For brokers advising buyers in affected markets, that retention gap is a data point worth understanding as America’s housing supply shortfall is slowly plateauing after years of sustained growth.
The stability on home values may not hold. The average large data center opening in 2026 draws 60 megawatts of power, up from 24 megawatts in 2018, raising utility, water, and community capacity pressures in markets less organized to respond.
Glen Morgenstern, economist intern at Realtor.com, noted the next wave of host communities “tend to be lower-income, lower-density and farther from a city center, which usually also means fewer resources on hand — fewer attorneys, less organized civic engagement, and housing markets that react more slowly to new information.”
In March, seven major AI companies signed a voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge to absorb new grid infrastructure costs rather than pass them to residential customers, a commitment since expanded to companies representing 80% of US power delivery.
Whether that pledge holds and whether home value stability follows will be an early test for the markets absorbing the next phase of the buildout.Â
