Data Center Leasing Robust in 2020
Each year, Jim Kerrigan of North American Data Centers reports on the prior year’s leasing activity for Multi-Tenant Data Centers. The report goes over the size of the deals, as well as the players involved. According to this year’s report, Data Center leasing in 2020 was just under 700 MW; that is three times greater than in 2019 and twice that of 2018.
The report goes on to say that while there was a large amount of leasing volume, more than 500 MW was in Northern VA. Microsoft dominated the leasing activity on a national basis, accompanied by Bytedance and Facebook in Northern VA. Cloud HQ, Aligned Energy, and Digital Realty Trust also benefited from this leasing activity. Another important item from this year’s report is that the individual deals were larger than ever, with five leases in excess of 50 MW, and 19 deals of 10 MW or more. The size of the deals are a huge difference from five years ago when a 10 MW lease was far from the norm.
While Northern VA is the dominant geographic location, the report notes a bit of an uptick in the Chicago market. The bounce in Chicago might be explained by the 2019 passage of Data Center tax incentives by the Illinois state legislature.
P.S. For you wine lovers, you will also want to read the full report as well, as NADC highlights the best red wines that they tasted throughout the year. You can read the full report here.
