Data Center Vacancy Rates: What They Mean for Pricing

Data center vacancy rate is the share of built, powered colocation capacity in a market that is not yet leased. In North America’s primary markets it fell to a record-low 1.4% in H1 2026, down from 1.6% a year earlier, according to CBRE — and the tightest submarkets, Northern Virginia and Hillsboro, sit near 0.2%. Low vacancy is the single best predictor of rising colocation prices: where there is nothing left to lease, operators set the rate.

Key takeaways

• North American primary-market vacancy: 1.4% in H1 2026, a record low, despite primary-market supply growing 33.7% year over year to 10,903 MW (CBRE).
• Northern Virginia (0.24%) and Hillsboro (0.21%) are the two tightest major markets in North America; Chicago, at 2.2%, is comparatively loose.
• Construction is not closing the gap: under-construction capacity hit a record 7,481.1 MW in H1 2026, but 80.4% of it is already preleased, up from 74.3% a year ago.
• Less than 1,500 MW of uncommitted future capacity remains across all North American primary markets — roughly six months of demand at the current absorption rate.
• Europe is nearly as tight: FLAP-D (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin) colocation vacancy stood at 6.4% in Q2 2026, with London at 7.4% and Paris at 8.0%; CBRE forecasts FLAP-D capacity pricing to rise 12% in 2026.
• Singapore remains the world’s tightest major market at roughly 2% vacancy (Q1 2026), which supports the highest wholesale rent CBRE tracks globally, about $403 per kW/month.
• Vacancy and price move together, not independently: the tightest submarkets carry both the lowest vacancy and the highest asking rates, and the correlation holds across every region CBRE covers.

For live pricing tied to these dynamics, see the colocation price index and the full data center catalog.

How vacancy rate is actually measured

Vacancy rate in colocation reporting (CBRE, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield) is unleased capacity as a share of total built, commissioned inventory in a defined market — typically expressed in megawatts of critical IT load rather than square feet, since power, not floor space, is the binding constraint in 2026. A market’s headline vacancy number can be misleading in two directions:

• It understates scarcity when most “available” capacity is fragmented into blocks too small for a hyperscale or large AI tenant, or is committed under letters of intent not yet reflected as leased.
• It overstates availability when the number reflects capacity that is built and powered but not truly deployable within a normal 6-18 month leasing timeline — the site may be waiting on a substation upgrade, generator delivery, or a zoning appeal.

Northern Virginia illustrates the second case clearly: 4,496.5 MW of inventory and a 0.24% vacancy rate imply roughly 10.8 MW is technically open, but grid queues in the market run years long, so that number does not translate into meaningfully more capacity coming free soon.

North America: the tightest primary-market vacancy on record

Metric	H1 2025	H1 2026	Change
Primary-market vacancy	1.6%	1.4%	-20 bps
Primary-market supply	—	10,903 MW	+33.7% YoY
Under construction	—	7,481.1 MW	+24.8% YoY (prior peak: 6,350.1 MW, H2 2024)
Net absorption	—	1,456.2 MW	+11.7% YoY
Preleased share of construction	74.3%	80.4%	+6.1 pts

Source: CBRE North America Data Center Trends H1 2026.

Supply grew at more than twice the rate of absorption in percentage terms, and vacancy still fell — a sign that a large share of new construction was already spoken for before it broke ground. That preleasing dynamic, not raw construction volume, is what keeps vacancy compressed even as the market builds at a record pace.

Vacancy by market: where the crunch is worst — and where it isn’t

Market	Vacancy (H1 2026)	Context
Hillsboro, OR	0.21%	170.3 MW under construction, 90%+ preleased
Northern Virginia	0.24%	4,496.5 MW inventory, 467.6 MW net absorption, only ~10.8 MW available
Chicago	2.2%	10+ MW rental rates up 9.7% even with looser vacancy
Atlanta	Not disclosed as a single figure	2,882 MW under construction, +52.3% YoY — largest pipeline of any market
Dallas-Fort Worth	Not disclosed as a single figure	765 MW under construction, 95% preleased, 3.7 GW greenfield planned
Phoenix	Not disclosed as a single figure	260+ MW net absorption, ~7-year average lease term
Primary markets (average)	1.4%	Record low despite record supply growth

Sources: CBRE North America Data Center Trends H1 2026; Data Center Frontier; JLL North America Data Center Report Midyear 2026.

Chicago is worth noting: at 2.2% vacancy it is the loosest primary market CBRE tracks, yet its 10+ MW rental rate still climbed 9.7% in H1 2026 — a reminder that even “available” markets are tight by any historical standard, and pricing power has shifted broadly toward operators rather than sitting isolated in one or two hubs.

Frontier markets: the release valve

JLL estimates roughly 77% of new North American data center capacity is now being built in frontier markets outside the traditional primary hubs — West Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana and the Carolinas foremost among them. Texas as a state now leads all North American capacity with roughly 26 GW, ahead of Virginia’s 13 GW, and CBRE expects West Texas specifically to reach top-five market status by 2028. For buyers who can tolerate a less mature fiber and services ecosystem, these markets currently offer the closest thing to negotiating room in the US market. See our grid connection queues guide for why power availability, not land, is what actually gates this expansion.

How tight vacancy shows up in the price you’re quoted

Vacancy compresses in two ways that both raise price: operators stop discounting off list rates, and multi-year annual escalators (3-5% has been typical through 2025-2026) get baked into new contracts as leverage shifts. The clearest evidence is the size-tier data: in H1 2026, rental rates for 3-10 MW deployments in North America rose 8.3%, the fastest of any size band, exactly the segment large AI tenants compete hardest for. New York-New Jersey saw the single steepest jump — 10+ MW rates up 19% — while Atlanta (+14.5%) and Chicago (+9.7%) also posted double-digit or near-double-digit gains despite Atlanta’s enormous construction pipeline. For committed capacity pricing by market, see the colocation price index; for a full breakdown of what drives the quoted rate versus the all-in bill, see the colocation pricing guide.

Vacancy outside North America: Europe and Asia-Pacific

Market	Vacancy	Asking rate
FLAP-D average (Q2 2026)	6.4%	~€145/kW/month for 20+ MW future capacity (forecast, CBRE)
London	7.4%	up to £145/kW/month
Paris	8.0%	—
Dublin	7.2%	—
Singapore (Q1 2026)	~2%	~$403/kW/month
Tokyo (Q1 2026)	6%	~$280/kW/month
Sydney (Q1 2026)	4.5%	~$188/kW/month

Sources: Data Centre Magazine (CBRE FLAPD data); BeBeez International; CBRE Global Data Center Trends 2026.

Singapore is the outlier worth understanding: its ~2% vacancy is not primarily a demand story but a supply-allocation one. The government’s DC-CFA capacity-award scheme rations new builds directly, producing structurally low vacancy and the highest wholesale rent CBRE tracks anywhere. FLAP-D vacancy is loosening slightly relative to North America’s 1.4% but is still tight enough that CBRE forecasts a further 12% rise in FLAP-D capacity pricing in 2026, driven mainly by grid connection bottlenecks rather than land or construction limits. See our Singapore market guide for the mechanics of that scheme.

What buyers should actually do in a sub-2% market

Tight vacancy changes the negotiation, not just the price. Three adjustments matter most right now:

1. Move earlier in the pipeline. With 80.4% of North American construction already preleased, waiting for a facility to reach commissioning before signing means competing for the remaining fragment, not the whole block. Buyers securing 3-10 MW in primary markets are increasingly signing against space still under construction.
2. Treat frontier markets as a real option, not a fallback. With 77% of new North American capacity landing outside the big-eight metros, a workload that does not require sub-5ms latency to Ashburn or Chicago can often secure faster timelines and softer pricing in West Texas, Ohio, or the Carolinas.
3. Separate “vacancy” from “deployable within your timeline.” Ask any shortlisted operator for grid interconnection status, not just a quoted in-service date — a nonzero vacancy figure in a market like Northern Virginia does not mean capacity you can actually energize in 12 months. Run the numbers for your footprint through /quote/ and cross-check against current market statistics before signing a multi-year escalator.

Vacancy will not loosen broadly before new grid capacity and interconnection queues clear — CBRE’s own six-month runway estimate assumes no material change in absorption. Until then, plan procurement timelines around preleasing calendars, not nominal vacancy rates.