The published figures
| Figure | Source | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| ~$244,000/acre | Cushman & Wakefield | US average, 2024 |
| +23% year over year | Cushman & Wakefield | Parcels 50 acres and up |
| $8M+/acre | CBRE | Recent and pending, N. Virginia and Northeast |
DataCenterScope, which compiled these, explicitly warns against combining them: they reflect different periods, different markets and different levels of site readiness.
Why the average is useless
A national average per acre for data center land is like a national average price for a house — technically computable, useless for any actual decision. The variance is not noise. It is the signal.
The three variables that drive it:
- Market constraint. Northern Virginia commands what it commands because supply of deliverable power ran out, not because the dirt is special.
- Site readiness. A stage-four powered site and a stage-one raw parcel are different products. The four stages →
- Timing. This market has repriced fast enough that a 2024 figure is historical.
How to think about a specific parcel
Rather than looking for a number, establish these:
- What stage of power readiness is the site at, honestly?
- What is the realistic time to energize in that utility territory?
- Is the market constrained or emerging?
- What is the alternative use value — the floor?
- Is the parcel essential to an assembly, or one of several workable options?
Those five answers bracket a parcel far better than any published average.
A note on what sellers are told
Landowners are shown the $8 million per acre headline by people who want them excited, and the agricultural comp by people who want them cheap. Both are being used as negotiating instruments.
The honest statement is that raw land in an emerging market, near transmission, with no utility work done, is worth a real multiple of agricultural value and a small fraction of a constrained-market powered site — and that the precise number comes out of diligence nobody has run yet.
Anyone offering more precision than that on a first call is selling something. How this gets used →
Figures attributed to Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE and DataCenterScope as noted, reflecting reporting through 2026. Nothing here is an appraisal of any specific parcel.