HOW BILLBOARDS CAN MAXIMIZE YOUR REAL ESTATES INCOME

FIND THE REAL HIDDEN TREASURE ON YOUR PROPERTY!

“Have you ever thought about leasing a billboard space on your property? It’s a great way to generate new cash flow income 

Today I want to tell you about a great way to generate an extra cash flow stream on your real estate property. If you are a property owner and have property along major highways, Interstate or busy street in the city, you  may want to consider leasing a space on your property for a billboard. It could be a more lucrative decision than you may think. I want to share with you a few tips about how you can get started. No it is not complicated or thousands of property owners across America and around the world would not do it.

Let’s get started. Leasing a location on your property for a  billboard and how you get paid. When renting a billboard space on your property to a billboard company, you have several different options ranging from a lump sum annual cash payments, to monthly payments, or combinations of both.

The sign’s footprint requires an approximate 5’ x 5’ space for a standard monopole steel structures so the impact to your property is very minimal and the return could be great. Not to get your hopes up but some property owners make more off of their billboard leases than of the offices or building spaces they rent. That is quite common in cities in high profile addresses. In rural areas it is generally more lucrative than to crop you plant in that 5′ X 5′ area.

You the property owner normally has the option to restrict advertising displays from adult entertainment ads, alcohol or tobacco ads, or any ads that would compete with a business at the billboard site location. In addition, the billboard company normally pays all Tangible Property taxes and permits associated with the sign structure.

5 things you should know about your property before you call the billboard company

1) Visibility. Do you have a possible billboard location on your property? First you need good visibility from the highway or street where the advertising will be visible from. A normal highway billboard location has a 4 to 5 second read from the highway for viewers. 3 to 4 second billboard reads, 5 and more are better. City billboard locations are more complex. You may have street viewers and slower traffic that should be taken into consideration as well as traffic. Times Square is a great example with over 1,000,000 viewers a day. Most are pedestrians.

2) Traffic Count. Does your billboard property have a good traffic count? That is going to be very important in evaluating what your future billboard locations value is. This is a very important part of the billboard evaluation equation.

3) Property Zoning. Know what your property is zoned before you get started. You are going to need this before you consult the billboard company, you also need the physical address and legal description of the property.

4) Billboard Government Regulations. Know what your local and state laws are governing billboards for your property’s location. Call the local city or county building and planning office, they can help. Ask for the person in charge of the outdoor advertising in the planning department. If your highway is a State or Federally funded Highway such as an Interstate check with your state Department of Transportation’s outdoor advertising division.

5) Billboard Separation. Each city, county and state has their own set of laws governing the distance between each off-site billboard location. Offsite billboards are billboards that advertise a business in a location other than a business located on your property. A billboard on your property is consider an on-site advertising billboard.

Once you have educated yourself on your property you are in a better position to negotiate with the billboard companies. Yes, it is a little work getting all of this together but it will bring you a cash flow for many years to come. I have seen it pay for many things from property taxes, college for the kids, vacations, new cars and even houses. Good luck and enjoy your new found cash flow stream.

By Thomas Gunter

About The Author: International Billboard Entrepreneur and developer since 1963. For more information about the author visit our website and “Meet The Company” below:

Meet The Company: http://www.billboardbroker.com/MeetTheCompany.html

Outdoor Billboard Sales and Developing:  http://www.billboardbroker.com

Billboard Investing and Property Development: http://www.billboards101.com

Billboard Development and Investing Video’s:  http://goo.gl/eQSlGF

Billboard Broker of America, LLC All Copyrights © reserved 5/12/2012

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BILLBOARDS AND THE FUTURE

One digital billboard can do the work of 6 to 8 conventional static billboards. In my opinion they look much more attractive that the static billboard. The cities are trading off the tradition static billboards at a ratio of 4 to 6 static billboards for one digital, that sounds like a win, win for everyone, right?. Not really unless you are a large billboard company that would like to trade off your income billboards.

Some of the politicians and garden clubs would take them all down if and plant flowers or a trees. Can you imagine Times Square without its electronic billboards? How about the flashing billboards in Las Vegas? Would you take the famous “Hollywood” landmark billboard down and plant a few bush or trees instead? What if you took all the billboards down? Stripped every American city naked of all the billboards and cleared them from the highways? Would that not be a desecration of the face of America? You bet it would and it is not going to happen.

I think you will be seeing less static and more digital billboards across America in the future as laws regulating and governing billboards get tighter. The trade-off of 4 to 6 static billboards for one digital is a great deal for the cities but not for all billboard companies. For instance a small mom and dad billboard shop in LA or Dallas may not have 4 to 6 billboards to trade-off for one digital billboard, where a large billboard company such as Clear Channel Outdoor which has many. How do you make this fair to the mom and dad operators? Their rights are also important; these kinds of laws knock them out of the race leaving a monopolized market by the large companies. The small guy loses once again.

It would be great to see the clutter cleaned up and quality control move in as long as it is not at the expense of the little people who make up the majority. If the mom and dad operator’s rights are to survive is important to take them into consideration when writing new laws by both state and local governments.