If You Entitle It, They Will Come: How Powered Land Plugs CRE Into The Data Center Boom

Data center developers and tech companies are increasingly running up against a growing tide of community and legislative pushback, endangering plans for future expansion of the current CRE wünderkind. 

But major CRE companies are investing now to safeguard possibilities for data center development later. With so-called “powered land” plays, landlords and brokerages are working ahead, getting infrastructure and approvals in place to pave the way for the artificial intelligence arms race.

“Thirty years ago, the constraint was the building,” Hines Chief Investment Officer David Steinbach said. “Today, the constraint is megawatts and entitlements.”

Nearly 100 gigawatts of new data centers are expected to be added between 2026 and 2030, equating to about $1.2T in real estate value creation globally, according to a new JLL report. Tech giants such as Meta, which in November announced plans for $600B of data center spending in three years, are responsible for the bulk of the new projects.

Hyperscalers Amazon and Google also have huge projects underway, including a $3B facility in Mississippi and $40B in new data centers planned in Texas, respectively.

But energy availability has emerged as a crucial bottleneck to data center development, and states and municipalities are increasingly resistant to the massive projects entering their communities.

Hines research suggests roughly 20,000 acres of powered land is occupied by operational data centers globally, and roughly 40,000 more will be needed in the next five years to keep pace with demand. 

In Atlanta, the average grid connection lead time for a 50-megawatt data center has stretched to five years, according to JLL. And in the 2025 election, Georgia voters elected Democrats to the Public Service Commission for the first time in years in a move seen as a rebuke of data centers.

By purchasing land, outfitting it with the needed power and securing necessary entitlements, CRE companies offer a way over those obstacles while adding value to the property and aiding tech companies that are often unfamiliar with the ins and outs of local development.

“These companies are not infrastructure companies, they're software companies,” said Everett Thompson, CEO of WiredRE Development Corp. “What they really want is just the easy button.”

Thompson, whose firm is looking to buy enough land across the nation for 10 GW of development — roughly equal to New York City and San Diego combined at peak power demand — believes offering multiple options, and a platform for purchasing, can help simplify the process for Big Tech buyers. 

Competitors in the space include everyone from small regional buyers to the world’s largest real estate brokerages and service firms. Companies such as JLL and CBRE have heavily invested in powered land plays as part of their push to become bigger players in more parts of the data center life cycle.

JLL has roughly 100 staffers working on powered land, and CBRE said a portion of its 6,000-person worldwide data center team is also working on this asset type. 

Developing the massive data centers needed today, which includes lines of credit for power hookups that can reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, requires Big Tech-size bankrolls. But powered land offers a way for CRE to get involved in the land rush without needing so much capital on hand.

In addition, the strategy allows companies to take part in the data center boom but offers freedom to pivot if market conditions change. Although the demand for AI seems insatiable, some are raising the possibility of a bubble. 

Sixty-three percent of respondents in a survey released this week by law firm Foley & Lardner anticipate a “strategic correction” in the data center space by 2030. The presence of a bubble in the space is a matter of debate among executives and investors, but powered land offers an out if the market is overinflated.

The parcels can be used for industrial development or even facilities for mining bitcoin as an alternative.

Purchasing and prepping this land isn’t easy. The total timeline from acquisition to being shovel-ready can be three to seven years, JLL Technology Service Group Vice President Jason Bell said. 

That preparation includes detailed power load studies that can take up to a year and may require the installation of new transmission lines and substations, detailed environmental studies of the land and capital commitments from end users. 

“Any advantage you have in speed creates a massive advantage in terms of the end-user wanting that capacity, and being willing to pay more to acquire or lease those powered land opportunities,” Newmark Executive Managing Director of Data Center and Digital Infrastructure Capital Markets Brent Mayo said.

That doesn’t even begin to factor in community approvals. Climate change publication Heatmap recently found 25 data center projects were canceled due to local pushback in 2025, four times the number the year before, with Virginia and Indiana tying for the most cancellations because of local opposition.

Due to these difficulties and demand, the cost of land has also skyrocketed in recent years, as landowners have become wise to the wild amounts of funding directed toward AI infrastructure. An Amazon deal for 189 acres in northern Virginia last November hit $700M.

“It's definitely more expensive,” Thompson said. “Everybody's swinging for the fences.”

Property that might have gone for $10K to $30K an acre before the data center rush heated up now trades between $200K and $1M an acre, Bell said. 

The geographic playing field has grown increasingly, as recent deals in Wyoming, such as the 2.7 GW project Jade, have shown. Activity has spread to new corridors where grid operators are more proactive, Steinbach said. Europe is becoming a bigger target, and Google is even rolling out data centers in space.

Even as power sources evolve in this ultracompetitive and very high-tech real estate niche, powered land plays leverage CRE companies with the right connections to perform an end-run around the mounting challenges for data centers.

“What matters in that environment is having a local footprint and real relationships,” Steinbach said. “This is not a remote underwriting exercise. You need people on the ground who understand local utilities, zoning processes and community dynamics.”