Data Center Land Values in Northern Virginia: What the Deals Actually Show

The Price Ladder: What Developers Have Actually Paid

Figures are drawn from county assessment records and local press reporting. For contrast, Virginia's statewide average agricultural land value is about $5,434 per acre, per a 2023 Virginia Cooperative Extension survey — a fraction of even the lowest number on this list.

The Records Aren't the Average

The $6.3 million-per-acre Leesburg sale and the $4.4 million-per-acre Ashburn assemblage offer are the two most eye-catching numbers on this list, and they're also the least representative. Both are single, extraordinary transactions in the most infrastructure-dense part of Loudoun County. The more useful benchmark for what data-center-zoned land is actually worth across the county is the $3.76 million-per-acre average from Loudoun's February 2026 assessment — still an enormous number next to ordinary farmland, but a truer picture of what a typical qualifying parcel commands rather than what the single best-located property fetched.

The same caution applies at the low end. The Pageland Lane figures reflect option pricing for an assemblage that ultimately failed, not a completed sale on the open market. A number from a deal that didn't close tells you something different than a number from a deal that did, and it's worth reading every figure on this page with that context attached.

Why the Numbers Are So Far Apart

A seven-figure gap between Pageland Lane and Leesburg isn't a typo — it reflects three different things: power, zoning, and policy.

Power is the biggest driver. Loudoun County sits at the center of the region's transmission and substation infrastructure, built up over two decades of data-center growth — that's a large part of why Loudoun's county-wide average for data-center-zoned land reached $3.76 million per acre in the February 2026 assessment, and why a single Leesburg parcel changed hands at roughly $6.3 million per acre. Fauquier and Prince William have far less of that infrastructure in place, so land there commands less even when a project moves forward.

Zoning and policy matter just as much. Culpeper's roughly 690-acre Technology Zone allows data centers by-right, which keeps deals moving inside that footprint. Fauquier, by contrast, now requires a special exception for any data-center building over 50,000 square feet near Vint Hill, and the Town of Warrenton removed data centers as a by-right industrial use in July 2025 — friction that keeps Fauquier's numbers well below Loudoun's even at a record sale like Vint Hill's $1.9 million per acre. And Prince William's Pageland Lane number is lowest of all because that deal never survived the approval process — landowners were paid option-era pricing for an assemblage that courts ultimately voided.

Why Most Farmland Will Never See These Prices

Every number on the price ladder above belongs to a parcel that had power access, zoning support, highway frontage, and often years of assemblage work behind it. That combination is rare. Most Virginia farmland has none of it — no nearby substation with spare capacity, no by-right path, no adjoining parcels already under option. For a full walkthrough of what actually makes a parcel a candidate, see our data center land guide.

That's not a reason for pessimism about ordinary land values. It's just a different market with different math, and it's worth keeping the two separate in your head before you start pricing your own property off a headline.

The Two-Market Reality

Ordinary rural land in this region appreciates the way land usually does — steadily, not explosively. Loudoun's 2026 assessment put rural land appreciation at roughly 5.9% to 8.6% for the year, which is a solid return but nowhere near what a data-center-zoned parcel commands (see our Loudoun land value page). Fauquier's vacant-land median sold price was about $432,000 in the third quarter of 2025, across roughly 90 to 100 land sales a year (Fauquier land value page). Culpeper's median runs about $39,000 per acre across recorded land sales (Culpeper land value page). Prince William's vacant-land median sold price is around $165,000 to $175,000, with 71% of sales under five acres.

Parcels with a genuine data-center path reprice at 10 to 100 times ordinary agricultural value. Parcels without one are still part of a normal, functioning land market — just a much less dramatic one.

What Changed in 2026

This year reshaped the data-center land map in Northern Virginia. Loudoun's Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 to have staff draft a pause option on new applications, with a report due September 15, 2026 — though the County Attorney has cautioned that a full moratorium is likely not legal under Virginia's Dillon Rule. The PW Digital Gateway, once the region's largest pending assemblage at roughly 2,100 acres, is dead: the Court of Appeals affirmed the voided rezoning in March 2026, and the developer withdrew in July. Prince William also denied a second large proposal, Dulles Cloud South, on about 2,000 acres, on July 9, 2026.

Fauquier's special-exception requirement for large data-center buildings near Vint Hill, adopted in March 2024, has continued to shape what gets proposed there, and Culpeper's Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 in April 2026 to oppose the Valley Link 765kV transmission line planned near Richardsville — a sign that even a county with a by-right technology zone is drawing lines around new infrastructure.

Stafford, Spotsylvania, and Orange counties are moving in the same direction as Loudoun and Prince William — freezing pipelines or removing by-right approval for new data-center applications — and a statewide moratorium push is active in Richmond. If that momentum continues, the counties represented on this price ladder may not be the only ones rewriting their rules before this list gets its next entry.

How to Think About Your Own Parcel

Start with the same questions a developer would ask: how close is the nearest substation with spare capacity, is there highway access, what's the zoning, and how much contiguous acreage do you actually have. If the honest answer is that your land is a normal farm five or ten miles from any of that infrastructure, treat these numbers as market context, not a preview of what your property is worth.

If your land does sit near a substation, inside a mapped technology zone, or next to an active assemblage, the range on this page is a starting point for a conversation, not a number to expect automatically — every deal above took specific site conditions and years of approvals to reach. For county-by-county sold data on ordinary land, see our land value page; for what an actual offer or option agreement involves, see what a data center offer really means.