The Lease Buy-Out Proposal
The Lease Buy-Out Proposal provides 3 benefits:
1) The opportunity to make more money in the long run
2) Security against the risk of rent reduction or lease cancellation
3) The opportunity to reduce your tax exposure
Make More Money
With a lump sum you can do more than you ever could with a monthly rent check. If you need to improve your credit position, your lump sum can be used to pay down a mortgage or pay off debt. If you are focused on building long term value, stocks and in particular real estate offer excellent opportunities. When you purchase investment real estate with our lump sum, you combine maximum investment capital (courtesy of the 100% tax-deferred 1031 exchange) with the ability to borrow money against your investment to maximize your return on equity. Together these factors produce a powerful investment return in a secure asset class - a return you could never match by keeping your monthly rent check and putting it in the bank.
In many cases Site Owners also stand to benefit from additional rent as a result of our effort to develop the long term value and marketability of the wireless site. Our industry position as the nation's leading private wireless leaseholder means we can act to improve the value of your current site through marketing and strategic relations with carriers and operators.
Save on Taxes
Want to cut your taxes in half - or more? Most of our site owners choose a transaction structure that qualifies for the capital gains tax rate, which is often less than half the ordinary income tax rate that you probably pay now on your rent check. Most site owners also qualify for the 1031 Starker Exchange, which allows you to select a real estate investment and transfer the Unison lump sum into the new property interest, fully tax-deferred. That's right: you can take our lump sum and pay no taxes at all until - if ever - you cash out of your real estate investment.
Gain Security
A Month To Month Lease
You may not realize it, but your lease rent is at risk. Almost all wireless lease agreements allow the operators to terminate the lease with 90 days notice or less, for any reason. Despite the language about "5 year contracts," what you really have is a month-to-month lease. This fact is why banks will not lend against individual lease rents.
Mergers
The principal cause of decommissioning and rent reduction is the wave of mergers currently taking place. Cingular / AT&T Wireless, Sprint / Nextel, Verizon / Qwest, and American Tower / Spectrasite have all recently completed mergers.
The driving force behind the mergers is the opportunity for the combined entities to save costs, and the merger of two large networks creates many redundant cell sites. The carriers have announced that as many as 47,000 sites nationwide are currently being considered for decommissioning programs. These are the "network efficiencies" targeted post-merger which put the lease income received by site owners like you in jeopardy.
New Technologies
Wireless telecommunication technology advances relentlessly, threatening to change the wireless landscape - and the value of your lease and cell site - substantially over the next decade. It is no accident that the carriers and operators insist on termination rights in their leases. Nobody wants to carry long term financial commitments to outmoded technology or useless property. The carriers and operators don't want to be selling the equivalent of buggy whips and carrier pigeons after newer technologies have arrived.
The Unison Proposal is Different.
- Portfolio Structure With Upside Strategy- Each lease we add to our portfolio enhances the value of the portfolio. Furthermore, managing the portfolio allows us to market your site into the future, potentially providing opportunities for additional rents for both Unison and you.
- Preferential Tax Treatment - We've structured our conversion agreement so that your lump sum payment can qualify for capital gains tax treatment - better than the ordinary income rate you're paying on your rent checks right now. And if you want to reinvest in real estate, our easement structure typically qualifies for 1031 Like-Kind Exchange treatment, which allows you to defer your taxes indefinitely.
- Experience - Our dynamic, creative team has unmatched experience in the wireless, real estate, and finance industries, as well as the knowledge gained from hundreds of transactions with everyone from individual site owners to the City of Boston. Whether you're a not-for-profit, low-income housing developer, church, school district, or water authority, we have the expertise to structure a deal that works for you.
Need more reasons to convert? We'll be happy to explain them in greater detail, too, so don't hesitate to contact us for a no-obligation consultation.
Once you've explored the benefits of lease conversion, and have decided to capitalize on the opportunity, here's the next question you'll face: Why work with us?
We begin with the premise that open transactions are good for both parties. We believe that win-win is the best way to do business. We know we have a valuable service to offer you, we know we can offer you the best deal, and that confidence makes it easy to be completely open about how we do business.