Mital Gandhi built his backyard in Ashburn's Regency neighborhood for basketball games, cookouts by the fire pit, and pool days with his kids. Thirteen years later, it still works that way, mostly. The exception is a low hum that rolls in from the data centers flanking his subdivision on two sides, the kind of sound people mistake for a neighbor's bass until they realize it never stops. Gandhi is a former HOA president and a real estate developer himself, and this year he started leading an effort to sell all 143 homes in Regency to a company that wants the land for a data center campus. The reported number on the table: $4.4 million per acre.
If you're comparing Ashburn, One Loudoun, and Lansdowne against other Northern Virginia suburbs right now, that story matters more than it looks like it should. Not because your street is about to get a buyout letter. Because the same economic engine behind that offer is also the reason Loudoun County's property tax rate keeps dropping, and county-wide numbers like that one can make every part of Ashburn look equally safe when they aren't.
The Number Every Listing Sheet Leans On
Loudoun's real property tax rate has fallen every single year for a decade, from $1.145 per $100 of assessed value in 2016 to $0.805 per $100 for tax year 2026, according to the county's own data center page. Agents cite it constantly, and for good reason. A shrinking tax rate alongside rising home values is a genuinely rare combination, and it's part of why Loudoun keeps outperforming national appreciation trends.
What that rate doesn't say out loud is where the room to cut it keeps coming from.
What's Actually Funding the Cut
Data centers now generate almost half of Loudoun County's property tax revenue, according to reporting on the county's FY2026 budget from Data Center Frontier. The county's own commercial portfolio was 73 percent data centers in tax year 2025, and that portfolio's value jumped 50 percent in a single year. The Board of Supervisors was confident enough in that growth to lower the rate again for 2026 and 2027, but not so confident that they skipped building a safety net. Loudoun created a Revenue Stabilization Fund specifically because leaders know a tax base this concentrated in one industry can swing hard if that industry cools.
Separately, county assessment data reported by Loudoun Now shows data center land values climbing steadily for five straight years, to the point that they now make up 26 percent of the county's real estate tax base, while residential property's share actually slipped three points to 55 percent even as home values kept climbing. Commercial land countywide, a category increasingly driven by data center sales, now averages $3.76 million per acre, an increase of $1.4 million in a single year. Homebuilders can't compete with that math, which is part of why new construction in Loudoun slowed last year even with demand still strong.
None of this is bad news by itself. It's context. The tax rate on your listing sheet is a countywide average built on a foundation that's growing narrower and more concentrated every year, and that foundation happens to sit directly underneath the neighborhoods this brand markets most.
Two Letters, Same Corridor
Here's where it gets specific to Ashburn. The same industry funding that tax relief is also actively deciding, block by block, whether a given street becomes a windfall or a headache.
Regency is the windfall version. The HOA has set up an LLC to negotiate on behalf of the neighborhood, and the deal would still need Loudoun's Board of Supervisors to approve rezoning the land, a step that isn't guaranteed even with every homeowner on board. Prince William County spent this summer showing exactly how uncertain that approval process can be, and the fight over a much larger data center corridor there only resolved in July when the developer dropped its appeal.
A few miles up the Dulles Greenway in Sterling, homeowners in the Trailside HOA are living the other version. Their neighborhood sits next to a Vantage Data Centers facility on Glenn Drive, the first in Loudoun to generate its own power on site using eight natural gas turbines that run around the clock. Residents describe a constant tonal hum loud enough that many now keep decibel meter apps on their phones. Loudoun's noise ordinance caps industrial sound at 55 decibels measured at the residential property line, but this spring, Supervisor Mike Turner acknowledged on the record that the rule wasn't written with this kind of narrow-band hum in mind, and said he'd like to see the threshold lowered.
| Regency (Ashburn) | Trailside (Sterling) | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | Data center developer land offer | Existing data center campus, on-site power generation |
| Reported dollar impact | ~$4.4 million per acre offered | Ongoing noise disputes, no buyout on the table |
| Current status | HOA-formed LLC negotiating; county rezoning approval still required | County reviewing noise ordinance changes |
Same corridor, same underlying industry, two completely different outcomes for the people living there. That split is the part a countywide tax rate can never show you.
Why the Sale Price on the Portal Can't See It Either
The price data backs this up in a smaller, quieter way. One Loudoun's average sale price sat at $1.17 million as of July 2026, up 33.7 percent year over year on tracked MLS data, a jump driven in part by its dense mix of walkable retail and newer luxury inventory. At the same time, the broader Ashburn area's home value index was $801,415 as of July 31, 2026, down slightly, about 0.4 percent, from a year earlier.
Those are two different geographies inside the same zip code family, and they're moving in opposite directions. If you're only looking at "Ashburn" as one line, you'd miss that the walkable core is pulling away from the surrounding suburban tracts entirely. Data center exposure adds another layer underneath that same split. A home a quarter mile from a planned substation and a home inside a mixed-use town center both get filed under "Ashburn" on a national portal, and neither the tax rate nor the median price tells you which one you're actually buying.
What to Actually Check Before You Write an Offer
For a buyer or seller in this specific submarket, the diligence list needs an extra layer that most Loudoun transactions didn't require ten years ago:
- Ask whether the parcel or an adjacent one has any pending rezoning application tied to data center or utility use, and check the Board of Supervisors' public meeting records directly rather than relying on a listing description
- Review HOA governing documents for any assemblage or bulk-sale provisions, the kind Regency's HOA used to set up its negotiating LLC
- Ask directly whether the county's noise ordinance review, prompted by disputes like Trailside's, has touched the specific district your home sits in
- Check Dominion Energy's published transmission corridor plans for the area, since new substations and high-voltage lines tend to follow data center growth
- Compare recent closed sales at the sub-neighborhood level, not the zip code level, before trusting any single "Ashburn" comp
None of this requires legal or investment advice from an agent. It requires knowing which questions this specific corridor makes worth asking, and asking them before you're already under contract.
Lansdowne's Version of the Same Lesson
Lansdowne shows the same principle from a different angle. The friction there rarely has anything to do with data centers. It's fee layering. A Lansdowne Woods condo listing can carry a monthly fee north of $1,300, split across several line items, the unit's own condo fee, plus a separate HOA fee covering the clubhouse, grounds, and security for the surrounding community. Two properties with the same square footage and the same list price can carry very different carrying costs depending on which fee structure attaches to them.
The specifics change from Ashburn to Lansdowne. The lesson doesn't. A single neighborhood-level number, whether it's a tax rate, a median price, or an advertised HOA fee, is never granular enough to tell you what you're actually buying into.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Does living near a data center automatically lower a home's value in Loudoun County? Not automatically. Countywide, home values have stayed strong even as the data center footprint has grown, and some properties near the industry have sold at prices that track regional demand rather than proximity concerns. The exceptions tend to cluster around active noise or construction disputes, like Trailside's, where residents report the issue affecting how they use their own property day to day.
How would I even find out if a parcel near a home I'm considering could be redeveloped? Start with the Board of Supervisors' public meeting agendas and any pending rezoning applications for the district. HOA governing documents are the other place to look, since an assemblage effort like Regency's typically shows up there before it shows up anywhere else.
Should I avoid Ashburn or One Loudoun because of this? That's a personal call tied to your own priorities, not a blanket answer. The point isn't that Data Center Alley makes the area risky. It's that the risk and the upside both vary block by block in a way no single county statistic captures, so the diligence needs to happen at that same block level.
Loudoun's tax rate really is falling, and Ashburn's demand really is holding up better than most of the region. Both of those things are true at the same time as a handful of specific streets negotiating buyouts and a handful of others pushing the county to rewrite its noise ordinance. If you're weighing a purchase or a sale anywhere between One Loudoun, Ashburn, and Lansdowne and want someone who tracks which side of that line a specific address falls on, The Local Group works this corridor block by block, not just by the countywide average. Get Your Home Value, and let's talk about what's actually underneath it.
