Key takeaways
- Wholesale space averaged $165 to $205 per kW per month in asking rent in the first half of 2026, by size, across primary North American markets. Power is billed on top.
- You lease power delivery, not floor space. Rent is quoted per kilowatt of critical IT capacity, whether or not you draw it.
- Term, escalator, ramp, power minimums, expansion rights and delivery remedies decide the ten-year cost. Compare full-term cash, not starting rates.
- Vacancy in the primary markets was 1.4%. New capacity is leased before it is finished, so start early enough to choose.
- Plan the exit when you sign. Renewal options have hard notice deadlines, and a filed wholesale lease sets holdover rent at 150% of base rent.
What wholesale data center space costs
Wholesale rent averaged $165 to $205 per kW per month in the first half of 2026, depending on the size of the requirement. These are CBRE's average asking rents across eight primary North American markets (CBRE, H1 2026). Larger blocks price lower per kW.
| Requirement size | Average asking rent per kW per month | Example | Monthly rent at that average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 to 500 kW | $204.69 | 400 kW | $81,876 |
| 500 kW to 3 MW | $183.75 | 2 MW | $367,500 |
| 3 to 10 MW | $175.00 | 5 MW | $875,000 |
| 10 MW and up | $165.31 | 20 MW | $3,306,200 |
Power comes on top. On a 5 MW lease, the illustrative power bill below adds about $266,000 a month. Asking rents are where negotiation starts, not where it ends. Market-by-market bands and what operators actually sign are in our wholesale lease rate guide.
What is a wholesale data center?
A wholesale data center leases large, dedicated blocks of capacity: a private suite, a data hall or a whole building, with power, cooling and redundancy sized to one tenant's requirement. The unit of the deal is critical IT load, measured in kilowatts or megawatts. Floor space follows from the power, not the other way around.
Retail colocation is different in almost every term. It sells cabinets, cages and circuits in shared halls, on standard contracts, usually with power bundled into the price. The line between the two is not fixed. Industry research commonly uses requirements of 250 to 500 kW as the reference size for wholesale pricing, and most operators treat a megawatt or more as clearly wholesale.
| Retail colocation | Wholesale | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit sold | Cabinets, cages, circuits | kW or MW of critical IT capacity |
| Space | Shared halls | Dedicated suite, hall or building |
| Pricing | Rate card, often power included | Negotiated rent per kW, power usually billed separately |
| Term | 1 to 3 years is common | Multi-year, often 5 to 15 years |
| Contract | Provider's standard agreement | Negotiated lease |
White space and gray space
White space is the data hall floor where your racks sit. Gray space holds the plant that powers and cools it: switchgear, UPS, generators, chillers and cooling distribution. A wholesale lease prices the white space by the critical IT capacity delivered to it. Depending on the building, the gray space behind it is dedicated to you or shared with other tenants. The lease should say which.
Under a megawatt and looking for cabinets or a cage? Our sister site Colocation Scout covers retail colocation.
Types of wholesale data center space
Wholesale space comes in five forms. They differ in how finished the space is, who pays to fit it out and how the lease is structured.
| Type | What you lease | Who fits it out | Usual structure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turnkey suite or hall | A finished, powered and cooled suite or hall in a multi-tenant building | The operator, who also runs it | Rent plus power |
| Dedicated building | A whole finished building for one tenant | The operator, often to your specification | Rent plus power, or triple net |
| Powered shell | A building with utility power and core structure, but no fit-out | You, at your cost | Triple net |
| Build-to-suit | A facility built to your design, before you occupy it | The developer, to your design | Triple net, long term |
| Hyperscale or AI campus | Tens to hundreds of megawatts, often leased in phases before it is built | The developer or operator | Triple net, or rent plus power |
Most wholesale leases are for turnkey space. Our turnkey data center guide covers how to test a move-in ready claim.
Where wholesale data center space is available
Wholesale space is scarce in the largest markets. Across eight primary North American markets, CBRE put vacancy at 1.4% in the first half of 2026, and 80.4% of the 7,481 MW under construction was already preleased (CBRE, H1 2026). What that means for a search differs by market.
| Market | Vacancy | What it means for a wholesale search |
|---|---|---|
| Northern Virginia | 0.2% | All 2026 deliveries are committed and preleasing runs into 2027 and later. Contiguous 5 to 10 MW blocks are hard to secure. |
| Hillsboro, Oregon | 0.21% | No facility had 5 MW or more contiguous available. |
| Phoenix | 1.1% | Tight, with the lowest power rates of the primary markets, $0.06 to $0.07 per kWh. |
| Atlanta | 1.6% | The largest construction market, with 2,882 MW under way, ahead of Northern Virginia for the first time. |
| Chicago | 2.2% | No contiguous block of 5 MW or more expected this year. Large contiguous projects deliver in late 2027 at the earliest. |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | 2.8% | 95% of capacity under construction preleased. 3.7 GW of greenfield development planned but not started. |
| Silicon Valley | 4.2% | The most vacancy of the primary markets, and the highest power rates, $0.16 to $0.271 per kWh. |
Secondary markets widen the search. CBRE reported 12.6% vacancy in Southern California and 16.8% in Minneapolis. Cushman & Wakefield, on a broader definition, put colocation vacancy at 2.2% in Columbus, 1.9% in Reno, 0.6% in Salt Lake City and 0.0% in West Texas (Cushman & Wakefield, H1 2026). Our data centers by state guide covers power prices, incentives and local rules in 20 states.
Read vacancy carefully. It counts space that is built and empty today. Capacity under construction and announced capacity are different things, and most new capacity is committed before it is finished. A building or operator named on this page is not a claim that space is available in it.
How wholesale rent is quoted
Rent is a monthly charge per kilowatt of contracted critical IT capacity. The contracted figure is the capacity reserved for you, not what you happen to draw. If you lease 2 MW and draw 1.2 MW, you pay rent on 2 MW.
What the rent covers depends on the lease structure. Three are common, and the labels vary by operator, so read the definitions rather than the name.
| Structure | Rent covers | Billed separately | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rent plus power (modified gross) | Space, critical infrastructure, operations and maintenance | Electricity, metered and passed through | Most turnkey wholesale |
| Triple net (NNN) | The space and delivered infrastructure | Electricity, plus your share of taxes, insurance and operating costs | Powered shell, build-to-suit and some hyperscale |
| Gross or all-in | Space, infrastructure and power up to an allowance | Power above the allowance | Smaller suites and some shorter terms |
The structure changes what a rent figure means. The CRE Finance Council's 2026 data center primer, drawing on KBRA and CBRE data for 2025 leases in primary US markets, puts the three at very different levels:
| Structure | Typical tenant | Rent per kW per month |
|---|---|---|
| Triple net | Hyperscale | $100 to $150 |
| Modified gross plus electric | Wholesale and enterprise | $150 to $250 |
| Full-service gross | Retail, under 1 MW | $200 to $400 |
The same primer notes that power reimbursement can make up 30 to 50% of what a data center collects. That is why the power terms deserve as much attention as the rent.
How power is billed
In most wholesale leases you pay for the electricity your equipment uses, plus a share of the energy the building uses to cool and support it. The common methods:
- Metered IT load times a PUE factor. Your metered consumption is multiplied by a power usage effectiveness (PUE) figure to cover cooling and losses, then billed at the utility rate. A fixed or capped PUE protects you from paying for an inefficient building.
- Metered facility share. The building's actual total consumption is allocated across tenants. Simple, but you carry the building's inefficiency.
- Fixed adder. A set charge per kWh on top of the utility rate, covering overhead.
Illustrative power cost
A 5 MW lease drawing an average of 70% of its capacity uses 3,500 kW of IT load. At a PUE of 1.3, the facility draw attributable to it is 4,550 kW. Over an average month of 730 hours that is about 3.3 million kWh. At $0.08 per kWh, the power bill is about $266,000 a month, on top of rent. The rate, draw and PUE are assumptions for illustration. Your utility rate and load profile change the answer.
One newer term changes the math: minimum power commitments. CBRE's H1 2026 North America report says take-or-pay floors of 60 to 85% of allocated power are becoming common in US leases, where tenants used to pay only for power they used. Utilities are pushing the same obligations down to large customers through new large-load tariffs, so expect landlords to pass them along. Model the floor, not just your expected draw.
Ask where meters sit, how PUE is measured and reported, how often it is trued up, whether demand charges and minimum-bill obligations are passed through, and whether renewable energy options are available at a known premium.
The term sheet: what else is in the lease
Beyond rent and power, these terms decide what a wholesale lease costs and how much room it leaves you. Ranges are from published sources, which do not always agree. Where they differ, both are shown.
| Term | What the market shows | What to negotiate |
|---|---|---|
| Initial term | Wholesale 3 to 7 years (datacenterHawk) or 5 to 10 years (CREFC). Hyperscale 10 to 15 years. Digital Realty's new leases over 1 MW averaged 12.2 years in the first half of 2026 (10-Q). | A term that matches the hardware and business plan, with renewal and termination options priced in. |
| Renewal options | Large AI leases often carry two or three 5-year extensions. Galaxy's 15-year lease with CoreWeave has two 5-year extensions (Galaxy, July 2026). | A fixed or capped renewal rent. Fair market value exposes you to the renewal spreads described below. |
| Escalator | 2.5 to 5% a year is typical (datacenterHawk). | A fixed rate at the low end, or CPI with a floor and a cap. Model it to the end of the term. |
| Power minimums | Take-or-pay floors of 60 to 85% of allocated power are becoming common (CBRE, H1 2026). | A floor that ramps with your deployment, and a PUE cap on how inefficiency is billed. |
| Expansion rights | Structured as options, rights of first offer or rights of first refusal. Expansions may need substation upgrades (Orrick, January 2026). | Reserved capacity with a defined price method and the power to serve it. |
| Service levels | Penalties are usually rent or service credits. Repeated breaches can give a termination right (Orrick). | Credits that scale with the outage, and a chronic-failure exit. |
| Delivery date | Late delivery can trigger rent abatement or termination. Whether utility or equipment delays pause those remedies must be written in explicitly (Quinn Emanuel, June 2026). | A guaranteed date, daily credits, an outside date with a right to walk away, and a narrow force majeure clause. |
| Credit support | Letters of credit, guarantees and third-party backstops. CoreWeave provided Applied Digital a $50 million letter of credit and a springing guaranty in 2026 (Applied Digital 10-K). | Security sized to the real risk, stepping down as rent is paid. |
| Termination rights | Hyperscale tenants increasingly ask for them, and several exercised them in 2025 (DLA Piper, October 2025). | An early exit at a known cost, especially on long terms for fast-changing workloads. |
Renewals: why fair market value is expensive right now
Operators are resetting expiring leases to much higher rents. Digital Realty reported renewals in the second quarter of 2026 at 25.4% above prior cash rents across its portfolio, a company record (Digital Realty, July 2026). In its first-half filing, renewals of leases over 1 MW moved from $150 to $248 per kW per month, about 65% higher by our arithmetic from that 10-Q. Iron Mountain's second-quarter renewals rose 11.8% on a cash basis (Iron Mountain). A renewal price agreed when you sign is worth real money.
Ramp schedules
Few tenants use their full capacity on day one. A ramp schedule lets committed, billed capacity step up over time. It is one of the largest cash-flow variables in a wholesale lease, and easy to overlook when comparing rates.
| Period | Billed capacity | On a 4 MW lease |
|---|---|---|
| Months 1 to 6 | 25% | 1.0 MW |
| Months 7 to 12 | 50% | 2.0 MW |
| Months 13 to 24 | 75% | 3.0 MW |
| Month 25 onward | 100% | 4.0 MW |
Negotiate when billing starts, whether steps are fixed dates or tied to your actual use, whether capacity you have not ramped into is reserved for you, and whether you can accelerate. A slower ramp with a lower billing floor can be worth more than a lower headline rate.
What a data center lease agreement contains
A wholesale data center lease is a commercial real estate lease with a technical contract built in. The rent clause is short. Most of the operating commitments sit in exhibits, and the names vary by landlord. These are the parts to find and read with your counsel.
| Part of the lease | What it settles | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Premises and capacity | The suite, hall or building, and the critical IT capacity delivered to it | Where capacity is measured. Vantage's 2016 lease to Box measures critical load at the power distribution units serving the space (section 1.24). |
| Rent and escalation | Rent per kW, start date, escalator and abatements | That rent starts on acceptance of finished space, not on a calendar date. |
| Power and metering exhibit | How electricity is metered, grossed up and billed | Meter locations, the PUE method, true-ups and any minimum commitment. |
| Service level agreement | Power, temperature and humidity commitments, and the credits for missing them | Credits that scale with the failure, and an exit for chronic failure. |
| Technical specifications | Redundancy, density, cooling and the systems the operator maintains | That the design matches your next hardware generation, not just today's. |
| Delivery and acceptance | The delivery date, commissioning and acceptance testing | Testing you can witness before rent starts, and remedies if delivery slips. |
| Access, security and maintenance | Who can enter, escort rules, planned maintenance windows and notice | Notice periods for maintenance that touches your power or cooling path. |
| Assignment and subletting | Whether either side can transfer the lease | Restrictions usually bind both landlord and tenant (Orrick). Secure the right to assign to an affiliate or a buyer of your business. |
| Insurance, casualty and liability | Who insures what, what happens after a fire or major outage, and caps on liability | How long the landlord has to restore, and your right to terminate if it cannot. |
| Options | Renewal, expansion and termination rights | Notice windows, pricing method and the power reserved to serve them. |
| Surrender and holdover | What you must remove at the end, and what staying late costs | See lease expiration and exit below. |
When to start a wholesale search
Much earlier than tenants used to. New capacity is spoken for before it is finished:
- In primary North American markets, 80.4% of capacity under construction was preleased in the first half of 2026, up from 74.3% a year earlier. CBRE estimates less than 1,500 MW of future capacity remains unclaimed, about six months of demand (CBRE, August 2026).
- JLL reports that most tenants signing today are contracting for 2028 deliveries (JLL, August 2026).
- datacenterHawk advises planning capacity three or more years out, and says six-month lead times are largely gone in primary markets (datacenterHawk, February 2026).
Work backward from the date you need power energized. Add the utility's timeline if the capacity is not built, the build and commissioning time, and a few months for the search and the lease. Energized capacity available today exists, but it is scarce, and it is priced accordingly. See preleasing in our AI capacity guide.
The leasing process, step by step
- Requirement. IT load by phase, rack density, cooling, redundancy, markets, delivery dates, term and budget.
- Market survey. Which operators have energized capacity, which have capacity under construction with a committed utility date, and which have plans.
- Request for proposal. A structured RFP so every proposal answers the same questions. Our lease rate guide shows what to expect.
- Shortlist and tours. Site visits, electrical and mechanical diligence, and a hard look at the delivery schedule.
- Letter of intent. The main commercial terms, usually non-binding apart from exclusivity and confidentiality.
- Lease negotiation. Legal terms, service levels, delivery remedies and the technical exhibits, with your counsel.
- Delivery and ramp. Fit-out, commissioning, acceptance and the start of billing, tracked against the dates in the lease.
What belongs in the letter of intent
Capacity and phasing, rent and escalator, power pricing method, term and renewal options, ramp, delivery date and remedies, expansion rights, service levels, security deposit or guarantee, and exclusivity. Anything left out of the LOI is harder to win in the lease.
How to compare wholesale proposals
- Put every proposal on the same basis: rent per kW per month of contracted critical IT capacity.
- Confirm the capacity basis. Contracted, usable and metered capacity are different numbers. Proposals often differ on this alone.
- Model power with the same load profile and utility rate, using each proposal's PUE method.
- Run the escalator to term end, compounded, and price CPI-linked escalators at both their floor and cap.
- Price the ramp in cash, month by month, including any billing floor.
- Add recurring extras: cross-connects, carrier and cloud connections, remote hands, monitoring, storage and parking.
- Amortize one-time costs such as fit-out, cage and power distribution over the term.
- Value the options: expansion rights, renewal pricing and termination rights. A fixed renewal is worth real money in a rising market.
Data center lease expiration, renewal and exit
The end of a wholesale lease needs as much planning as the start. Moving several megawatts takes years, and the renewal option has a deadline. Two wholesale leases filed with the SEC show the terms to look for. They are examples, not market standards. Your own lease governs.
Renewal notice windows
A 2006 lease of 3 Corporate Place in Piscataway, New Jersey, from Digital Piscataway, LLC to Savvis, gave the tenant two 5-year renewal options. Notice had to arrive at least 9 and no more than 24 months before expiration, with time of the essence. A late notice let the landlord treat the option as waived (Datacenter Lease, section 2.3). Vantage Data Centers' 2016 wholesale lease to Box also carried two 5-year extension options (Wholesale Datacenter Lease). Put the window's opening and closing dates in a calendar the day you sign, and send notice by the exact method the lease requires.
Holdover: what staying late costs
Staying past expiration without a new agreement is a holdover. In the Vantage lease to Box, holdover rent is 150% of base rent. The tenant also indemnifies the landlord against claims caused by the holdover, expressly including lost profits and consequential damages (sections 1.49 and 13.3). If the next tenant's move-in slips because you have not left, that bill can be yours.
Surrender and removal
Both leases require the tenant to remove its property, and any alterations the landlord designates, at its own cost, and to repair damage the removal causes. In both, a landlord that does the work itself can recover the cost plus a 10% administrative fee. Under the Vantage lease, alterations become the landlord's property at expiration unless the landlord requires their removal. Budget decommissioning, data destruction and restoration as part of any move.
Renew or move: a working timeline
- Before the notice window opens, decide whether you might move. Replacement capacity is leased far ahead: JLL says most tenants signing in 2026 are contracting for 2028 deliveries (JLL, August 2026).
- Run a market survey and RFP, even if you expect to stay. A credible alternative is your leverage on renewal rent, which has been resetting well above expiring rents (see renewals above).
- Exercise the option, or let it lapse, in writing and inside the window.
- If you move, schedule the migration, carrier and cross-connect cutovers, and decommissioning so you are out before expiration, not after it.
Data center leasing companies: who is on the other side
Three kinds of company show up in a wholesale search. Know which one you are talking to.
- Operators and developers own or build the capacity and sign the lease as landlord. Public operators disclose their leasing in their filings. This page cites filings from Digital Realty, Iron Mountain, Applied Digital and Galaxy, and two leases filed with the SEC.
- Commercial real estate brokers. CBRE, JLL and Cushman & Wakefield publish most of the market research cited on this page, and they, Colliers and others run data center brokerage teams. A large firm can list space for landlords and represent tenants at the same time. Ask whose side your broker is on for your deal.
- Tenant advisors, such as Data Center Scouts. We work for the tenant. We are free to tenants and paid by the provider the tenant chooses, and the compensation is disclosed on every shortlist. See how we are paid.
Much new wholesale capacity is committed before it is ever marketed, so the operators worth hearing from rarely advertise it. A structured requirement sent to several of them at once is how it surfaces. A building or operator named on this page is not a claim that space is available in it.
Leasing land to a data center developer
Landowners ask about data center leasing too. Developers lease land as well as buy it. A ground lease keeps the land in your name and pays rent over a long term. A sale pays more today. Options and partnerships sit in between. Our data center land guide compares the four.
Power decides the value. Developers screen for deliverable utility capacity first, then acreage, fiber, water and zoning. Cushman & Wakefield puts the average price of powered land in primary US markets at $584,000 per MW so far in 2026 (2026 Development Cost Guide). See what powered land is worth, or bring us a site.
Common mistakes tenants make
- Comparing rents that sit on different capacity or power bases.
- Treating a construction schedule as a delivery commitment, with no remedy if it slips.
- Negotiating the starting rate and accepting the standard escalator.
- Leaving renewal at fair market value in a market where renewal rents keep rising.
- Missing the renewal notice window, or sending notice by a method the lease does not allow.
- Leaving holdover, decommissioning and restoration out of the budget for a move.
- Specifying today's rack density when the next hardware generation will need more.
- Signing without expansion rights, then finding the adjacent capacity leased to someone else.
Frequently asked questions
What is a wholesale data center?
A facility that leases large, dedicated blocks of capacity, such as a suite, a data hall or a whole building, to one tenant at a time. Deals are sized in kilowatts or megawatts of critical IT load, usually 1 MW and up, on negotiated multi-year leases.
How much does it cost to lease wholesale data center space?
In the first half of 2026, CBRE's average asking rent in primary North American markets was $204.69 per kW per month for 250 to 500 kW, falling to $165.31 for 10 MW and up. At $183.75, a 2 MW lease is about $367,500 a month in rent. Power is usually billed on top. Our lease rate guide has the bands by market.
What is the difference between wholesale and retail colocation?
Retail colocation sells cabinets and cages in shared halls on standard contracts, usually with power bundled. Wholesale leases a dedicated block of capacity, priced per kW with power billed separately, on a negotiated multi-year lease.
How long is a typical wholesale data center lease?
Multi-year terms are the norm, with longer terms for larger and newly built capacity. Digital Realty's new leases over 1 MW averaged 12.2 years in the first half of 2026. Longer terms buy lower rent, but only if the renewal and expansion terms protect you too.
What is white space in a data center?
The data hall floor where IT racks sit. Gray space holds the electrical and mechanical plant that powers and cools it. Wholesale rent prices the white space by the critical IT capacity delivered to it.
Can I lease capacity that is not built yet?
Yes, and much new capacity is leased that way. Make sure the lease commits the operator to a delivery date, with rent credits or termination rights if it slips.
What happens when a data center lease expires?
You renew under an option, negotiate a new lease, or move out and surrender the space. Renewal options must be exercised inside a notice window, which in one filed lease closed 9 months before expiration. Staying on without an agreement is a holdover, set at 150% of base rent in another filed lease. More on expiration and exit.
Can I lease my land for a data center?
Yes. Developers use ground leases as well as purchases and options. What your land is worth depends mostly on the utility power that can be delivered to it. See our data center land guide.
Who pays the broker in a data center lease?
Usually the provider. With us, tenants pay nothing. See how we are paid.
Sources
- CBRE, North America Data Center Trends H1 2026, August 27, 2026.
- JLL, Data center demand exceeds expectations in H1 2026, August 11, 2026.
- CRE Finance Council, Data Center E-Primer, January 2026.
- datacenterHawk, Colocation data center pricing: a 2026 beginner's guide, February 12, 2026.
- Digital Realty, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and second quarter 2026 results, July 23, 2026.
- Iron Mountain, Q2 2026 supplemental reporting.
- Orrick, Data centers: leasing considerations, January 26, 2026.
- Quinn Emanuel, Force majeure and the AI data center buildout, June 3, 2026.
- DLA Piper, Navigating hyperscale lease terms and termination rights, October 10, 2025.
- Galaxy, Phase I of the Helios campus delivered to CoreWeave, July 6, 2026.
- Applied Digital, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2026.
- Vantage Data Centers and Box, Inc., Wholesale Datacenter Lease, July 27, 2016, filed by Box as Exhibit 10.2.
- Digital Piscataway, LLC and Savvis Communications Corporation, Datacenter Lease, December 21, 2006, filed as Exhibit 10.1.
- Cushman & Wakefield, Americas Data Center Update H1 2026, and 2026 Data Center Development Cost Guide.
The illustrative power cost, ramp schedule and example monthly rents on this page are our own examples and arithmetic, not market data. The two filed leases are shown as examples of how such terms are written, not as current market terms.