What Drives Data Center Land Value? Power, Timing, Entitlements and Size

Ordinary land is priced by comparable sales per acre. Data center land is increasingly priced by what it can deliver: megawatts, and how soon. Cushman & Wakefield now reports powered land in primary U.S. markets by the megawatt, at an average of $584,000 per MW in 2026 year to date, 35% above its five-year average and 51% higher than a year earlier.⁴ Linklaters describes access to reliable, near-term power as the principal driver of powered-land value.⁷

Per-acre figures still matter, especially to landowners, and they vary enormously. Altus Group’s August 2026 analysis of 80 verified data center land deals found a median of about $2.8 million per acre in Northern Virginia, against as little as $28,000 per acre in underserved markets.¹ National farm real estate, by comparison, averaged $4,500 per acre in 2026, and cropland $6,020.²

Read the spread carefully. The countywide medians in Loudoun and Prince William, about $125,000 and $93,750 per acre in a 2025 analysis, cover all kinds of land, while data center deals in the same counties have closed at several million dollars per acre.³ The difference is the value of power, entitlements and location for this one use.

Altus identified three variables in its deal set: committed power capacity, proximity to electrical infrastructure and parcel size. Its headline finding is that utility load commitments predict land pricing better than any other factor.¹ That matches how developers buy. A parcel with a signed or well-advanced utility commitment is a different asset from one that only sits near a line, which is why powered land is marketed as its own product.

Distance still counts. Altus found that sites within half a mile of a high-voltage substation trade at roughly double the price of comparable sites two to five miles away, and that sites served by 230 kV or 500 kV lines carry roughly a 2.4 times premium over sites served only at 138 kV or lower.¹ Shorter distance usually means a shorter, cheaper line extension and fewer easements to acquire, though only a utility study can confirm available capacity. See substation proximity and capacity.

The Salem Township, Pennsylvania assembly shows the effect outside the major hubs. Ninety-six landowners sold about 1,700 acres to QTS for a data center campus, for a reported total of more than $500 million, or roughly $300,000 per acre.⁸

Two sites with the same eventual capacity are not worth the same if one can be energized years sooner. Developers and their tenants pay for speed to revenue, and the market prices risk that has already been retired. Altus argues that most land value is created before a sale is recorded: utility coordination, entitlements and tenant negotiations often run in parallel for an extended period, and the transaction is the exit from that de-risking work rather than the start of it.¹ Altus also warns that power de-risking can be reversed, citing Texas, so it should be treated as a current condition to monitor.¹

For a landowner, the practical point is that most of the uplift is earned during development, not at first contact. Raw land with a plausible power path is worth more than farmland, but much less than the same land with a utility commitment and zoning. How power schedules work is covered in power timelines and interconnection queues.

Zoning approval for data center use can multiply a site’s value. In Northern Virginia, Amazon Web Services paid $700 million for a campus entitled for up to 3.5 million square feet of data centers, about 13 times the roughly $51 million the seller paid to assemble it in 2021 and 2022.⁹ That gain reflects both entitlement and timing in a market where power is scarce.

Entitlements can also fail. In August 2025, a Prince William County judge voided the rezonings for the PW Digital Gateway, a large planned data center campus, finding that the county’s public notices did not meet legal requirements.⁵ In July 2026, after the Virginia Court of Appeals had upheld that ruling, QTS said it would terminate the Digital Gateway project and withdraw its associated filings.⁶ Landowners whose price depended on that zoning were left with contracts in dispute. The lesson for valuation: until zoning is final and beyond appeal, its value is a probability, not a fact. See zoning for data centers and data center moratoriums.

Data center buyers want larger tracts than they used to. In data reported by Building Design + Construction, the average parcel procured in 2024 spanned 224 acres, up 144% since 2022, with averages of 190 acres in established markets and 340 acres in emerging and tertiary markets.¹⁰ Average prices for parcels of 50 acres or more rose 23%, from $4.39 per square foot in 2023 to $5.40 in 2024 through October.¹⁰

Per-acre prices usually fall as tract size rises. Altus attributes much of the gap between small and very large sites to execution risk rather than site quality: a huge rural tract carries more uncertainty about power, entitlements and timing than a small parcel in an established cluster.¹

Gross acreage overstates what a buyer is paying for. Floodplain, wetlands, steep slopes, easements and setbacks reduce buildable acreage, and an irregular shape can strand land a campus layout cannot use. Buyers increasingly price on usable acres or deliverable megawatts. Our guides to gross vs. buildable acreage and how much land a data center needs cover the math.

Demand for data center land has pushed prices for developable land generally. Avison Young data reported by Bisnow put sales of land earmarked for future data center development at about $3.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and one Avison Young manager said industrial development on powered land no longer makes financial sense in many cases.⁹ The National Association of Home Builders reported in 2026 that data center buyers were outbidding home builders, citing Northern Virginia deals at roughly $3.75 million to $6.3 million per acre, including a developer offering Ashburn homeowners about $4.4 million per acre to assemble a site of roughly 130 acres.³

Those numbers describe the top of the market. Most land that a developer looks at never closes as a data center site, and an offer is not a sale. Market conditions also change quickly: per-MW powered land values rose 51% in a single year,⁴ and they can fall if demand, financing or power policy shifts. For the market backdrop, see data center vacancy, absorption and pricing.

Market data can frame a range, but it cannot value a specific parcel. Use it to ask the right questions, then rely on a qualified appraiser, a utility and local counsel for answers. A practical sequence:

1. 01Establish the baseline: current use value, recent local sales and any preferential agricultural assessment.²
2. 02Map the power facts: distance to transmission and substations, and whether any utility has studied or committed capacity.¹ Our screening tools and methodology show what we check.
3. 03Check entitlements: current zoning, the comprehensive plan, moratoriums and how contested past approvals have been.⁵
4. 04Measure usable land: buildable acres after floodplain, wetlands, slopes and easements.
5. 05Compare structure as well as price: an option, a sale and a ground lease pay very differently over time.

If you are fielding offers, a site review can show which of these factors your land has and which it lacks before you negotiate. The option agreement guide covers how price is locked in when the developer still has work to do.