Americans Aren’t Moving Toward Data Centers, the Data Centers Are Coming to Them

The number of data centers is growing across the nation and a new report from Realtor.com reveals that the American home-sales market’s growing proximity to them is being driven by where the data center industry chooses to build, not by any behavioral shift among homebuyers.

According to the report, the share of U.S. home sales within five miles of a large (50-megawatt or larger) data center has more than doubled since 2018, rising from 0.67% to roughly 1.5% so far in 2026.

Realtor.com noted that the number of large facilities operating across the nation grew more than sevenfold, from 49 to 347. Based on the full construction pipeline through 2027, that share is projected to approach 2.3% of all U.S. home sales, Realtor.com said.

The report, which draws on millions of home sales, listings, and property tax records alongside facility-level data center insights from Aterio, also finds that the newest wave of large data centers is landing farther from cities, in less densely populated areas, and increasingly in communities with below-median household incomes. That’s a reversal from the pattern that defined the early 2020s AI buildout, Realtor.com noted.

“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, 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.”

Living Near a Data Center

To isolate what is driving more Americans to live near large data centers, Realtor.com’s report models what would have happened had the data center industry stopped building in 2018.

Under that scenario, Realtor.com said the share of home sales near a large data center would sit at roughly 0.6% today, below where the market actually stands. The entire increase, in other words, traces back to facilities that didn’t exist in 2018 opening in new communities, not to more home-sale activity in neighborhoods that already had one.

Housing stock turnover in ZIP codes near large data centers has tracked essentially the same as broader metro areas throughout the period, Realtor.com said, with the gap never exceeding 0.2 percentage points.

Realtor.com said that the industry’s physical footprint has expanded alongside its power footprint.

In 2015, just 12 U.S. ZIP codes contained a large data center; by June 2026 that had grown to 108, and is on pace to reach 125 by year’s end, Realtor.com said. The land those facilities are built on looks increasingly different, too, the report noted.

The median large data center opening in 2026 is surrounded by roughly 70% fewer residential housing units per square mile than the median 2017 facility, and the typical 2027 opening will sit about 34 miles from its nearest major city center, 26% farther than the 2026 median of 27 miles.

Realtor.com noted that household income patterns near new data centers have shifted as well.

Income in Data Center Areas

ZIP codes receiving new large facilities ran well above the national median income from 2020 through 2023, peaking 24.7% above the median in 2023 as hyperscale investment concentrated in affluent Northern Virginia suburbs.

Large data centers activated in 2026 sit in ZIP codes 2.1% below the national median income, and the 2027 construction pipeline points to communities 5.7% below the median, Realtor.com reported.

“The places absorbing this next wave of data centers look different from the places that absorbed the last one,” said Glen Morgenstern, Economist Intern at Realtor.com. “They 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. That doesn’t tell us those communities will be worse off, but it does mean they may be less equipped to respond if a facility turns out to be a difficult neighbor.”

Realtor.com said that to test whether a large data center opening nearby affects home prices, the report compared 43 ZIP codes that gained a large data center between 2019 and 2025 against similar ZIP codes matched on pre-opening price levels and population density.

In the two years following activation, Realtor.com said that home values in data center neighborhoods moved in line with their matched comparisons, with no gains or losses large enough to represent a meaningful difference.

It said that listing prices exhibited a similar pattern: a small initial bump around the facility’s opening that faded within two years.

Housing inventory told a different story, according to the report.

How Data Centers Affect Housing

Three years after a large data center opened, those ZIP codes retained 66% of their pre-opening active for-sale listings, compared with 43% for matched neighborhoods without a data center. New construction near data centers ran above the metro average in the years surrounding a facility’s opening, Realtor.com noted, but slipped slightly below that average by the third year.

Realtor.com said that property tax rates near big data centers were lower than in comparison communities both before and after a facility’s arrival. The report attributes that gap to where data centers tend to be sited rather than to the facilities themselves.

The average large data center that opened in 2018 drew about 24 megawatts of power; by 2026 that figure had climbed to 60 megawatts, meaning more generators, more cooling infrastructure and more round-the-clock truck traffic per facility, the report noted.

According to Realtor.com, electricity and water use are also emerging as more visible pressure points, particularly in Sun Belt markets already navigating water scarcity, and rising utility bills tied to data center demand have already drawn public attention in states including Georgia and Virginia.

In March 2026, seven major AI companies signed a Ratepayer Protection Pledge committing to cover the cost of new power supply and grid infrastructure rather than pass it on to residential customers, a commitment that has since expanded to companies representing 80% of U.S. power delivery, though it remains voluntary, Realtor.com said.