Data centers, the immense warehouses that hold, process and distribute seemingly endless amounts of data, are also an unassuming commercial real estate powerhouse. Hyperscale data centers built by tech giants such as Apple or Google are projected to grow 53% by the year 2021, in comparison to the number of existing data centers in Q4 2016.
A solid history of economic performance—even during severe downturns—combined with a continued growth of global digitalization trends makes this property type particularly attractive to real estate investors. Everett Thompson, Senior Vice President of Colliers’ Data Centers Consulting group, describes data centers as “the utility of the future.”