You Don't Need Power to Get Paid on a Data Center

Real Estate Insights. Success Mindset. One Step at a Time.

Issue #69 | September 20, 2026

Everyone chasing the data center boom is hunting for power. Meanwhile, one-fifth of new demand for industrial yards is coming from the people building the campuses. No amps required.

🧠 Market Insights

You Don't Need Power to Get Paid on a Data Center

Land investors, landowners, and developers all run the same screen. Find dirt with real power capacity and a substation nearby, or don't bother. That's one game. A good one. It's also small and crowded.

There's a second game, and the numbers got hard to ignore this month. Data center developers now account for about 20% of new demand for industrial outdoor storage, according to Max Heiden of Catalyst Investment Partners, as reported by Bisnow and CRE Daily.

Analysts file these under industrial outdoor storage, but a modern yard is more than open ground. Fenced. Paved or compacted. Built for truck access. Some have security.

Developers don't need power or compute from a yard. They need a secure place to stage construction, park equipment, and stack materials before it all goes into the building next door. A campus takes years to build, and that whole time the yard is working. Contractors upgrading transmission lines may need space for wire spools too.

The capital is paying attention. Per Matthews, institutions now make up 45% of investment in the sector, up from 30% four years ago. Investment hit $14 billion to $16 billion in 2025, up 15%. CBRE has national yard vacancy at 3.6% against 6.5% for industrial overall. Heiden expects twice as many portfolio sales this year as last.

The tech companies are in it too. Google and Microsoft have invested in yard sites to support their data center plans. Meta's $1.2 billion Idaho campus, which just opened, sits on a land assemblage that included outdoor storage.

Here's the catch: trucking, the traditional yard tenant, is in a prolonged contraction. A driver shortage and high diesel prices have some carriers canceling parking leases. Data center demand and a chronic shortage of yards are keeping the sector tight anyway.

Dirt Dawg Take

Most landowners write themselves out of this boom the second they learn their parcel has no power. That's the wrong test. Power gets you a data center. Close and zoned gets you a yard, and a yard has tenants today. The entitlement path to a yard is a lot shorter than the path to a powered shell.

✨ The Alpha Effect

Don't Rule Out Your Own Dirt

Most landowners lose this boom before it starts. Nobody turns them down. They turn themselves down.

They hear data center, check for power, see none, and walk away. The decision takes ten seconds and feels like realism. Underneath it is a belief: if my dirt isn't the headline, it doesn't count.

Ego is part of that. Everybody wants to own the asset in the press release. Nobody daydreams about owning the yard down the road. But that yard has tenants, income, and institutional money competing to buy it.

Then there's the crowd. When everyone runs the same screen, it stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like the only game. So you grade your own dirt on a test that was never built for it, and you conclude it fails.

The people I respect don't need to be the star of the boom. They're comfortable standing next to the action if the action pays. They're also willing to ask a question that most people skip: what have I ruled out that I never actually tested?

Don't rule out your own dirt before the market has looked at it.

🚀 One Step at a Time

Action Steps This Week

1. Draw a Circle Around a Data Center

Pick one data center under construction in your market and draw a circle five to ten miles out. Then look up the zoning yourself on your city or county zoning map and code. Find out whether outdoor storage is permitted, conditional, or not allowed. If you can't tell, call a broker.

2. Pull the Permit Records

Building and site permits show what's being built, how big it is, and often who the general contractor is. A large campus with a long construction schedule means yard demand that lasts for years.

3. Check Demand Inside the Circle

Search commercial listing sites for yards and outdoor storage for lease inside your circle. Note the asking rents and how long listings sit. Then ask a broker what has leased near the build in the past year, and at what rate.

Small steps compound. Some of the best dirt in this boom is sitting one exit away from the headline.

Here's to building your success, one step at a time...

from the dirt up.

Kris "Dirt Dawg" McGee 🐾

The Dirt Dawg Den