Investing In Billboards

Billboards are income properties without the usual landlording concerns. Perhaps the biggest problem with investing in billboards is that there are limited opportunities to do so in most areas.

I like the idea of a billboard investment. No toilets to fix, no tenants to evict. Just lease the space, let the renter do all the painting, and collect the income. Of course it might be necessary to upgrade the billboard or repair it every ten years or so, but that just doesn't compare with the regular problems that come up with other rental real estate.

The best way to make money with billboards used to be buying property and then putting billboards on it. However, this is getting more difficult all the time. Many communities are limiting the number of billboards allowed, or just plain outlawing all new ones.

One way around this that I have seen is to have billboards that aren't billboards. The most common example is old truck trailers that have been made into "mobile" billboards. These presumably don't fit the definition of a billboard, and so are left alone. It is just a truck trailer parked near the highway that happens to have advertising on it.

I'm not sure if these are legally secure enough to make advertisers fell comfortable. If not, the rates would be much lower. I might try this if I had a property alongside a highway or busy road, but I wouldn't invest in property based on this scheme.

Buying Billboard Properties

The new laws and regulations almost never make existing billboards illegal. They are grandfathered, meaning they will be allowed as long as they are there. It may not be okay to replace them, but they can generally be there as long as they can be repaired. These are the properties that you will want to look for to make money with billboards.

The math is relatively simple compared to most real estate deals. On the expense side, you have your financing, property taxes, insurance, and occasional repairs. Advertising for advertisers is usually done on the vacant sign itself, for the cost of the paint. If these expenses are less than the monthly rent coming in, you have positive cash flow, and it may be a good investment.

You'll want to know how long the lease has to run. Billboards can remain empty for months, so you have to account for that if you buy one with a lease about to expire. Look around at how many empty billboards there are to get an idea of how easy or difficult it will be to get it rented out again.

Do some research on rental rates before you start shopping for properties. Find out the range of rents in the area, as well as information on vacancy rates, if you can. Then, as you narrow your search, get the average rates for other billboards on the same streets where your prospective properties are for sale.

You want the rates on a property you buy to be in line with others in the area. It's even better if they are low. In that case you might pay a price based on the existing rates and raise the rent when the lease is up.

Ideally you want a property that will have decent cash flow from day one, and has a long term lease with a client who has repeated renewed the lease. Then you might just take that easy return on your investment for many years as the rent also pays off your loan.

There is a strategy that I hesitate to mention, because it seems unfair to me. But it can be profitable. I heard about from an investor who bought a lot real estate with billboards in Arizona. Once he had enough properties in city, he lobbied for a ban on all future billboards,and joined any groups that were doing the same. He urged the city council to "beautify" the city by banning new billboards, knowing that they would always "grandfather" existing properties, including his.

Once the law passed, future competition was eliminated. No new billboards could be erected, despite a city that continued to gain population and businesses. The result, of course, was predictable. Advertising rates on the existing billboards skyrocketed over time. He said he was making a lot of money on the ones he had.