Mital Gandhi built his backyard for basketball games, cookouts by the fire pit, and pool days with his kids. Thirteen years after moving into the Regency, a subdivision of roughly 143 homes off Waxpool Road, that backyard still works the way he planned it. Most of the time. Standing by the pool, he described a low hum that visitors mistake for bass from a stereo. It's not. It's the data centers flanking his neighborhood on two sides, part of what's often called the largest concentration of data centers in the world.
That hum is also, indirectly, why Gandhi's name showed up in headlines across the region this year. As a former HOA president and a real estate developer himself, he's leading an effort to sell the entire 143-home neighborhood to a company that wants to build a data center campus on the land. The reported numbers are the kind that stop conversations: roughly $4 million per household, or by another accounting, $4.4 million per acre across the site's roughly 130 acres, landing somewhere near $576 million total.
If you own a home anywhere near Loudoun County's Data Center Alley, you've probably heard some version of this story secondhand. The number is the part everyone repeats. It's not the part that matters most if you're actually trying to sell a house in this corridor.
The Signature Every Single Neighbor Has to Give
Here's the detail that gets lost between the dollar figure and the headline: Regency sits on land that is still zoned residential. Any application to rezone it for data center use requires every single homeowner to agree and sign on. Not a majority. Not enough to reach a supermajority threshold. Every one of the 143 owners.
Broad Run District Supervisor Sylvia Glass, whose district includes Regency, confirmed her office is aware developers have reached out to the community and that she's spoken with residents. She was also clear that no rezoning application has actually been submitted to the county, and that she isn't involved in whatever private negotiations the community may be having.
That single-signature requirement is the whole ballgame. It's why, as of March 2026, current HOA president Kevin McCaughey stated on the record that there is currently no offer to purchase Regency homes for data center development, calling reports to the contrary categorically inaccurate. Some residents told local reporters the original proposal wouldn't move forward because not enough of their neighbors could agree on terms. Others said they'd rejected it outright but remained open to some other arrangement down the road.
Gandhi, for his part, doesn't dispute the friction. Asked directly what happens to the homeowners who don't want to sell, he didn't have a ready answer.
"That's a good question," he said. "I don't know."
That's not a rhetorical shrug. It's the actual, unresolved center of this deal. A structure built on unanimous consent has no clean mechanism for the holdout, and in a 143-household subdivision, it only takes one.
Why Even a Unanimous Neighborhood Can Still Lose
Suppose Regency somehow gets every signature. The path still isn't guaranteed to end in a sale. Loudoun County eliminated by-right approval for data centers in the first half of 2025, which means every new project now requires a Special Exception granted by the Board of Supervisors, a legislative vote rather than an administrative sign-off. That change alone adds a public hearing and a political decision to what used to be closer to a formality.
There's also a live precedent for what happens when landowners agree but the county doesn't. In Prince William County, more than 200 landowners tried to sell their properties for a proposed campus called the Dulles South Innovation Center, spanning nearly 2,000 acres, which would have been the largest data center development in that county's history. Every one of those owners wanted the deal. The county's Board of Supervisors rejected it anyway, unanimously.
Regency is a fraction of that size, but the same hurdle applies. Full agreement among neighbors gets a proposal to the county's front door. It doesn't get it through.
| Regency (Ashburn) | Dulles South Innovation Center (Prince William) | |
|---|---|---|
| Landowners involved | ~143 households | 200+ |
| Acreage | ~130 acres | ~2,000 acres |
| Reported deal value | ~$576 million | Not publicly disclosed |
| Owner consent | Required unanimous, not yet reached | Landowners in agreement |
| County outcome | No application filed as of mid-2026 | Rejected unanimously by supervisors |
None of this is happening in a policy vacuum, either. Loudoun's Commissioner of the Revenue reported to the Board of Supervisors that data center land now makes up 26% of the county's entire real estate tax base, even as data center land values keep climbing and residential land's share of that base has actually ticked down. Separately, county officials project data centers will generate about $1.3 billion in real and personal property taxes for fiscal year 2027, close to 40% of the county's total budget. Supervisors are currently weighing whether to end grandfathered protections for 17 pending data center applications representing about 11 million square feet, a debate some board members warn could expose the county to hundreds of millions in litigation if it goes wrong. Every one of those numbers is a reminder that the county has enormous financial incentive to keep saying yes to data centers in general, and no obligation to say yes to any specific rezoning, including one built around a subdivision full of family homes.
What This Actually Means If You're Selling One House, Not 143
If you live near this corridor and you're not part of an active assemblage effort, the Regency story isn't really your story. It's tempting to read $4 million headlines and wonder whether your own home near a data center is secretly worth more, or whether proximity is quietly working against you. The research on that question points in a specific direction: an analysis of thousands of Northern Virginia home sales by George Mason University found that homes located closer to data centers tended to sell for higher prices, not lower, and that pattern held across single-family homes, townhomes, and condos. The explanation isn't the buildings themselves. It's that data centers get built where infrastructure, roads, and utilities are already strong, and those same factors already drive value in Northern Virginia.
So the assemblage story and the ordinary resale story are two different conversations happening in the same zip code. One is about a rare, difficult, unresolved effort to convert an entire neighborhood's zoning through unanimous agreement and a legislative vote that has already failed once nearby. The other is about pricing a single home correctly given the location it already has, which the data suggests is not a liability.
Before You List Near Data Center Alley
A few things worth confirming before you put a home on the market anywhere in this corridor:
- Ask whether your specific subdivision has an HOA-formed entity or committee currently in negotiations with a developer. Regency's HOA reportedly set up a separate LLC for exactly this purpose, so it would show up in HOA meeting minutes or communications, not rumor.
- Confirm with the county whether any rezoning or Special Exception application has actually been filed for your area. As of the most recent reporting, none had been filed for Regency, meaning anything discussed remains speculative rather than pending.
- Don't price your listing around the possibility of a future buyout. These deals require unanimous participation and a legislative approval that a comparable, larger effort in Prince William County did not survive.
- Do ask what an NDA might mean for your neighbors' willingness to talk. Gandhi wouldn't confirm deal specifics to reporters, citing exactly this kind of agreement, which means even attentive neighbors may not have the full picture.
A Few Questions Worth Asking
Could my neighborhood get a similar offer? Possibly, if it sits inside the established fiber and power footprint developers are targeting. But the Regency situation shows how rarely these efforts reach a signed, filed application even when a motivated organizer is pushing for one.
Does living near a data center hurt my home's value? The George Mason University analysis found the opposite pattern across the region, with proximity correlating to higher, not lower, sale prices.
What happens to someone who won't sell in an assemblage like this? Nobody involved in the Regency effort, including the person leading it, has offered a clear answer. That uncertainty is itself useful information for any homeowner asked to consider a similar arrangement.
If you're weighing a sale anywhere in Loudoun County, from the Ashburn corridor to the horse country further west, Brian MacMahon can walk through what the data actually says about your specific street, not just the headline your neighbor forwarded you. Request a free home valuation or schedule a consultation to get a clear, current read on your property before you make any decision.
