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Could Your Client’s Land Be Worth Millions to a Data Center? What NC Real Estate Brokers Can Learn From a $500 Million Virginia Deal
- Skyline
- 15 hours ago
- 11 min read
An entire 143-home Virginia neighborhood is considering a data-center deal reportedly worth more than $500 million. For North Carolina real estate brokers—especially those who work with acreage—the story carries an important lesson: yesterday’s “highest and best use” may not be tomorrow’s.
The Short Version
In Ashburn, Virginia, homeowners in a neighborhood called The Regency have been considering an extraordinary proposal: assemble all 143 homes and sell the land for redevelopment as a data center campus.
The numbers are difficult to ignore.
The proposed economics have been reported at approximately $4.4 million per acre, more than $500 million for the entire neighborhood, and roughly $4 million per household. The proposal would require the homeowners to act together and would also require substantial land-use approvals before a data center could actually be developed.
For real estate brokers, the biggest lesson isn't whether The Regency ultimately sells. It's this:
If you work with acreage, you need to understand whether data centers are a potential use of land in your market—and your seller deserves the opportunity to decide whether that potential matters to them.
How Does an Ordinary Neighborhood Become a $500 Million Data Center Site?
The Regency is a 143-home community in Ashburn, Virginia, in Loudoun County's famous "Data Center Alley."
Over time, enormous data center facilities moved closer and closer to the neighborhood. Former Regency HOA president Mital Gandhi, who is also a real estate developer, told Business Insider that multiple data centers now sit less than 2,000 feet from his property. Residents have described dealing with construction, disappearing green space and the persistent hum associated with nearby facilities.
Gandhi eventually approached the situation from another angle.
Instead of simply asking what the data centers might do to the neighborhood's property values, he began asking what a data center developer might pay for the neighborhood itself.
The result was an effort to assemble the entire community for a data center development.
Business Insider reported a proposed sale price of approximately $4.4 million per acre, producing a potential transaction worth more than $500 million. WUSA9 later reported that Gandhi did not dispute widely reported estimates of roughly $4 million per household.
That is a dramatically different valuation model than determining what another homeowner might pay for a house.
And that is exactly why real estate brokers should be paying attention.
WUSA9 — “Data centers offer to buy Loudoun County homes, homeowners looking to cash out” — July 30, 2026.
There's a Catch: You Need 143 Sellers to Agree
The numbers may be extraordinary, but the transaction is anything but simple.
The proposed redevelopment effectively depends on assembling the entire neighborhood. Business Insider reported that an early poll found 138 of 143 households willing to entertain a sale if the price was right. Once detailed terms entered the picture, however, support became more complicated.
That shouldn't surprise anyone who has ever assembled land.
One homeowner may be ready to move tomorrow. Another has a child who wants to graduate from a nearby school. Someone else believes the property will appreciate enough over the next several years that today's impressive price will not look as impressive later.
And the transaction cannot simply close next month.
The existing property is residential. Rezoning and major electrical infrastructure would be required, and Gandhi has estimated that the process could take years. Loudoun County officials have also said that no rezoning application for The Regency had been submitted.
In other words, a property can have tremendous potential value without that value being immediately realizable.
That distinction matters tremendously when brokers discuss potential alternative uses with clients.
What Does This Have to Do With North Carolina Real Estate?
Quite a lot.
Data-center development is no longer an issue confined to Northern Virginia.
North Carolina already offers specific sales-and-use-tax exemptions associated with qualifying data centers, and the state has attracted enormous investment in the sector. Amazon, for example, announced a $10 billion investment in Richmond County, North Carolina, for data center and artificial-intelligence infrastructure.
Closer to Skyline School's home market, Charlotte's rapid data-center growth has prompted City Council to temporarily stop accepting new data-center applications while officials reconsider the city's policies.
On June 8, 2026, Charlotte adopted a 150-day moratorium on new data-center
development applications lasting through November 5, 2026. The city says it is using that time to study infrastructure capacity, noise, environmental impacts and possible changes to development regulations.
That makes Charlotte an almost perfect illustration of the point:
The rules affecting the potential value of acreage can change—and brokers who deal in land need to keep up.
Acreage Brokers Need to Add One Question to Their Vocabulary
When evaluating acreage, brokers are accustomed to asking questions such as:
What is the zoning?
Can the property be subdivided?
Is water and sewer available?
What density is permitted?
Is the property in a floodplain?
Is there road frontage?
Are there environmental limitations?
Could it support commercial, industrial or residential development?
Increasingly, another question belongs on that list:
Could this property—or an assemblage containing this property—support a data center?
That does not mean every 20-acre tract in North Carolina is suddenly worth millions of dollars per acre.
Far from it.
Data centers are unusually demanding developments. Large sites may need enormous amounts of reliable electricity, appropriate transmission infrastructure, fiber connectivity, sufficient usable land, suitable topography, access, utility infrastructure and a regulatory path that makes the project feasible.
But brokers do not need to become data-center engineers to recognize that the possibility deserves investigation.
Start With Zoning: Is a Data Center Allowed By Right?
This may be one of the most important new pieces of local knowledge for brokers who regularly sell acreage.
Every broker working extensively with land should know—or know how to quickly determine:
How does the local zoning ordinance define a data center? In which zoning districts is that use allowed? Is it permitted by right, subject to prescribed conditions, allowed only through conditional zoning or a special-use process, or prohibited altogether?
Do not assume the ordinance even uses the words "data center."
Charlotte is a good example. Its Unified Development Ordinance calls the use a "Telecommunications and Data Storage Facility," defined to include facilities housing computer systems, cloud-storage systems and server farms. Charlotte's use matrix uses an "X" to identify uses permitted by right and historically listed telecommunications and data-storage facilities as by-right uses in multiple districts. New applications are temporarily affected by the city's current moratorium.
A broker who searches the ordinance only for the phrase "data center" could therefore miss something important.
And Charlotte's moratorium illustrates another point: you must check the current rules, not simply remember what the rules were six months ago.
Zoning Is Already Part of a North Carolina Broker's World
This isn't about asking brokers to become land-use attorneys.
The North Carolina Real Estate Commission already emphasizes the importance of zoning when brokers evaluate property.
The NCREC explains that material facts can include matters outside the property lines that affect a property's use, desirability or value, specifically identifying zoning as an example. The Commission also tells brokers to become familiar with the government offices responsible for zoning and permitting in the geographic areas in which they practice.
Brokers also owe their clients skill, care and diligence and are expected to act in their clients' interests.
That does not create a special new rule requiring every listing broker to investigate every theoretical future use that could someday be imaginable for a property.
It does mean, however, that a broker who holds themselves out as knowledgeable about acreage should understand the major forces affecting acreage values in their market.
Data centers are increasingly one of those forces.
Don't Value Development Land Through the Rearview Mirror
Consider two hypothetical buyers.
Buyer A wants 100 acres for a residential subdivision.
Buyer B wants the same 100 acres for a hyperscale data center and considers the location strategically important because of power and fiber infrastructure.
Those buyers may not value the land remotely the same way.
If a broker evaluates the seller's property solely by looking at comparable agricultural land sales or what a residential developer typically pays per lot, the analysis may completely miss another category of demand.
The Regency demonstrates this phenomenon at an extreme scale.
The houses did not suddenly become four times nicer.
The potential use of the underlying land changed the economics.
That is a concept every land broker should understand, whether the alternative use is a data center, industrial facility, solar project, residential subdivision, mixed-use development or something that has not yet become common in the market.
Learn to Recognize the Clues—Without Promising a Payday
A broker does not need to determine whether Duke Energy can deliver 300 megawatts to a particular parcel.
That is specialist work.
But acreage brokers should begin recognizing characteristics that may justify additional investigation, including large contiguous acreage, nearby electrical transmission infrastructure or substations, major utility corridors, fiber infrastructure, industrial zoning, relatively flat developable land, access to major roads and the possibility of assembling adjoining parcels.
The correct response to those clues isn't:
"Congratulations! Your farm is worth $100 million."
It is:
"There may be a category of potential users for this property that we should investigate before deciding how to price and market it."
That difference is important.
By-right zoning does not make a property a viable data-center site. Electricity availability alone can determine whether an otherwise excellent property works. Environmental restrictions, utility limitations, buffers, development standards, politics, infrastructure costs and dozens of other variables can eliminate a site.
Brokers should recognize the opportunity, conduct appropriate preliminary research and then bring in qualified land-use, engineering, utility, tax or legal professionals when the investigation moves beyond the broker's expertise.
What About the Ethical Concerns Surrounding Data Centers?
There are legitimate public debates surrounding large data centers.
Communities across the country are discussing electricity demand, water consumption, noise, backup generators, transmission infrastructure, loss of open space, impacts on nearby residents and whether the economic benefits justify those costs. Charlotte's current moratorium is expressly intended to give the city time to study several of those concerns.
Real estate brokers are free to have personal opinions about those issues.
But when representing a property owner, the broker's personal position on data-center development should not substitute for the client's decision.
A seller may hear that a data-center developer would pay several times what a residential developer would pay and say, "Absolutely not. I don't want my land used for that."
That is the seller's decision.
Another seller may say, "I have been farming this property for 30 years, and that offer would completely change my family's financial future."
That is also the seller's decision.
The broker's role is to help the client understand meaningful information and available options so the client can decide what aligns with their financial objectives, personal values and plans for the property.
The broker should not quietly eliminate a potentially lucrative category of buyers because the broker has personally concluded that the proposed use is undesirable.
And the reverse is equally true: a broker should not pressure a client toward data-center development simply because the potential commission or sale price is enormous.
Inform. Advise within your expertise. Bring in specialists. Then let the client decide.
A New Due-Diligence Checklist for Brokers Who Sell Acreage
Before pricing or marketing significant acreage, consider adding these questions to your process:
What jurisdiction controls the property? City, county and extraterritorial jurisdiction boundaries can matter.
What is the current zoning?
How does the ordinance define data centers or data-storage facilities?
Is that use permitted by right anywhere in the jurisdiction?
Would the subject property's existing zoning permit it, or would rezoning be required?
Are there pending moratoria, text amendments or proposed zoning changes?
What does the future land-use plan recommend for the area?
Are there major electrical transmission facilities, substations or utility corridors nearby?
Could neighboring parcels create a viable assemblage?
Have there been recent data-center purchases, rezonings or developer inquiries in the surrounding region?
Does the seller want the property exposed to industrial and data-center prospects, if appropriate?
Which specialists should become involved before anyone represents the property as suitable for a particular development?
You aren't trying to determine whether Google is going to buy the property.
You are trying to avoid discovering after the seller closes that an entire category of sophisticated buyers was potentially worth investigating.
Frequently Asked Questions About Data Centers and North Carolina Real Estate
Are data centers permitted by right in North Carolina?
There is no single statewide zoning answer. Land-use regulations vary by city and county. Brokers should review the applicable local ordinance and determine how the jurisdiction classifies the use. A data center may be permitted by right in certain districts, require conditions or rezoning in others, or not be allowed at all.
What does "by right" mean for a data center?
Generally, a use permitted by right does not require the property owner to obtain discretionary rezoning simply to establish that use, provided the project complies with all applicable development requirements.
That does not mean the developer can immediately start building. Building permits, utility approvals, environmental requirements, site-plan standards and other regulations may still apply.
If data centers are permitted by right, is acreage automatically more valuable?
No. Zoning is only one component of site feasibility.
Data centers require extraordinary infrastructure, particularly access to sufficient reliable electricity. A parcel with the correct zoning but inadequate power capacity may have little value to a data-center developer, while a strategically located parcel near critical infrastructure may command a significant premium.
Should an acreage broker investigate data-center potential?
If data centers are an active or emerging land use in the broker's market, it is increasingly prudent for brokers specializing in acreage to understand the applicable zoning rules, market activity and basic site-selection characteristics.
That does not mean a broker should speculate about value or represent that a site is "data-center ready" without adequate support.
Does a broker decide whether selling land for a data center is ethical?
No. Brokers should provide clients with relevant factual information and competent advice without substituting their personal policy preferences for the client's objectives.
A property owner can consider the financial opportunity, environmental concerns, community consequences and personal values and make their own decision.
What should a landowner do if a data-center developer approaches them?
A potentially large development transaction deserves significantly more due diligence than simply comparing the offer with the property's current residential or agricultural value.
The owner should consider the proposed price, option period, deposits or option payments, zoning contingencies, assignment rights, closing timeline, infrastructure requirements, tax consequences and the risk that the transaction never closes. Appropriate legal, tax and land-use professionals should generally be involved before the owner commits to a complicated long-term development agreement.
The Bigger Lesson: Know What Your Client Actually Owns
For decades, a broker might have looked at a 100-acre tract and thought:
Farm.
Then:
Subdivision.
Then perhaps:
Industrial development.
The rise of AI infrastructure has added another potential answer:
Data center.
The Regency in Virginia may or may not ultimately become one. The proposed transaction still faces enormous logistical, regulatory and human hurdles.
But the lesson for real estate professionals has already arrived.
When the possible uses of land change, the potential value of land can change with them.
North Carolina brokers—particularly those who work with farms, vacant land and large acreage—should understand the zoning rules in the markets they serve, pay attention to changing development patterns and recognize when a client's property deserves a deeper look.
You don't have to decide whether a data center should be built there.
You do have to give your client the information they need to decide whether they want to explore the possibility.
Would you sell your land to a data center developer? Leave a comment below or discuss with a colleague in an upcoming CE class!
References
Amazon Staff. “Amazon Plans to Invest $10 Billion in North Carolina to Expand Cloud Computing Infrastructure and Advance AI Innovation.” About Amazon, 4 June 2025. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
Charlotte Unified Development Ordinance. “Article 15. Uses.” City of Charlotte. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
City of Charlotte. “Frequently Asked Questions: Data Centers & Moratorium.” City of Charlotte, 8 June 2026. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
North Carolina Department of Commerce. “Tax & Other Cost Savings.” NC Commerce. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
North Carolina Real Estate Commission. “Case Study: Agency.” NCREC Bulletins. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
North Carolina Real Estate Commission. “What Is a Material Fact?” NCREC Bulletins. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
Pandy, Jordan. “The Data-Center Dilemma: Data Centers Are Taking Over the Suburbs. Mital Gandhi Wants to Sell His Entire Community to One and Cash Out.” Business Insider, 2 June 2026. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
WUSA9. “Data Centers Offer to Buy Loudoun County Homes, Homeowners Looking to Cash Out.” WUSA9, 30 July 2026. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.
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