Key takeaways
- In a turnkey lease the operator builds, commissions and runs the power, cooling and redundancy. You bring IT equipment. You pay for that in rent instead of capital.
- "Turnkey" describes a finished product, but the word is used for halls that are built, halls under construction, and halls that only exist on a drawing. Ask which.
- Move-in ready means energized, commissioned and able to cool your racks at your density. A hall that fails any one of those is not ready for you.
- Large finished blocks are rare. Most multi-megawatt turnkey space is leased while it is still being built, which is also your window to shape it.
Two things called "turnkey"
People searching for a turnkey data center usually want one of two different things:
| Turnkey space you lease | A turnkey facility you buy | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A finished data hall or suite in an operator's building | A design-build contract or prefabricated modules delivered as a working facility you own |
| Who owns and runs it | The operator | You |
| How you pay | Rent per kW per month, plus power | Capital, then your own operating costs |
| Where power comes from | The operator's utility service, already secured | Your site. You still need land and a utility connection |
This guide is about the first: leased turnkey space, which is what most tenants mean by a turnkey wholesale deal. If you are considering building and owning, the power and land questions in our site selection guide and build-to-suit guide come first, because a prefabricated facility still needs somewhere to plug in.
What a turnkey lease includes
Digital Realty describes its turnkey product as move-in-ready, secure space with power, cooling and interconnection already in place, and says its requirements over 1 MW can be executed in weeks, on contracts of 5 to 10 years or more (Digital Realty 10-K). That is a fair description of the category. The split of responsibilities usually looks like this:
| Item | Operator provides | You provide |
|---|---|---|
| Utility power, substation, switchgear | Yes | |
| UPS, generators and fuel | Yes | |
| Cooling plant and air handling | Yes | |
| Power distribution to your space | Yes, to an agreed point | Often the last step to the rack |
| Containment, cages, rack layout | Sometimes, as an option | Often |
| Liquid cooling to the rack | Varies widely | Varies widely |
| Security, fire suppression, monitoring | Yes | |
| Operations and maintenance of critical systems | Yes | |
| Servers, network gear and cabling in your racks | Yes |
The rows marked "varies" are where proposals quietly differ. Two turnkey quotes at the same rent can deliver power to different points, or leave you to buy and install the liquid cooling distribution. Put the demarcation line in writing before comparing rents.
The move-in ready test
"Available now" should mean you could install equipment on a known date and run it at your density. Use this test on every hall offered as turnkey. Each claim needs a piece of evidence, not a sentence in a proposal.
| Claim | Evidence to ask for | What it catches |
|---|---|---|
| "The hall is built" | Named hall, floor plan, site visit | Capacity described at campus level that is not yet assigned to a room |
| "Power is available" | Energized capacity for that hall, not the building total | A utility date presented as present tense |
| "It is commissioned" | Integrated systems test results for the hall's power and cooling | Equipment installed but never tested together under load |
| "It supports your density" | Sustained kW per rack and per row across your whole footprint | A peak rack figure that does not hold across a full row |
| "Liquid cooling ready" | Installed facility water loop, supply temperature, capacity per rack, who supplies the distribution units | A design that allows liquid cooling but has not built it |
| "Carriers on site" | Carriers lit in this building, meet-me room access, cross-connect pricing | A campus carrier list that does not reach your hall |
| "Move in next month" | A delivery date in the lease, with rent credits if it slips | A schedule that binds nobody |
Why the test matters
Cushman & Wakefield notes that even space marketed as immediately available often takes 3 to 12 months to occupy unless it is truly turnkey (Global Data Center Market Comparison, May 2026). If your hardware ships in six weeks, a hall that fails one line of this table can cost you a quarter of idle equipment.
How much finished turnkey space exists
Less than most tenants expect, especially in large blocks:
- Across the Americas, the largest single availability in an operating facility in the first half of 2026 was 15 MW, and only 28 availabilities were larger than 5 MW (Cushman & Wakefield, H1 2026).
- Vacancy across the eight primary North American markets was 1.4%, and 80.4% of capacity under construction was already preleased (CBRE, H1 2026).
- In Atlanta, CBRE reports turnkey space preleasing about 12 months before completion, against about 2.5 years for build-to-suit (CBRE Atlanta, H1 2026).
The practical rule: under about 5 MW, finished turnkey space can often be found in several markets. Above that, you are usually leasing turnkey space that will be finished, which puts the delivery date and remedies at the center of the deal.
How much you can still customize
Turnkey does not mean take it or leave it. What you can change depends on when you commit:
| When you commit | What you can usually shape | What is fixed |
|---|---|---|
| Before the hall's design is final | Density, cooling approach including liquid, redundancy level, power distribution, room layout | The building, the utility service and the central plant |
| During construction | Containment, cages, rack layout, distribution to the rack, some cooling upgrades | Hall-level electrical and mechanical capacity |
| After commissioning | Fit-out inside your space | Almost everything else, short of a retrofit |
Retrofits are slow. CBRE notes that converting an air-cooled hall to liquid cooling can delay fit-out by more than six months (CBRE, H1 2026). If your next hardware generation will need liquid cooling, commit to a hall that is built for it, or early enough to have it built that way.
What turnkey costs, and what it saves
Turnkey rent is the highest per kW of the wholesale models because the operator has funded and runs the infrastructure. CBRE's first-half 2026 average asking rents ranged from $204.69 per kW per month for 250 to 500 kW down to $165.31 for 10 MW and up (CBRE, H1 2026). datacenterHawk puts turnkey leases on a modified gross basis at $145 to $170 per kW, against about $75 historically (datacenterHawk, 2026 deal trends). Power is billed on top. Our lease rate guide has the market-by-market bands and a full-term cost estimator.
What the rent buys is capital you do not spend. datacenterHawk has put the development cost of a turnkey facility at $12 to $13 million per MW, against $4 to $8 million for a powered shell (datacenterHawk, 2025). By our arithmetic, a tenant who takes a powered shell instead funds roughly the difference, $4 to $9 million per MW, plus the team to run it. For most enterprises and AI companies that is money better spent on hardware.
| Turnkey | Powered shell | Build-to-suit | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to power | Fastest if the hall is finished | Shell delivery plus your fit-out | Development timeline, often years |
| Your capital | Lowest | Highest | Low to moderate |
| Rent per kW | Highest | Lowest | Set from project cost and yield |
| Design control | Within the operator's options | Full, inside the shell | Full, agreed up front |
| Who runs it | The operator | You | Agreed in the lease |
When turnkey is the right choice
- You need power within months, not years.
- You do not have, or do not want, a team that designs and runs critical infrastructure.
- The requirement is under roughly 20 MW per site, or can be split across phases.
- You want to keep capital for servers, GPUs and network.
- You may need to move or resize within a decade and value a shorter commitment.
It is the wrong choice when your design is too specialized for any operator's standard hall, or your scale makes the rent premium larger than the cost of running your own. Then compare a powered shell or a build-to-suit.
Turnkey lease terms to negotiate
- Demarcation point
- Exactly where the operator's power and cooling responsibility ends, drawn on the single-line diagram.
- Density commitment
- Sustained kW per rack and per row the operator guarantees, and what happens if it cannot deliver.
- Delivery and acceptance
- A date, integrated testing before acceptance, and rent that starts at acceptance, not signature.
- Ramp
- Billed capacity that steps up with your deployment, and a minimum power commitment you can meet.
- Expansion
- Rights to adjacent halls or the next phase, at a price method agreed now.
- Refresh rights
- The right to deploy denser hardware later, and the operator's obligation to support it.
The full list of wholesale terms, with market ranges, is in our wholesale leasing guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is a turnkey data center?
A finished, commissioned data hall or suite that an operator leases to a tenant with power, cooling, redundancy and security already installed and operated. The tenant installs its own IT equipment. The term is also used for prefabricated or design-build facilities that a company buys and owns.
What is the difference between turnkey and powered shell?
In turnkey space the operator funds, builds and runs the critical infrastructure, and you pay for it in rent. In a powered shell the landlord delivers the building and utility power, and you design, fund and run everything inside.
How fast can I move into a turnkey data center?
If the hall is energized and commissioned, leasing can close in weeks and installation can follow soon after. If it is under construction, your date is the operator's delivery date, so make it contractual.
Is turnkey data center space more expensive?
The rent per kW is higher than a powered shell, because it includes infrastructure the operator paid for. Over the term it is often cheaper for tenants who would otherwise have to fund and staff that infrastructure themselves.
Can turnkey space support AI hardware?
Some can. Rack-scale GPU systems need liquid cooling and well over 100 kW per rack, which many existing halls cannot deliver. Use the readiness test above, and see our AI capacity guide.
Sources
- Digital Realty, Form 10-K for 2025.
- Cushman & Wakefield, 2026 Global Data Center Market Comparison, May 20, 2026, and Americas Data Center Update H1 2026.
- CBRE, North America Data Center Trends H1 2026 and its Atlanta chapter, August 27, 2026.
- datacenterHawk, 2026 data center deal trends and Understanding powered shell data centers, February 2025.
The difference in development cost between turnkey and powered shell is our arithmetic from datacenterHawk's figures. The readiness test and customization table reflect how we evaluate halls, not a published standard.