AI Data Centers Transforming Rural Land Markets, Fueling Backlash

There’s a race of sorts happening across the country to build AI data centers as companies charge into rural America to build not only data centers, but facilities for the businesses constructing and servicing them.

CNBC reported that in locations nationwide, entire secondary economies are popping up around technology construction sites, creating boom towns and transforming land uses. But with that boom comes opposition and controversy.

There’s fear that the data centers could impact farm land and property that could be used for housing.

Take, for example, a July protest against data centers in Lubbock, Texas, where the state’s Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, voiced his concerns about data center land grabs in his home state. MSNBC noted that what Miller said could apply to what’s happening in dozens of states across the nation.

“When [data centers] first started popping up, nobody really knew much about them,” Miller said at the protest. “I found out real quick that they were taking up our very best farmland. … And [developers] give sometimes 10 times the value, so it’s hard for farmers to turn that down.”

Nationwide Investments

MSNBC reported that nationwide, investments in computing power sparked by artificial intelligence have set off a commercial land rush, sending property values soaring in unlikely and out-of-the-way places.

Here’s the issue per MSNBC:

AI data centers house huge computer servers brimming with powerful chips and systems that are necessary to run AI models and workloads. The data centers require vast amounts of electricity and water to power and cool the servers, and because of their large footprint, vast amounts of land.

According to MSNBC, the transformation often is pitting some of the largest corporations in the U.S., along with their backers on Wall Street, against residents and communities, who are grappling with newfound competition for their space, infrastructure, and natural resources.

Residents are fearful that the massive centers will encroach on the homes with noise and heavy equipment and drain their water and electrical resources. And it is having an effect on the land values in their towns and nearby communities.

According to commercial real estate firm Avison Young, land purchases for future data centers reached about $6 billion in the first half of 2026 — a 79% increase from last year.

Data centers represent 27% of development sites in the U.S. this year, MSNBC reported. It’s the second-highest category after apartment buildings, and outranks industrial buildings, office buildings, retail spaces and mixed-use developments, according to the firm.

Water and Power Plants

And that’s just the data centers themselves, MSNBC said. Commercial developments in directly related industries, such as water and power plants, and indirectly related sectors, such as housing construction for workers, likely put the total share of AI-driven land investment even higher.

MSNBC noted that comprehensive rural property price data correlated to data center and related industry construction isn’t easily attained. However, several reports and analyses indicate that in key data center areas, commercial property values are skyrocketing.

According to the real estate firm CBRE, last year, site costs in Northern Virginia and the Northeast surpassed $8 million per acre, according to real estate firm CBRE.

MSNBC noted that reports of developers offering prices for powered land that are far above their accustomed values are almost becoming common, despite their targeted, site-specific applicability.

In Loudoun County, Virginia, for example, a data center developer reportedly offered $4.4 million per acre for land.

“Median land prices in Northern Virginia are nowhere close to those figures,” a July brief from the National Association of Home Builders says, citing data showing the median price in Loudoun County in 2025 was $125,000 per acre.

“Home builders cannot bid in that market, because a builder’s land budget is capped by what home buyers can afford,” the NAHB said. “A data center operator faces no such constraint. The result is not more expensive homes on that parcel. It is no homes at all.”

Concerns in the communities

MSNBC reported that residents in many communities worry that the data centers will create a drain on water and energy infrastructure and that electricity prices for all customers would be raised to cover the costs of powering the data centers.

Pennsylvania farmer Bobbi Thompson said she’s concerned about pressure on local water resources, as cloud computing company CoreWeave builds a data center in Lancaster, less than 20 miles from her Mount Joy Township home.

“Where is all the water coming from?” Thompson said. “What does that mean for us as a community?”

Concerns about rising electricity costs are not unfounded, MSNBC noted.

It said that existing and forecast data center load growth is “the primary reason” for “high prices” within electricity capacity markets, according to a May report from Monitoring Analytics, the group that monitors the PJM market, a wholesale electricity transmission region covering all or parts of 13 states in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

MSNBC noted that the report says that “data center load growth resulted in a combined total increase in capacity market revenues” of $23.1 billion from auctions through 2028.

Many residents are also concerned about the general loss of open land to private commercial use.

“It’s a little depressing, as far as the outlook, to physically see the farmland go away,” said Lindsey Dodge, a resident of Boise, Idaho.