Mital Gandhi built his backyard for basketball games, pool days, and cookouts by the fire pit. Thirteen years after he moved into Ashburn's Regency neighborhood, it still works that way, most of the time. Then the hum starts. People visiting for the first time sometimes mistake it for bass from a stereo somewhere. It isn't. It's the cooling systems of the data centers that flank his subdivision on two sides, part of the largest concentration of data centers on the planet.
This year, Gandhi did something that sounds strange until you understand the math: he started organizing his 143 neighbors to sell the entire subdivision to a data center developer, at a price reportedly north of $4 million per acre parcel. No rezoning application has been filed with Loudoun County. The deal may never close. And that unresolved standoff is the most useful thing a buyer comparing Ashburn to other Northern Virginia neighborhoods can study right now, because it exposes a split that the median price on any listing site papers over.
Here is the split. Ashburn homes sold for a median of $675,000 over the six months ending in early September 2026, based on closed transactions across the area. That single number is doing a lot of work. It is blending homes in walkable, amenity-rich pockets with homes that sit against chain-link fencing and industrial lighting, and it is implying a kind of uniformity that does not exist on the ground. The real question for a buyer here isn't whether data centers are good or bad for property values in Ashburn. It's which side of the fence a specific address sits on, and whether that matters more or less than you'd think.
The offer that might not happen
The Regency subdivision sits off Waxpool Road and Ashburn Village Boulevard, in the heart of what locals call Data Center Alley. It's bordered by facilities operated by DataBank, Sabey, Aligned, and Digital Realty, with a CloudHQ project planned nearby. Site plans reviewed by trade publication Data Center Dynamics show up to six new buildings proposed for the 130-acre Regency site, with power delivery not expected until the mid-2030s even if the deal proceeds.
The Regency homeowners association set up an entity called Community Works LLC to handle negotiations, and the process requires every one of the 143 homeowners to agree before a sale can move forward. As of late July 2026, no formal application had been submitted to Loudoun County, and county officials confirmed as much when the story broke.
That detail matters more than it might seem, because Ashburn isn't the only place this kind of deal has been tried. In Prince William County, more than 200 landowners attempted to assemble a similar package for a nearly 2,000-acre project called the Dulles South Innovation Center. The county's Board of Supervisors rejected it unanimously earlier this summer. Developers said they weren't giving up, but the rejection is a real data point: a homeowner buyout offer is not the same thing as an approved rezoning, and in this region, the gap between the two has recently gotten wider. Loudoun County itself eliminated by-right approval for data center development in 2025, meaning every new project now has to clear a Special Exception review rather than sail through as a matter of course.
If you're touring a home anywhere near an existing or proposed data center site in Ashburn, the honest answer to "is this going to become an industrial buffer zone" is usually: maybe, eventually, but not on a timeline anyone can promise you.
What the same industry gives back
Gandhi's own account of the situation complicates the simple story even further. Pushed on whether living next to data centers has hurt what Regency homes are worth, he pointed to recent sales in the neighborhood that, in his telling, haven't suffered for it. That's one resident's read, not an appraisal, but it lines up with something larger happening across the county.
Loudoun County is projecting data center tax revenue to reach $1.3 billion by 2027. That revenue is a large part of why the county can hold its property tax rate at $0.805 per $100 of assessed value, among the lowest in the region, while still funding the schools and infrastructure that keep buyer demand high. The same industry that puts an industrial hum in Gandhi's backyard is quietly subsidizing the tax bill and the school budget for homes a mile away that never hear it.
That's the mechanism worth sitting with. Data centers aren't a blanket negative or a blanket positive for Ashburn real estate. They're a redistribution. Homes directly adjacent absorb the noise, the sightlines, and now the possibility of a life-changing buyout or a long wait for one. Homes elsewhere in the same zip codes benefit from the tax base without any of the friction, which is part of why the broader market has stayed competitive even as national headlines emphasize community backlash.
There's a cost on the other side of that ledger too. Virginia's State Corporation Commission approved a Dominion Energy base rate increase of $11.24 per month for the average residential customer in January 2026, a hike widely tied to the grid buildout that data center demand is driving. Every Ashburn homeowner, adjacent to a data center or not, is paying a small piece of that bill each month even while the county-level tax revenue works in their favor. The subsidy runs in more than one direction.
Reading the spread across submarkets
The median doesn't show this, but the submarket breakdown does.
| Area | Recent median sale price | Time window | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| One Loudoun | $1.17 million | Trailing three months, mid-2026 | Up nearly 34% year over year |
| Ashburn overall (all closings) | $675,000 | Six months ending early September 2026 | Broad mix of submarkets and property types |
| Loudoun County overall | Roughly $800,000 average | As of late July 2026 | Roughly flat year over year |
One Loudoun's number is climbing fast because it's the amenity core, walkable retail and restaurants with no data center in view. The Ashburn-wide figure sits well below that because it folds in townhomes, older subdivisions, and yes, homes that back up to server farms. Loudoun County's overall figure lands in between, propped up by exactly the tax-funded infrastructure the data center industry pays for. None of these three numbers contradicts the others. They're describing three different distances from the same fence line.
What this means if you're comparing Ashburn to other options
If you're the kind of buyer who has already looked at Ashburn's median next to Leesburg's or Winchester's and is trying to figure out what the number actually buys, the honest answer is that Ashburn's number buys a wider range of outcomes than most neighborhoods this close to a Metro station. Before you fall in love with a floor plan, it's worth doing a few specific things:
- Ask directly whether the subdivision or an adjacent parcel has received outreach from a data center developer. HOA boards in affected communities have set up dedicated entities for exactly this kind of negotiation, so the information usually exists somewhere in board minutes even if it hasn't hit the news.
- Check whether the parcel in question falls under Loudoun's post-2025 Special Exception process rather than an older by-right approval, since that changes how much runway a neighborhood has before anything gets built.
- Weigh proximity against your own tolerance for noise and industrial views, not against a property value discount, because the evidence so far doesn't show a consistent price penalty for adjacency. It shows a possible windfall on one end and a quieter, unaffected comp sheet on the other.
Agents who have worked this market for years have noted that buyers increasingly raise data center proximity as a question during the closing process, but that it rarely changes their decision to buy. Demand for Ashburn homes has held up even as the conversation around data centers has gotten louder, which tells you the concern is real but not, for most buyers, disqualifying.
FAQ
Does living near a data center lower a home's resale value in Ashburn? The evidence so far doesn't show a clear, consistent discount. Residents in the Regency subdivision, directly bordered by multiple facilities, have pointed to recent sales that haven't reflected a penalty, though there's no independent price index isolating "data center adjacent" homes from the rest of Ashburn's market.
Is the Regency buyout deal actually going to happen? As of late July 2026, no rezoning application had been filed with Loudoun County, and every one of the 143 homeowners has to agree before the deal can proceed. A similar large-scale buyout attempt in Prince William County was unanimously rejected by that county's Board of Supervisors earlier this summer, which suggests approval is not automatic even when homeowners are willing sellers.
How do I find out if a home I'm considering is near a data center or a proposed site? Ask about HOA board communications and any entities set up for developer negotiations, since that's typically where this information surfaces first, often well before a formal application reaches the county.
Does the data center tax base actually lower my property taxes if I buy in Ashburn? Loudoun County's commercial tax base, heavily weighted toward data centers, is a significant reason the county can maintain one of the lowest property tax rates in the region while funding schools and infrastructure. Utility costs are a separate line item and have moved in the opposite direction, with a state-approved base rate increase tied to grid demand taking effect in January 2026.
Ashburn's median tells you what the middle of the market looks like. It won't tell you which side of a specific fence line you're buying into, or whether that line is about to move. That's the kind of read that comes from knowing which subdivisions have had developer conversations, which parcels sit under the new approval process, and which comps actually back up a listing agent's claim that proximity doesn't matter. If you're weighing Ashburn against other Loudoun or Northern Virginia options, Talbot Greenya Group can walk the specific streets and submarkets with you. Get your instant home valuation or schedule a consultation to talk through what a given address's fence line actually means for your decision.
