How are data centers affecting the Fort Worth housing market?
Two things are true at once, and most of what you’ll read online picks one and ignores the other. Fort Worth is in the middle of a real and fast-moving regulatory fight over data centers — the City Council voted unanimously on August 11, 2026 to start a moratorium, with a final ordinance scheduled for February 2027. But there is no reliable evidence telling you what a nearby data center does to one specific home’s value, and the research that exists is split. So the useful question isn’t “what will this do to prices.” It’s what is actually proposed near the address you care about, what stage it’s at, and what you can still do about it.
By Eric Duran, The Fort Real Estate | October 7, 2026
A client asked me this a couple of weeks ago, almost word for word: how are data centers affecting the Fort Worth market?
It’s a fair question and a hard one to answer honestly, because the honest answer has two halves that pull in opposite directions. The civic story is enormous and well documented. The property-value story is not documented at all — not in the way anyone quoting you a percentage would need it to be.
So let’s take them separately, and then get to the part you can actually act on.
What’s Actually Happening in Fort Worth
This is the part with a paper trail, and it’s worth knowing the dates because they matter to anyone buying in the next year.
On August 11, 2026, the City Council took three votes. It approved unanimously the first step toward a 90-day moratorium on data center construction. It voted 10-1 to require developers to show proof of grid approval from the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT. And it voted 10-1 to create a Data Center & Infrastructure Committee to study noise, water supply, building scale, mechanical infrastructure, and land-use compatibility.
The calendar runs well into next year. Committee findings were due November 3, 2026, with a first public hearing November 10, a second on January 5, 2027, and final adoption scheduled for February 16, 2027 — which requires a three-fourths supermajority of the council. The 90-day moratorium window runs from February 16 to May 17, 2027, extendable once. After one moratorium, Texas law bars another for two years.
Here is the practical consequence, and it’s the single most useful thing on this page for a buyer right now: the moratorium is not in effect. It is months away, it requires a supermajority that isn’t guaranteed, and it exempts applications filed before it takes effect, along with projects in the extraterritorial jurisdiction and some that use city water outside the city limits. Do not plan a purchase around the assumption that a pause will stop something near you. Dates and ordinance language can change — check the current status rather than trusting this paragraph in six months.
Where the projects actually are. The largest is Black Mountain’s roughly $10 billion, 187-acre project in southeast Fort Worth, south of Lon Stephenson Road, east of Forest Hill Drive, and west of Anglin Drive. The council approved its site plan 7-4 on August 25, 2026, after the plan was revised from 18 buildings and about three million square feet down to four buildings and just over one million, with maximum height raised from 55 to 70 feet and the setback from homes increased from 150 feet to 300. In north Fort Worth, a $430 million, 156,500-square-foot Colovore project is planned at 14700 Heritage Parkway in AllianceTexas, with construction slated to begin in December.
Worth saying plainly, because it’s what most of my clients are really asking: the active projects are in southeast and far north Fort Worth. Neither is in the established neighborhoods west of downtown — 76107, 76109, or 76116. That could change, and the citywide ordinance will apply everywhere, but as of today the proposals are not there.
There’s a state layer too. On August 3, 2026, Gov. Greg Abbott called for an audit of every data center in the ERCOT interconnection queue, and ERCOT delayed its Batch Zero transmission planning study two days later. Abbott put the queue at roughly 474 gigawatts — more than five times the state’s record peak demand — and said about 90 percent of the requests were data centers.
What the Research Says About Home Values, and Why It Can’t Answer Your Question
The National Association of REALTORS® published a Data Center Impact Report on September 9, 2026. It is the most serious attempt at this question so far, and it does not deliver the clean answer either side wants.
The county-level figures look dramatic. In counties with ten or more data centers, median home value was $431,750, against $174,500 in counties with none. Over a decade, the first group appreciated 95% and the second 64%.
Read that carefully, because it is the most misused statistic in this whole debate. That is a finding about where data centers get built — large, growing metros with power, fiber, and land, which already had higher home values and faster growth before anyone poured a slab. It is not a finding about what a data center does to the street it sits on. Anyone showing you those numbers as proof your value will rise is misreading them, and so is anyone running the argument in reverse.
NAR’s own survey of its members lands exactly where you’d expect given that: about half of commercial REALTORS® reported higher nearby property values. Which means about half didn’t. The professionals closest to these transactions do not agree with each other.
So I’m not going to give you a number. Not up, not down. What I can tell you is what clients consistently raise — energy and water use are the dominant concerns in NAR’s findings, and they were the dominant themes at Fort Worth’s own hearings too. If those matter to you, they’re worth weighing directly rather than through a proxy guess about resale.
This is the same discipline I applied when I wrote about whether it’s a bad time to buy in Fort Worth: market data is worth a great deal when you read what it actually measures, and worth less than nothing when you stretch it past that.
What You Can Actually Verify Before You Write an Offer
This part is concrete, and it’s where the value is.
- Look the address up in the city’s zoning cases. Fort Worth publishes cases by council district, numbered in the form ZC-26-### and posted as PDFs, and you can enter an address into the city’s zoning map to find its district and any case attached to it. The posted list is informational and is not the official commission agenda — check the city calendar for posted agendas. Development Services takes questions at zoninglanduse@fortworthtexas.gov or 817-392-8028.
- Check the stage, not just whether something exists. A filed application, a zoning commission recommendation, and a council vote are three very different levels of certainty. The Black Mountain plan changed substantially between filing and approval — eighteen buildings became four, and the setback from homes doubled. A proposal is not a project.
- Use your option period for this. The termination option is the window Texas gives you to do exactly this kind of homework and walk if you don’t like what you find. It’s the same approach I lay out for verifying a school attendance zone before you offer — confirm the public record yourself, in writing, while you still have an exit.
- Selling near a proposed site? Talk to your broker about disclosure before you list. The Texas Seller’s Disclosure Notice under Property Code §5.008 asks what you actually know about the property and its conditions. I’m not going to tell you in a blog post whether a particular proposal two streets over is a required disclosure — that depends on specifics and it’s a question for your broker and, where it’s close, a real estate attorney. What I will say is that the instinct to disclose what you know is almost always the cheaper instinct. The disclosure obligations that come with selling in Texas are worth understanding before you’re under contract, not after.
- If you’re already listed nearby, watch the showing feedback, not the headlines. Local news cycles and buyer behavior are not the same thing. What matters is whether showings are happening and what buyers say afterward, which is the same diagnostic I’d run on any listing that’s stalling.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a data center moratorium in Fort Worth right now?
No. The City Council voted unanimously on August 11, 2026 to begin the process, but the moratorium itself is scheduled to start February 16, 2027 and run 90 days, after public hearings in November and January and a final adoption vote requiring a three-fourths supermajority. Applications filed before it takes effect are expected to be exempt, as are some projects outside the city limits. Check the current status with the city rather than relying on a date published months earlier.
Do data centers lower nearby home values?
There’s no reliable answer, and I’d be careful with anyone who gives you one. NAR’s September 2026 Data Center Impact Report found that counties with many data centers have higher median home values, but that reflects where data centers get built — big, growing metros — rather than what they do to an individual street. NAR’s own members split roughly half and half on whether nearby values are higher.
How do I find out if a data center is proposed near a Fort Worth address?
Enter the address in the city’s zoning map to find its council district, then check Fort Worth’s published zoning cases for that district, which are posted by case number as PDFs. Confirm anything you find against the posted agenda on the city calendar, since the case list is informational only. Development Services can be reached at 817-392-8028.
Are data centers being proposed in 76107, 76109, or 76116?
Not as of early October 2026. The large active projects are Black Mountain’s 187-acre site in southeast Fort Worth and a Colovore facility in AllianceTexas to the north. The ordinance under development would apply citywide, so the rules matter everywhere even though the current proposals don’t sit in the established West Fort Worth neighborhoods.
Does a nearby data center have to go on the Seller’s Disclosure Notice?
That depends on the specifics and it isn’t a question to settle from a blog post. The Texas Seller’s Disclosure Notice under Property Code §5.008 asks about what you know regarding the property and its conditions, and the practical instinct is to disclose what you’re aware of rather than argue about the margins later. Run the specific situation past your broker, and an attorney if it’s a close call.
The short version: the Fort Worth data center story is real, it’s moving fast, and the regulatory calendar runs through at least the middle of 2027 — but none of that tells you what happens to one particular house, and the research honestly doesn’t either. What you can do is check the public record for the specific address, understand what stage any proposal is at, and keep your option period for the homework.
If you’re looking at a house and want to know what’s filed near it, that’s a half-hour of checking and I’m glad to do it with you before you’re under contract. Reach out anytime at 817-703-1333. Or text me if that is easier.
About Eric Duran
Eric Duran is the founder and Realtor behind The Fort Real Estate, a boutique brokerage in Fort Worth, Texas. A former firefighter and paramedic, he’s guided buyers and sellers across West Fort Worth since 2020 — from TCU, Colonial, and Tanglewood to Ridglea, Arlington Heights, and the new builds out in Aledo. He has been recognized as a Fort Worth Real Producers Top Agent in 2025 and 2026, a list ranked by MLS sales volume and limited to the top 1,000 agents in the market, and was featured in the magazine as an “Agent on the Rise” in May 2025. Reach Eric at 817-703-1333 or thefortre.com.