If a tower stands on your land, you will hear about a sale after it happens more often than before. A letter arrives with a new company name, a new address for correspondence, and a request to sign something. This article is for that moment. It explains what a sale changes, what it does not, and what you are entitled to ask.
The lease transfers whole
A ground lease is a contract, and the tenant's side of it travels with the tower when the tower is sold. When the tower is sold, the buyer takes the seller's place in the lease, with every term intact: the rent, the escalator, the renewal options, the access rights, the restoration duty at the end. The buyer cannot shorten the term, change the rent, or add obligations by buying the tower. Most tower ground leases allow assignment to a buyer of the tower without the landowner's consent, which is why the letter usually arrives afterward. Check yours.
What changes is the counterparty. Your rent now comes from a different entity, your notices go to a different address, and the person who answers the phone is new. In a well-run acquisition, the rent arrives on the same date without interruption, because the buyer has set up payment before closing and asked the seller to confirm the schedule.
What you may be asked to sign
Two documents come up, and neither amends your lease terms.
An estoppel certificate is a short statement of fact: the lease exists, this is the current rent, it has been paid through this date, and neither side is in default that you know of. Buyers and their lenders ask for it because it confirms the lease is what the seller said it was. Read it against your lease, correct anything that is wrong, and sign it only if it matches. Your attorney can read it first. Do not sign an estoppel that recites terms you do not recognize.
A subordination and non-disturbance agreement, usually shortened to SNDA, comes up when the buyer finances the purchase. It says that if the buyer's lender ever forecloses on the tower, the lender will honor your lease, and in exchange you agree that the lender's interest sits ahead of yours in the tower itself. The non-disturbance half is the part that protects you. The subordination half does change your position relative to the lender, so it is worth an attorney's read. If a form arrives with the subordination and without the non-disturbance, ask for it.
Anything beyond these two, a new lease, an amendment, a consent with new terms attached, is a request, not a requirement. You can take it to your own counsel, and you should.
The new owner may make you an offer
Buyers who intend to hold towers for decades care about the length of the ground lease, because a short remaining term is the single largest risk to the cash flow they just bought. So the new owner may ask to extend. There are three shapes.
A lease extension adds years, usually with the escalator brought up to date and sometimes with a signing payment. It is the simplest.
A buyout replaces future rent with a lump sum today, either by buying the land under the tower outright or by buying a long easement. The right price depends on the rent stream, the escalator, how many years remain, and the value you place on cash now against income later.
Nothing at all is also a fine answer. The lease you have continues to its end, with its options, exactly as written.
Questions worth asking
Who exactly is the new owner, and is the tower held in its own entity? Where do notices go, and who is my single point of contact? Will the rent date and method stay the same? Is the tower's registration and insurance current under the new name? If you are offered an extension or buyout, what are the numbers, and may I take the document to my attorney before I answer?
A serious owner answers all of these in writing and does not mind the last one.
How we handle it
Every tower we buy sits in its own single-purpose entity, and the lease transfers into it on closing day. Rent runs from the day we take over, on the schedule you already have. You get a named contact at our land desk, and any extension or buyout we propose comes as a document your counsel can read, with the numbers in plain sight. That is the whole approach: the lease on your land is a relationship we intend to keep for a long time.