A Realtor.com report finds home values near data centers have held steady, but that may not last
The American housing market's growing proximity to large data centers has nothing to do with where homebuyers choose to look, and everything to do with where the industry chooses to build.
A new report from Realtor.com draws on millions of home sales and facility-level data from Aterio to examine how the accelerating buildout is landing inside residential communities across the United States.
The share of home sales within five miles of a large data center — defined as a facility with at least 50 megawatts of selected power capacity — has more than doubled since 2018, rising from 0.67% to roughly 1.5% so far in 2026, according to the report.
The number of large facilities nationwide grew more than sevenfold over the same period, from 49 to 347.
Based on the full construction pipeline, that share is projected to approach 2.3% of all US home sales by 2027.
"The data center buildout has moved fast and it is raising policy, community, and housing-market questions as it spreads and accelerates," said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.
"Our analysis so far offers some reassurance: in the communities we studied, a new data center opening nearby wasn't associated with meaningfully higher or lower home values than similar neighborhoods that didn't get one."
A shift toward lower-income, more remote communities
The geography of the buildout has changed materially since the early years of the AI infrastructure surge. ZIP codes receiving new large facilities peaked 24.7% above the national median household income in 2023, driven by hyperscale investment concentrated in Northern Virginia suburbs.
That has since reversed: data centers activated in 2026 now sit in communities 2.1% below the national median, with the 2027 construction pipeline pointing to ZIP codes 5.7% below median income.
The typical 2027 facility will open approximately 34 miles from the nearest major city center, 26% farther than the 2026 median of 27 miles. Those figures add a geographic dimension to what brokers working in lower-density growth corridors have already observed as a deepening land and supply challenge.
What the data shows and where the track record ends
To test the price impact, the report compared 43 ZIP codes that gained a large data center between 2019 and 2025 against similar matched ZIP codes with comparable pre-opening price levels and population density.
Home values tracked in line with comparisons in the two years following a facility's activation, with no statistically meaningful difference in either direction.
Inventory, however, told a different story. Three years after a large data center opened, those ZIP codes retained 66% of their pre-opening active for-sale listings, versus 43% for matched communities.
For brokers advising buyers in affected markets, that retention gap is a data point worth understanding as America's housing supply shortfall is slowly plateauing after years of sustained growth.
The stability on home values may not hold. The average large data center opening in 2026 draws 60 megawatts of power, up from 24 megawatts in 2018, raising utility, water, and community capacity pressures in markets less organized to respond.
Glen Morgenstern, economist intern at Realtor.com, noted the next wave of host communities "tend to be lower-income, lower-density and farther from a city center, which usually also means fewer resources on hand — fewer attorneys, less organized civic engagement, and housing markets that react more slowly to new information."
In March, seven major AI companies signed a voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge to absorb new grid infrastructure costs rather than pass them to residential customers, a commitment since expanded to companies representing 80% of US power delivery.
Whether that pledge holds and whether home value stability follows will be an early test for the markets absorbing the next phase of the buildout.
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