Data Center Feasibility Study in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metro Area

Data centers in the Austin metro: a concentration worth reading carefully

Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX stands 7 of 169 areas for data center loans, and a location quotient of 3.43x gives the class a weight well beyond three times the national one. Inside the metro the class is 17th of 39. The files hold 27 loans for $21.2 million from FY2017 to FY2026, with Travis County accounting for 18. At $350,000 the median is 1.70x the national class figure; the central half begins at $150,000 and ends at $569,000. These are the plain figures for the metro, read beside the state and the class nationally without any one standing out.

What the code actually covers

The data cannot split colocation buildings from hosting services, since the code also holds data processing and hosting businesses. The 27 loans therefore include businesses that lease space in a data hall and businesses that sell hosting, which are different credits. Franchise affiliation is 0.00%.

Years and blanks

FY2020 is empty of loans, printing 0 loans and $0. FY2023 prints 6 loans and $8.8 million, which is a very large figure for six loans. Every other year lacks the volume to print and is not zero. No lender reaches five loans, the program split is not printed, and a cancellation or charge-off rate would print only from 30 loans under Loan Analytics' own rule, and Austin's FY2017 to FY2021 total is smaller.

What a data center study has to test

Because the code mixes colocation with hosting, a study must say exactly what the project is: a building leased to tenants, or a hosting operation with equipment. For a building it tests power capacity and its cost, cooling, tenant demand and lease terms, and the cost to build against the loan sizes in this record; for a hosting business it tests customer contracts, churn and equipment refresh. Debt service should be shown with a realistic lease-up. A $350,000 median is small for a building; the lender will need to know which of the two kinds of credit this is, and the gap may mean many loans fund equipment or hosting businesses, and a project far above $569,000 should say why. Loans reach the metro by project county, and nothing here predicts approval.