Tower Title & Closing knows its niche, tower and data center transactions. Having a specific focus and area of expertise has helped the company gain and maintain the trust of the industry. “We understand the ins and outs of large-scale real estate transactions for the telecommunications sector,” Kevin Bradley, company CEO, told Inside Towers.
“We bring order and value to our clients’ real estate holdings,” he added. “We protect those assets, and as our customers grow their tower portfolios, we help them do it correctly to limit risk and liability.”
To do that, Tower Title offers a full suite of title products that can be tailored to each individual tower company, including real estate search and reporting, title and closing services, and policy and transaction services. “We offer every solution necessary to complete transactions in a timely manner and create customized plans,” Bradley said.
A Foot in the Door
Bradley spent his first six months after law school working on residential title transactions with a national title insurance firm, but quickly pivoted to tower deals once his company founded a commercial division 13 years ago. At the time, the number of towers being built was increasing quickly. Bradley saw an opportunity as his clients were becoming major players in the tower industry. Now, they’re some of the largest towercos in the nation.
Three years ago, the national title insurance company where Bradley worked was sold. Bradley, Jeffrey Leblanc, President, and Kyle Perry, Chief Technology Officer, decided to strike out on their own, specializing in cell tower transactions. “We decided to take a chance and start a title insurance company with the client relationships we had created,” Bradley said.
Tower Title now has 24 clients that it serves with hands-on support from a team of 28 people.
Establishing Title
To begin, Tower Title requires a client to provide a property address, a parcel, and a legal description. The location of the tower and the ownership of that land must be established to secure clear title. Some of the more difficult towers to abstract and examine are the ones that were built back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, referred to as the “wild, wild west” of the cellular industry, according to Lorelei Silvia, Chief Operating Officer.
“For us to get started, we need something that helps us pinpoint exactly what land you do and do not own,” she said. “We have a team that works on these files as soon as they’re placed. We assess the land records, and we leverage GIS (geographic information system) maps to locate the tower.”
To establish the title of the property under a tower, Tower Title’s team often plays multiple roles — historian, researcher, and detective. Instead of figuring out “who dunnit,” they figure out who owns it. Property that has been in a family for generations can be a particular problem, Silvia said, in the case where somewhere along the line someone died, but the deed was never transferred.
“We can end up with a group of, for instance, five people who think they own the property, but there is no legal proof. So, we follow the chain of what was supposed to happen and find ways to establish legal ownership.” With a secure title, the family can then lease the land or sell it completely outright, and the tower company can be confident of what it is receiving.
The Differentiator
Tower Title consists of a team of lawyers, paralegals and abstracting professionals, many of whom have years of experience working on commercial real estate transactions. Tower Title’s formula is simple. Each staff member works on a particular title from start to finish, so the client has one point of contact. Bradley eschews the use of call centers. If a customer has a question, that individual can call the employee who processed their files and talk to that person directly.
“We want our clients to be able to talk to whoever is handling their matter, personally,” Bradley said. “We make this a partnership more than a client/vendor relationship.”
Silvia said what sets the team apart is passion and hard work. The Tower Title workplace is lively, with ideas being passed back and forth as team members seek solutions to clients’ unique problems. Many of Tower Title’s employees have worked together for years; they share a sense of camaraderie and synergy in the workplace.
“We are lucky that we found people who get excited to figure out these weird, complicated legal matters,” she said. “It really makes a difference because everybody feels invested in the end result.”
That end result is documentation of ownership that an underwriter is willing to insure. Tower Title enjoys the trust of Fidelity National Title and Westcor Land Title Insurance Company.
“With title insurance, a tower company knows that they are going to have a much easier time selling a portfolio of towers. The acquiring company may have to do less due diligence because it knows that, at the root of it, they do have a title policy,” Silvia said. And that is what title insurance is about.
