Any experience buying and renting a billboard on a busy road?

[Malcolm Lawson]

Instead of purchasing another rental home, I have been thinking allot about purchasing land on a busy road and building billboard and renting out space.  I am a real estate agent so Ideally, I could build or purchase one with 4 smaller signs (two facing each way) and I could use one to promote my real estate business and rent out the other three.

Does anyone have any experience with this and could point me in the right directions?  I am guessing I would need to get it approved by someone in my county or city before building, who would I talk to about this?

I have also heard if you own a commercial building you can hang a large advertisement on the side of the building.  For me, I would want to hang a large banner promoting my business and even If I just broke even on a small commercial building it would be worth it for free advertisement.  Anyone experience with this?

[Bob Razler]

Hello @Malcolm Lawson .  Now you are deep into the world of zoning and neighbor relations.

I think the easier way into the billboard empire is to just lease or license the small land area from the current owner with access rights.  That is how most of the boards you see are established.

However, your bigger issue is whether the current zoning allows for it.  If there is a long stretch of highway with 30 "SOUTH OF THE BORDER" billboards there is a good chance the land in the area is zoned for it.  It's easy enough to check for.  Most municipalities have their zoning code online these days.

If you are dealing with a farmer or vacant land, you also want to make sure they haven't either sold their Transferrable Development Rights (TRD's) away which could negate the use depending on the town/county or that they haven't elected some agricultural reserve status which would trigger a tax issue for them.

After all that, then you are going to need to check what the rates are on them (I have NO CLUE on that one) and the cost to construct and your ROI/COCR. You may need to run power out to the structure, etc.

Finally the neighbor issue.  If there are plenty of billboards in the area, you should be fine.  If you will be a trailblazer and be putting up the first one, be prepared for neighbor "feedback" at your zoning area.  I remember thinking that residents treated us bad as homebuilders until I was in the same public hearing with the poor cell tower and billboard guys.  :-)

But look, it's clearly being done all over.  There is no shortage of billboards in the world.  So it can't be that hard.

Best of luck with all this.  It certainly is a different topic than usual here.  Keep up all updated on your progress!