Agents and their clients are worried data centers will drive up utility costs. But their impact on property values is less clear.
Real estate agents and their clients are worried data centers will drive up utility costs. But their impact on property values is less clear, the National Association of Realtors® found.
About 61% of NAR members said their clients were concerned that data centers would raise energy costs, and 56% reported concerns about water usage, according to survey data released on Wednesday.
As well, 43% feared environmental contamination and 32% feared the impact on the immediate landscape.
However, opinions on the impact on home values were divided. About 25% of agents surveyed expected data centers to have a positive impact on residential values, while 22% perceived a negative impact.
“There is no single data center effect. Instead, the story varies significantly depending on the local market,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “The number of data centers alone does not tell us what will happen to home values, jobs, or utility costs.”
The data tracks with recent Realtor.com research on data centers. The research found data centers are moving into increasingly rural areas. While they do affect property taxes, the impact on the average homeowner's tax burden is complicated. And while the separate study from Realtor.com found no impact on property values, that data tracks only large facilities in the two years after they open.
Data centers have emerged as a flashpoint in the 2026 midterms. Surveys show data centers are unpopular with the public, and lawmakers are weighing how to regulate the industry and its impacts on energy prices, the environment, and the real estate market.
Counties with more data centers do tend to have higher home values, NAR found. Those with 10 or more data centers have a median home value of $431,750 versus $174,500 for counties without a data center. Those with data center concentrations saw their home values jump 95% from 2014 to 2024. Counties without data centers saw their values jump just 64%.
"This does not mean that data centers caused home values to rise," the report states. "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."
Data and perceptions
NAR looked at data center activity across 3,200 counties, comparing employment, housing characteristics, and electricity costs. It also conducted a survey of real estate agents working in those cities. The group tracked 1,474 data center projects in 251 counties. About 92% of those counties have no data centers. Meanwhile, 34 counties have 10 or more.
But those projects are largely concentrated in just a few areas: Almost 19% of the data centers NAR found are just in Northern Virginia's "data center alley" in Loudoun and Prince William counties. Meanwhile, 75 data centers are in California's Santa Clara County and 63 are in Arizona's Maricopa County. NAR found those markets attract data centers because of available land and power infrastructure.
Household incomes tend to be higher in counties with data centers, with a median household income of about $89,000 in counties that have 10 or more data centers, versus $64,000 in counties without them. Realtor.com research found that data center developments, though, are shifting away from these large metro areas and into increasingly rural places.
NAR did find that the presence of data centers is associated with faster growth of residential electricity rates. But having more data centers didn't cause steeper growth. And counties with the most data centers don't have the highest residential electricity rates.
“We do not see evidence of weaker housing markets in counties with a large data center presence,” Yun said. “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.”
Agents' attitudes split
The NAR member survey found different viewpoints on data centers, which could vary by region.
About 38% of agents in the survey reported a data center proposed or in place in their local market.
NAR found markets in the West had stronger optimism that residential property values would rise with data centers.
Among five key sentiments in the survey, Realtors found residents are strongly opposed, but some see them as inevitable or necessary infrastructure.
They are likely to create tax revenue but could also strain local power grids. Meanwhile, the study urges that real estate agents "need to be informed from a credible source about the impact."