Pricing or Valuing a Mountaintop Site

[Birken Vogt]

I need to pretty quickly come up with some sort of valuation for a mountaintop repeater site.

It consists of a 60' single wood pole tower ca. 1990 in good condition with a 20' shipping container set up as a vault with pretty well finished interior, air conditioning, propane generator and battery backup.

It is on a small patch of rented land which might be interesting to know how much it is worth too.

Any general ballpark values or methodology would be nice.

Thanks

[escomm]

I would think the most important thing is how much is it bringing in rent right now and how much could it bring in rent. Unless you're just looking at it from a materials standpoint in which case it shouldn't be too hard to find out how much it costs to sink a telephone pole and haul a shipping container with all the fixings out to the site.

[Bill_G]

There are three rules to real estate - location, location, location.

Does it serve a major metro market, rural, or is it remote?

What is the HAAT?

Everything else is amenities. It sounds like a primitive site by modern standards. Unless it's a bald hill, a 60ft pole won't clear the surrounding forest canopy. The first tenant will claim the top, and anyone else will have to start lower. Hardly any room for antenna separation. No antenna mounting system. No cable tray. No ice bridge. No grounding. Containers get cramped fast. Hot in summer, frozen in winter. Shore power and site access would be the next two criteria to look at.

[Birken Vogt]

Thanks for the replies. It is a on major hill in the area. It serves a small city and the surrounding rural areas. It is useful for low and high band, but UHF and above are not really much good. Unfortunately, HAAT is usually misleading due to the unique topography in the area. I know rent would probably be the biggest valuator, but the majority of it is taken by the owner right now and we are trying to figure a way to break up the different pieces.

Thanks again.

[Bill_G]

Are there any cell towers on the hill? That will tell you if it's a coveted piece of property. If the cellular providers are on another hill, and this one stands as a lonely reminder of days gone by in LMR, that's all you need to know.

[Birken Vogt]

There is a major cell tower on the hill, in fact, they used to be in this vault until they built themselves a palace that actually sits BELOW this one. So it is definitely useful for something.