The Last Time the 10-Year Was Here

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

Issue #71 | October 4, 2026

🧠 Market Insights

The Last Time the 10-Year Was Here

On October 1, the 10-year Treasury hit 5.3%. That’s the highest since 2002. It capped the biggest quarterly jump since 1994. In late February the 10-year sat under 4%.

Lenders felt it fast. AEW Capital COO Lauren O’Neil said a 75 basis point move in 30 days chills the whole market. Justin Piasecki of George Smith Partners put it plainly: borrowers have to refinance or sell at today’s price, not yesterday’s.

So what did data center dirt look like the last time the 10-year sat here?

Ashburn, Virginia. AOL opened its headquarters there in 1996. Fiber went in the ground. Developers built data centers ahead of demand. Then the dot-com bubble popped.

The Loudoun Exchange campus went up in 2001. After the crash, it couldn’t find tenants. Loudoun’s economic development chief, Buddy Rizer, has pointed to three data centers from that first boom that sat empty for years. Digital Realty bought the Loudoun Exchange buildings in 2007 for $62.5 million.

Today, county figures put data-center-zoned land in Loudoun at $2 to $3 million an acre. Other land runs $200,000 to $300,000.

Same county. Same fiber. The location was right in 2002. The timing was wrong.

Here’s what that means for dirt. Land doesn’t pay rent. It can’t carry a loan at 5.3% on its own. Data center land sales hit $3.3 billion in Q1, up 141% from a year earlier, per Avison Young data reported by Bisnow. Colliers’ Anne Dempsey warned then that deals stop making sense when the land basis runs too high. Lenders now say deals that worked a month ago may not pencil today.

🐾 Dirt Dawg Take

Rates don’t kill good dirt. They test who can afford to hold it.

Ashburn was the right dirt in 2002. It paid the owners who could wait, not the ones who had to sell.

✨ The Alpha Effect

Wrong Timing Isn’t Wrong Land

Buddy Rizer once pointed out his office window at three data centers from the first boom. They sat empty for years.

Plenty of people looked at those buildings and saw a mistake. Rizer saw a market that wasn’t ready yet. He kept selling Loudoun anyway.

That’s the hard part of a rate shock. It makes everything look wrong at once. Your land. Your price. Your plan.

Some of it is wrong. Some of it is only early. The pros sort the two before they act.

A bad asset gets worse with time. A good asset in a bad market just needs time. Sell the good one in a panic and you lock in a loss nobody forced on you. Hold the bad one out of pride and you lose slower.

So be honest about which one you own. That takes nerve when the headlines are loud.

Don’t confuse a bad week with a bad asset.

🚀 One Step at a Time

Action Steps This Week

1. Price One More Year of Waiting

Add up what holding your land costs for twelve months: property taxes, insurance, upkeep, and interest if there’s a loan. Then add what your land’s value would earn sitting in Treasuries at today’s rates. That’s your real carry. Know the number before a buyer asks you to wait on them.

2. Ask Your Buyer What Changed

If you have land under contract, option, or LOI, call the buyer this week. Ask whether the deal still works with a 5.3% 10-year, and whether debt or cash funds the close. A fast, clear answer means they’re still in. A vague one means start a backup list.

3. Study Your County’s Last Reset

Pull land sales in your county from 2008 through 2012 at the register of deeds or the appraisal district. Note how far prices fell and how many years they took to come back. That’s your real downside. It beats any forecast you’ll read this week.

Small steps compound. Rates move. Good dirt outlasts them.

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

from the dirt up.

Kris “Dirt Dawg” McGee 🐾

The Dirt Dawg Den