerPoint. The motion passed narrowly, 4-3.
“We’ll take over the income stream and we’re going to manage that cell tower moving forward,” essentially acting as a landlord for the tower, explained Jacobson. TowerPoint would collect the tenants’ current monthly rents, which range from $290.63 per month for Verizon to $1,914.51 for T-Mobile.
However, maintenance of the physical infrastructure rests with the tenants, according to Jacobson, and that would continue under the new deal. UScellular maintains the steel structure compound, and other tenants maintain antennas on the structure, he said.
While rents from these tenants are set to increase in 2029, according to TowerPoint’s letter to the town, the $850,000 offer equates to roughly 15 years of rent paid by all five tenants, if the rents remained at their current level.
“If the technology changes and Verizon and T Mobile … exercise their right as a tenant to just leave this tower within a 30-day notice and stop paying rent, and UScellular does the same thing as the owner of the steel structure, essentially, this goes away (and) our easement goes away,” he said. Jacobson said analysts in the telecom space expect this sort of technology change to happen on a 15- to 20-year timeline.
When asked after the meeting why the town was motivated to entertain the proposal, Town Manager Diane Barnes emphasized that it was TowerPoint that reached out to the town, not the other way around. Barnes said she couldn’t say for sure what the Select Board would do with the $850,000 if they took the deal, but she thinks they might try to invest it.
In terms of avoiding risk, Jacobson emphasized that T-Mobile announced this spring that it intends to acquire all of UScellular’s wireless operations, only a few years after it merged with the mobile network operator Sprint.
“There’s a lot of ambiguity about what’s going to happen to UScellular and their assets, and how that’s going to affect their ability to pay rent to landowners such as the town of North Yarmouth,” Jacobson said.
Mergers can lead to higher prices for consumers, and in the case of the Sprint led to the shuttering of services like Sprint’s 4G LTE and 5G networks.
Asset managers are financial firms that manage money on behalf of investors. That money is often invested in financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, but also increasingly in “alternative” assets – such as housing and infrastructure – according to the book “Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World” by Brett Christophers.
In his book, published in 2023, Christophers estimates that asset managers collectively own at least $4 trillion globally in housing and infrastructure assets.
“I’m just struggling to think about the long-range financial implications and understand the thought process. Nobody’s in business to lose money, and people want to make money … so I’m of course looking for the catch,” said Select Board Member Nancy Tice.
“I know it almost sounds like too good to be true,” said Jacobson, who explained part of the reason the firm can offer $850,000 is because its risk is spread among roughly 5,000 other leases.
According to Christophers, asset managers are generally also paid through fees levied on investors, such as management and performance fees – though this didn’t come up during TowerPoint’s discussion with North Yarmouth.
TowerPoint did not return a phone call asking to clarify aspects of the proposed deal before deadline.
Select Board Vice Chair Karl Cyr asked what TowerPoint’s incentive would be for the company to come back and help the town if T-Mobile, for example, suddenly decided to exit and residents were stuck with poor service.
Jacobson answered his question by saying TowerPoint “is not a massive corporation,” indicating that the firm is committed to being a good partner with the town, and emphasizing that because TowerPoint has an incentive to collect rent from T-Mobile and the town has an incentive to provide cellular coverage to residents, their goals are aligned.
At the end of the meeting, Select Board Chair Andrea Berry said the members and staff would take more time to think about the offer.
Barnes said after the meeting that the town had more research to do. “We don’t have the knowledge or the expertise in this area to know whether this is a good deal or a bad deal,” she said.
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