Data centers are pricing home builders off America’s land
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has documented the same pattern nationally. In Illinois, Stream Data Centers bought and demolished 55 homes in Elk Grove Village to make way for a three-building campus.
In North Las Vegas, VanTrust Real Estate sold approximately 205 acres in Apex Industrial Park to Novva Data Centers for $181 million in 2025, exceeding $880,000 per acre.
In Texas, land along US Route 67 that had sold for $20,000 to $40,000 per acre just a few years prior was fetching more than $350,000 per acre by early 2026.
A market home builders cannot enter
The price disparity is decisive. Median land values in Loudoun County were approximately $125,000 per acre and $93,750 per acre in Prince William County, according to a 2025 land price analysis, a fraction of the $3.5 million to $6.3 million per acre that data center buyers were paying in the same region. Home builders cannot absorb that gap: every dollar spent on land passes directly into the price of a finished home.
NAHB’s 2026 affordability analysis estimated that 65% of US households cannot afford a median-priced new home at $413,595 at a 6% mortgage rate, and that every $1,000 increase in home prices prices out an additional 156,405 households.
