What Red Oak's Data Center Boom Is Actually Doing To Home Prices

The citywide median says Red Oak home values are down 2.8% year over year. The listings data says more than half of active sellers have already cut price. Those two numbers describe the same market, and they are telling you very different stories about what is happening on the ground.

Six hyperscale data center campuses have now been approved inside a town of fewer than 20,000 people. If you own a home here, or you are shopping the corridor because the price per square foot looks attractive next to Waxahachie or Midlothian, the portal median is not the number you should be reading. The number you should be reading is your distance, in feet, from the nearest rezoned parcel.

The Median Is Hiding A Bifurcated Market

Through the three months ending April 2026, Red Oak homes sold at a median of $377,000, down 2.8% from the same period a year earlier, with median days on market at 90 versus 87 the prior year, according to Redfin's tracking of MLS and public records. Price per square foot came in at $165, down 1.2%.

Read alongside that, one data point reframes everything: 53.6% of Red Oak listings had a price drop in the last 30 days of Orchard's tracking window, up 2.5 percentage points year over year, and the sale-to-list ratio slipped to 95.4%.

A market where more than half of sellers are cutting price but the median is only off single digits is not a uniformly softening market. It is a market where a subset of homes is dragging the average while the rest hold. The variable separating those two groups is not lot size or finish level. It is proximity to the projects below.

What Was Actually Approved, And Where

Anyone pricing a Red Oak home or writing an offer should have this list open. These are the campuses locals and their agents are drawing lines around on plat maps:

• Google Red Oak — 166 acres at FM 664 and State Highway 342, a $600 million build that went operational in November 2025. The county approved a 10-year tax abatement with Alamo Mission LLC, Google's negotiating entity, back in July 2018.
• DataBank DFW9-DFW11 (and expansion) — a 292-acre, eight-building campus on Stainback Road. DataBank closed a $2 billion construction loan on April 21, 2026 to fund the first three buildings, totaling 600,000 square feet and 180 megawatts. Oracle has signed as anchor tenant for the first four buildings, with the first building slated to be operational before year-end 2026, according to DataBank's financing disclosures reported by the AI Consulting Network.
• Compass Datacenters, current campus — five buildings filled with a single tenant, with three more under way.
• Compass Datacenters, second campus — the 830-acre rezoning near Pierce Road, Pratt Road, Oglesby Road and FM 2377. The Red Oak City Council approved rezoning from agricultural to a planned "high-tech industrial park" in a 4-1 vote just before midnight on May 11, 2026, along with a 4-1 tax abatement vote, as reported by WFAA, FOX 4, CBS Texas and the Ellis County Press. More than 150 residents attended the meeting to oppose it.
• Lincoln Property Company — 540 megawatts planned on 131 acres.
• Plus additional filings that push the Ellis County project count to roughly 14 known data center developments as of July 2026, per reporting by the Waxahachie Sun.

At the May 11 hearing, City Manager Todd Fuller told residents the Compass build would use a closed-loop cooling system consuming roughly 10 million gallons of water per year, less than an average Walmart Supercenter's approximately 15 million, and pointed to Senate Bill 6, which allows large energy users to be curtailed during grid emergencies. City ordinance caps facility noise at 70 decibels at the property line.

Whether those mitigations hold up over a 20-year operating life is a separate question. What matters for pricing today is that buyers are underwriting the risk into their offers now.

The Proximity Discount Is Real, And Longtime Owners Are The Ones Absorbing It

At the May 11 council meeting, longtime resident Martel Edwards told council members her property has dropped $107,000 in value since the data center on Steinback was built nearby. That is one homeowner's assessment, not a market study. It is also the kind of number that shows up in appraisal narratives, buyer objections, and re-list conversations for months after it hits the news.

Here is how the discount actually surfaces in a Red Oak transaction in 2026:

1. Appraisal comp selection. An appraiser pulling comps for a home on the east side, near existing or approved campuses, is now pulling from a smaller, discounted pool. West-side subdivisions insulated by I-35E and mature single-family buildout are not clean comps for a home fronting FM 664 or bordering the Stainback corridor.
2. Buyer contingencies. Buyers who read the Ellis County Press or watched the FOX 4 coverage are asking for longer inspection windows, and some are walking after a drive-out at dusk to check noise and light.
3. Days on market stretch. The gap between Redfin's 90-day median and Orchard's 45-day median in the same window reflects methodology differences, but both are trending longer, and the price-drop rate confirms which side of that gap most sellers are on.

The takeaway for a Red Oak owner: your home is not "Red Oak, TX" for pricing purposes. It is the parcel it sits on, and its relationship to six approved campuses.

What This Changes For Sellers At The Closing Table

Texas is a caveat emptor state with a statutory Seller's Disclosure Notice, and the "any conditions materially affecting the physical health or safety of an individual" language is broad. Approved rezonings within visual or audible range of the property are not something a listing agent can safely leave off the conversation, even if a specific line item does not require it. The safer, and more defensible, practice is written disclosure of known adjacent industrial rezonings and any pending council actions in the ETJ, paired with a factual summary of what has been approved.

Two other closing-table items worth planning around before you sign a listing agreement:

• Tax abatement asymmetry. Ellis County and Red Oak have entered abatements ranging from 7 to 20 years with these operators, according to reporting by the Waxahachie Sun. Promised tax-base benefits arrive years out. The market's pricing of proximity risk arrives immediately. Sellers who assume "more tax revenue equals higher home values" are betting on a lag that will not help them in a 2026 closing.
• Buyer financing hesitation. Lenders are not underwriting to headlines, but private mortgage insurance providers and secondary market buyers pay attention to appraiser commentary. A comps narrative that references adjacent industrial rezoning can slow a file even when the loan ultimately clears.

Where The Buyer Opportunity Sits

The same bifurcation that pressures certain sellers creates a real window for buyers who are willing to underwrite proximity risk with open eyes.

Ellis County land traded at roughly $50,000 to $150,000 per acre in the two years before the DataBank close, according to the AI Consulting Network's analysis, and comparable parcels are repricing sharply. That repricing is not evenly distributed across residential inventory. A buyer targeting west-of-I-35E subdivisions, or established sections tucked behind existing buildout, is competing on a different curve than a buyer looking at raw acreage near a rezoned tract.

Two questions worth answering before you write an offer anywhere in the 75154 ZIP code:

• What is the shortest straight-line distance from this parcel to any of the six approved campuses, and is that line of sight blocked by existing structure or canopy?
• Is the parcel inside the Red Oak city limits, inside the ETJ, or in unincorporated Ellis County? Ellis County Press reporting noted that homeowners in the unincorporated ETJ said they were not notified of the Compass rezoning in advance. Notification standing matters if a future campus is proposed near you.

The Story Behind The Story

A homeowner-led nonprofit, Save Our Red Oak, formerly Say NO MORE Data Centers, has retained legal counsel and is funding litigation through car shows and community fundraisers, according to the Waxahachie Sun. Whether that effort changes any approvals is a separate question from what it signals: an organized, visible constituency of current homeowners who are treating this as a property-value fight, not just a lifestyle one. That signal is now part of any comp story a listing agent tells about east-side Red Oak.

Quick FAQ

Is Red Oak still a good place to buy in 2026? Yes, with parcel-level due diligence. The pricing pressure is not uniform across the city, and Redfin migration data through late 2025 showed that 69% of Red Oak-area home searchers were looking to stay within the metro. Demand for the corridor is intact. What has changed is which specific parcels carry proximity risk.

Should I wait to sell? "Waiting for the market" is rarely the right frame in a market where the risk factor is being priced in immediately and abatements will not deliver offsetting tax-base effects for years. The better question is whether your specific parcel has already absorbed the discount or is still catching up to it. That is a pricing conversation, not a timing conversation.

Does the Google campus being operational since November 2025 tell us anything? It gives buyers and appraisers a real reference point for noise, traffic, and evening light within Red Oak city limits. Use it. Drive the perimeter of the Google Red Oak parcel at 9 p.m. before making assumptions about any other campus.

Work The Parcel, Not The Median

If you are pricing a Red Oak home this quarter, or trying to decide whether the corridor still fits your budget, the portal median is the wrong tool. Your parcel's relationship to six approved campuses, its notification standing, and its comp pool are the numbers that will actually decide your closing price.

Tiffany West works these questions parcel by parcel, with a project-managed pre-sale timeline for owners and a proximity-first search process for buyers relocating into the Ellis County corridor. Ready to see what your specific address is worth in this market, not what the median says? Get Your Instant Home Valuation and let's talk through the map together.