10 Counties Hold 42% of U.S. Data Centers. Home Prices Rise Faster There.

A new report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has determined that only a few U.S. counties are home to the ongoing data center development boom, and that the construction of these facilities raises home values and improves local economic performance, namely household incomes. 

The findings of the NAR 2026 Data Center Impact Report — first reported by Commercial Observer — conclude that data centers do impact housing values and local economies, but there’s no uniform national assessment as it varies from locality to locality. 

“There is no single data center effect,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist of NAR, said in a statement. “Instead, the story varies significantly depending on the local market.”

Using national, state and city data from 3,200 U.S. counties, NAR found that 92 percent of U.S. counties do not have a single data center in their boundaries, and that 10 counties hold nearly half (42 percent) of all data centers nationwide, with Loudoun County and Price William County in Northern Virginia alone accounting for 19 percent of U.S. data centers. 

Silicon Valley in Northern California and Franklin and Licking counties in central Ohio together account for 10 percent of data center development nationwide. 

NAR data did conclude, however, that those areas which have clusters of data centers do in fact have stronger housing markets. 

For instance, in counties with more than 10 data centers, the median home value came out to $431,750, while the median home value in U.S. counties without data centers is $174,500. 

Perhaps more interesting, counties with 10 or more data centers saw their home values increase by 95 percent between 2014 and 2024. Meanwhile, median incomes were $89,000 in the data center cluster counties (compared to the $64,000 average in communities without data centers), and employment grew by 16 percent, (compared to 2 percent growth in those counties without data centers) in that same period, according to NAR. 

That said, Yun emphasized that it’s not just simple cause and effect at work here, stating:  “The number of data centers alone does not tell us what will happen to home values, jobs or utility costs.”

Moreover, the report itself offered a bit more clarity, stating: “Counties with more data centers also tend to have higher incomes, younger populations and more college-educated residents. All these factors are also associated with stronger housing demand.” 

But even if data centers appear to be loosely connected with tangible economic benefits, there are still negative perceptions associated with the asset class. 

An NAR survey of 2,357 national commercial and residential real estate agents found that 22 reported negative effects in their communities from data center development (compared to 25 percent reporting positive effects), while 61 percent of these same agents reported that clients associate data centers with increased energy costs and 56 percent associate the asset with excessive water use. 

The NAR assessment of U.S. counties found that residential electricity rates rose 21.4 percent between 2020 and 2024 in the high-cluster data center counties, compared to rate increases of 15.4 percent in counties without data centers. 

“We do not see evidence of weaker housing markets in counties with a large data center presence,” said Yun. “But these are county-level numbers, and they can’t tell us what happens to an individual home next to a facility. That’s why local knowledge and credible data matter so much right now.”

Brian Pascus can be reached at bpascus@commercialobserver.com.