AI data center land rush reshapes rural America, stoking community backlash
AI data center investments have sparked a rural land rush across the U.S., sending property values soaring and drawing protests from farmers and residents.
Data-center land purchases in the U.S. reached about $6 billion in the first half of 2026, a 79% increase from a year earlier, according to commercial real estate firm Avison Young. Data centers represent 27% of U.S. development sites this year, second only to apartment buildings and ahead of industrial, office, retail and mixed-use projects. Related commercial developments, such as power and water plants and housing for workers, are likely to make the total AI-driven land investment even larger.
Rural areas with reliable access to regional power grids have seen the biggest price jumps. Last year, site costs in Northern Virginia and the Northeast surpassed $8 million per acre, according to real estate firm CBRE. In Loudoun County, Virginia, a data center developer reportedly offered $4.4 million per acre, while the median land price there in 2025 was $125,000 per acre, according to a July brief from the National Association of Home Builders. The group said home builders cannot bid in such a market because their land budget is capped by what buyers can afford: “The result is not more expensive homes on that parcel. It is no homes at all.”
Residents worry that data centers will drain water and energy infrastructure and push up electricity prices for everyone. Pennsylvania farmer Bobbi Thompson questioned the water supply for a CoreWeave data center being built in Lancaster, less than 20 miles from her home. “Where is all the water coming from?” she asked. “What does that mean for us as a community?” Existing and forecast data center load growth is the “primary reason” for high prices in electricity capacity markets in the PJM region, which spans all or parts of 13 states, according to a May report from Monitoring Analytics. The report said the load growth resulted in a combined total increase in capacity market revenues of $23.1 billion through 2028.
The rush is transforming small communities and often pitting some of the largest U.S. companies and their Wall Street backers against local residents. Entire secondary economies are emerging around technology construction sites, creating boom towns but also displacing open land. Lindsey Dodge, a resident of Boise, Idaho, said it was depressing to “physically see the farmland go away.”