🏠 Will this hurt my property value?

Homeowners reasonably want to know whether nearby industrial-type uses will affect what their property is worth — so here is what the actual research shows, and what the City can do about it.

What does the evidence show? The best available studies do not find data centers lowering nearby home values:

• A George Mason University study of 2023 home sales in Northern Virginia — the country’s largest data-center hub — found homes closer to data centers sold for slightly higher prices on average, not lower, and the pattern held for single-family homes, townhomes, and condos.
• A separate Indiana study comparing homes within about a mile and a half of large data centers (2021–2026) found they appreciated about the same as the surrounding market.

An honest caveat: these are specific markets — Northern Virginia is unusually short on housing, and neither place is rural Kansas — and the researchers themselves caution the results could differ elsewhere. The outcome also depends heavily on siting and design: a facility set well back, screened, and away from neighborhoods is a very different thing from one dropped next to homes. The honest bottom line is that the evidence shows no measurable harm to nearby home values — but it is not a promise your home will be worth more.

A few things that follow from that:

• Siting and screening matter most. The overlay concentrates these uses in a defined area and lets the City require buffers, screening, setbacks, and design standards that reduce visual and nuisance impacts on neighbors.
• Tax base can help residents. New investment in the district can broaden the City’s tax base, which supports services and can ease pressure on residential property taxes.

What the City can require / commit to:

• Landscaped buffers and screening between facilities and residential areas.
• Setbacks and height/lighting standards.
• Concentrating uses where infrastructure already fits, rather than spreading them near homes.

A fiscal or tax-impact estimate for any specific project would be developed and shared as part of that project’s public review.