Where you can own a data center (or at least a piece)

Anita Verma-Lallian scouts out land nobody wants and turns it into real estate’s hottest asset: data centers. “Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are running into a massive bottleneck: lots of demand for computer power and very little supply,” she explains. “That’s what makes this such an interesting opportunity now.” Here’s where she finds acreage that data center companies are dying to develop, why Phoenix could be the next Data Center Alley, and how anyone can buy in.

Getting started: “In 2019, a lot of companies were moving to Phoenix, and I saw so many properties that I knew would appreciate quickly,” Verma-Lallian says. “I didn’t have millions of dollars, so I went to my network of friends and family and started pulling together capital to buy $1 to $2 million properties where each person invests $50,000 to $100,000.”

Her market’s pros: “Power infrastructure is now the single biggest gating factor for data centers,” she says. “Phoenix is located near the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, the largest nuclear facility in the country. And Arizona is largely free from natural disasters, which matters for these facilities.” Verma-Lallian recently purchased a 2,000-acre site for $40 million and sold it to data center developer Tract for $136 million. “And that was just with zoning in place,” she says. “Now, we’re working on sites where we’re getting the power infrastructure in place. And land with power is no longer selling per acre: It’s selling per megawatt, with prices as high as $1 million per megawatt.”

The cons: “About 40% of all data centers are getting shut down right now because of community opposition,” she says. “You really need to be strategic about picking locations where they’re welcomed. It’s just not the best use of anyone’s time to force a data center into a community that doesn’t want it.” In Phoenix, Verma-Lallian has gotten more pushback. But nearby Buckeye has rolled out the welcome mat. “The project we just did with Tract, at full build-out, is going to generate hundreds of millions in tax revenue for Buckeye—money they can use to build roads, schools, freeways,” she says.

Her advice: “Land gets overlooked by investors because it’s cost-prohibitive. The way I’d recommend someone get started is by being a fractional owner,” says Verma-Lallian, whose company, Arizona Land Consulting, welcomes accredited investors. “Find a developer you trust and get behind their project.”