If you've had to decide between leasing space on an SBA Communications tower and building your own site, you already know the spreadsheet isn't the hard part. The hard part is the costs that don't appear in the spreadsheet.
I've spent 11 years on the carrier-side site development team. In that time I've signed off on more than 600 lease agreements and made—or documented, which is my way of saying I was involved—14 significant mistakes. Total wasted budget: roughly $112,000. That number is burned into my memory. I now maintain our team's 12-point site selection checklist to keep others from repeating my errors.
This post isn't a sales pitch for SBA Communications, the Boca Raton, Florida-based tower REIT (sbasite.com, accessed February 2025). It's a comparison between two options: leasing existing tower space from a national infrastructure company (SBA Communications is the example here) and building and operating your own site. I'll compare them on five dimensions, and one conclusion will probably annoy people who love building.
The Comparison Framework
Before comparing, let's define the choice. A lease on an existing tower means you're renting space, power, and ongoing structural maintenance. A build means you're responsible for land, permitting, construction, monitoring, and all future repairs.
I compare them on:
- Cost and term structure
- Timeline to go live
- Regulatory risk
- Upgrade flexibility
- Internal capacity required
Why those five? Because every expensive mistake I've made falls into one of them.
1. Cost and Term Structure
I don't have hard data on industry-wide build costs. What I can tell you anecdotally is that our Q4 2024 construction quotes for a ground-based monopole in Texas and Florida ranged from $290,000 to $410,000, excluding land. Rooftop sites were less, roughly $90,000 to $150,000, but they came with tenant improvement traps.
Leasing on an existing SBA Communications site is a different animal. You pay rent, escalation, and often a one-time construction or install fee, but the upfront capital is dramatically lower. The trade-off is that you're committing to a term—usually five to ten years with renewal options—and to escalators that are rarely fixed forever.
The '5-year total return' question comes up here. A lot of people searching for 'SBA Communications 5-year total return 2025' are asking about stock performance. I'm not an investment advisor and I won't pretend to be. But if 'return' means return on a capital decision, the 5-year horizon is exactly the right one. In the last three lease deals I reviewed, a self-build only made financial sense if the site would still be needed at year 12 or later. On a 5-year view, leasing won every single time.
Conclusion: Lease wins on capital efficiency. Build wins only when you have a 15-year, certain-demand use case.
2. Timeline to Go Live
Leasing on an existing SBA tower can go live in 90 to 150 days in my experience, assuming the structural review and permits are clean. A new build takes 12 to 24 months, and that's if the zoning hearing doesn't get continued.
In Q1 2024, I had 48 hours to decide whether to respond to a county fairgrounds proposal. Normally I'd want two weeks to review coverage, structural load, and lease language. There was no time. I had to choose with incomplete information. I chose lease, not because build was unavailable, but because an existing tower was the only option that could meet the county's go-live deadline.
That pressure is why the checklist needs to already exist before the urgent decision arrives. If you wait until you're in the meeting to think about lease amendment language, you'll sign something you regret.
Conclusion: Lease wins for any project with a hard go-live date. Build wins if you have the patience and the schedule buffer.
3. Regulatory Risk
The legacy myth is that 'existing tower equals zero permitting.' That was true in some jurisdictions fifteen years ago. Today, many municipalities treat a new antenna as a permit event, even if the tower has stood for decades. You might avoid a full zoning hearing, but you still need land-use approval, RF exposure compliance, and often public notice.
This is where I have a specific debt to Jackie from SBA Communications' Boca Raton office. In September 2022, I submitted a rooftop modification package without a current structural calculation. Jackie sent me a one-line email: 'What's the title block date on that calc?' It was stale. A structural engineer had to re-run numbers, adding three weeks and $14,000 to the project. Jackie's question caught a mistake that would have gotten the permit denied.
If you're dealing with SBA Communications, the Boca Raton-based REIT, remember that their site-development team isn't trying to be your engineer. They're protecting the tower. That's fine—just verify that your lease defines who is responsible for structural updates.
Conclusion: Lease lowers, but does not eliminate, regulatory risk. Build concentrates it on you.
4. Upgrade Flexibility
This is the dimension that surprised me. I assumed ownership was always more flexible because you can swap equipment without asking permission. In practice, that's true for a site you own. But for an enterprise with no dedicated RF engineering team, a lease with good amendment language can be more flexible than ownership.
Why? Because a national tower company has existing power, backhaul, and maintenance relationships. When we needed to add a small-cell cabinet to an existing SBA lease in 2023, the amendment took six weeks. Our own team would have spent three months finding a contractor, checking power, and scheduling a crane.
The equipment itself matters more than you'd think. If your cabinet needs active cooling—say, a Rittal TopTherm enclosure cooler—you have to specify that in the lease or you'll be stuck with a non-standard power load. If your field crew uses rugged hardware like the Kyocera DuraXV Extreme for site inspections, that's not a lease line item, but it's a reminder that the actual devices on site affect the mount and the data connection. The lease should cover 'future equipment of similar size and weight,' not just the exact radio model you install today.
Here's the counterintuitive conclusion: if your technology roadmap is uncertain, leasing can win on flexibility too—provided you negotiate amendment terms upfront. If you own the site, you have no one to complain to except yourself.
Conclusion: Lease wins on flexibility for most teams. Build wins only if you have deep in-house engineering.
5. Internal Capacity Required
In my first year, 2017, I was the guy who said 'we can manage this one site ourselves.' We couldn't. No one monitored the alarms. No one scheduled the generator test. When the battery string failed, the response fee and overtime labor cost us $3,200. It was a small amount compared to the credibility damage with the enterprise customer.
Leasing from SBA Communications shifts monitoring, structural repair, and most maintenance onto the tower owner. You still need someone to review invoices and lease amendments, but you don't need a field operations team.
Today, our department's rough internal rule is: if you have fewer than 10 sites, lease. If you have more than 10 and you're planning a long-term network, build a regional team and consider ownership. There are exceptions, but this rule has prevented more than one expensive server room conversation.
Conclusion: Small teams should lease. Large teams with long horizons can build.
So Which One Should You Choose?
I can't answer that for you. But I can tell you what I'd do based on my mistakes.
- Choose lease if: you have a fixed go-live date, limited internal RF or engineering capacity, no land already in hand, or any uncertainty about the site's life beyond five years.
- Choose build if: you own the land, have permit certainty, expect 15-plus years of high usage, and have the internal team to run 24/7 operations.
If you're comparing SBA Communications vs. building your own site, the honest answer is that for most carriers and enterprises in 2025, leasing wins on capital, timeline, regulatory risk, and operational load. It can also win on flexibility, as long as you negotiate the lease like a partnership, not a one-time purchase.
The question isn't 'Is SBA Communications a good company?' It's 'Is this specific site right for your specific network?' You can't know that until you've done the due diligence.
The 12-Point Pre-Sign Checklist
5 minutes of verification beats 5 days of correction. I've saved an estimated $78,000 in potential rework since we adopted this checklist. Maybe it's actually $60,000—I'd have to check—but it's been worth it.
- Get the structural calc with a current date. If it's more than 12 months old, re-run it.
- Verify power capacity in writing, not in the sales call.
- Specify active cooling needs, like a TopTherm enclosure if applicable. This is not a detail.
- Ask what the municipality considers a permitable modification.
- Get the lease amendment procedure and fee schedule in writing.
- Confirm the annual escalator cap, not just the starting rent.
- Define 'operational' for your use case. Who responds when the site is down?
- Check backhaul. Is fiber already at the site? If not, who pays for the extension?
- Review subleasing rights before you need them.
- Confirm the term length matches your asset depreciation plan.
- Get the property contact's name and direct line. In our case, it's Jackie at SBA Communications' Boca Raton office, and her early warnings have saved me twice.
- Build a one-page version of this checklist for the next emergency decision. You won't have time to read the full version when the CEO is waiting.
I don't have hard data on how many leases are signed without checking all twelve. I can tell you anecdotally that in the 300-plus lease audits I've reviewed, well over half missed at least one. Most of those misses didn't matter until the first construction delay or first surprise invoice.
A Final Note on Timing
This advice is accurate as of February 2025. The tower leasing market changes fast, especially around build-to-suit incentives and small-cell rules. Verify current pricing, permit requirements, and SBA Communications' standard lease terms before you make a call.
And if someone asks you about SBA Communications' 5-year total return in 2025, you can tell them what I tell people: I don't predict stock returns. I predict rework costs. Those, I have data on.