Data Centers: Coming to a Neighborhood Near You?

(Image courtesy of Michael Tuszynski/pexels.com)

Realtor.com, Santa Clara, Calif., found the number of large data centers has increased sevenfold since 2018.

The share of American home sales near large data centers has more than doubled since 2018, to 1.5% of all home sales. Realtor.com projects that by the end of next year, 2.3% of all home sales will take place within five miles of an active data center. But this increase is driven by data centers opening in new places–not people rushing to buy near data centers, the report noted.

Realtor.com defined large data centers as those 50-megawatts and up. In 2015, large data centers operated in 21 states, drawing a combined 9,600 megawatts of electricity; by 2025 that has increased to 36 states and 43,000 megawatts.

The new large data centers are being built in more rural communities. The median large data center that opened in 2026 is surrounded by 32 residential housing units per square mile, down from 116 in 2017.

They’re also moving into lower-income zip codes. From 2020-2023, new large data centers opened in ZIP codes well above the national median income. However new large facilities opening in 2026 are in ZIP codes just below the national median income.

“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 with 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. But the facilities coming online next are bigger, more remote and landing in communities with less experience managing an industrial neighbor, so that track record may not hold as a guide to what comes next.”