Wait. The auction is being cancelled?

A client had called me a few weeks ago to ask me if I had heard the rumor about a data center trying to locate at a property across from Nelson County High School. The sign from the road advertises an auction to sell off 683 acres.

“I’ve heard of the rumor,” I replied, “But the land looks horrible from the road.”

Here’s what I meant. It is a lovely piece of land. If you are a bird in the sky, it’s a big chunk of rolling woods riddled with ridges and creeks. Great hunting if it weren’t so close to US 29. But maybe the hum of the highway isn’t so bad in those hollows where the creeks run.

But to build a data center? The terrain — though I haven’t walked it — looks like a hot mess for anything of that scale. Except for that perfect scar that runs straight along one edge of the parcel. Zooming in on my hunting app, I can see it’s one of those massive electric transmission lines. The clearing is a great place to set up for deer season.

But it’s apparently data season in many parts of Virginia.

Our current zeitgeist paints a bleak picture of our natural world: Tick diseases are spreading so quickly, you might as well enjoy the ribeye while you can. And if a tick doesn’t get you, a data center just might.

But that’s just a rumor, right?

Well, the part about ticks is true. I’m in the woods a lot for work and for pleasure, and I’ve got the tick diseases to prove it. I pulled two ticks off me today.

The unfortunate part about the disease is it makes me do strange things like call up a local Board of Supervisor after dinner.

After a minute or two of teasing each other about who bought the land — “I think Yvette bought the land!” and “No, you bought the land!” — my question was simple but blunt.

“So who bought the land?”

A period of awkward silence finally broke with an official excuse: “We get calls all the time. A Google headhunter. Facebook. D.R. Horton. Ryan Homes.”

So that excuse is either puffery or a disclosure. Or it could be its lovechild: a political trial balloon. The kind of thing that can get a community very, very worked up.

A few minutes prior to my conversation with the Supervisor, I had reached out to a person with knowledge of the transaction after two different people brought up the sale to me today. One was halfway seriously kicking around the idea of participating in the auction but feared he’d get outbid. The other had heard the auction had been cancelled. It was in the evening when a person with direct knowledge of the auction told me in writing that the property had indeed gone under contract, and that it was essentially now a private sale prior to the auction, which would be canceled.

That’s how potential buyers get outbid before an auction even happens. Make an offer the seller can’t refuse.

Back to the Supervisor chat. The county had tried to buy the parcel years ago, the Supervisor told me.

But with Silicon Valley and large national home builders supposedly hovering, how would the Board react?

“We would probably entertain it.”

Which begs the question: what else would the County entertain? In theory, if the County wanted to speculate on land, it could submit a purchase offer. One strong enough to cancel an auction.

“It’s got to be seven figures, right?” I asked.

“It’s a big number,” Supervisor assured me, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. If it’s “only” seven figures, using the county’s assessed value of roughly $3.3 million, that purchase price would fetch nearly $5000/acre. But is that really the “cancel an auction” price? I don’t think it is. Maybe the buyer came in hard and deep with an 8-figure number. $10 million? To think, that someone could potentially drive up the value of rugged wooded mountain land in Lovingston to around $15,000 an acre. And that’s buying in bulk! I haven’t run the comps but it feels high.

The electric service is clearly there. But who is bringing in the water and sewer infrastructure? Given the terrain and expense of building out any project, does developing that land even pencil out?

“So what about a data center?” I prodded.

“Probably not,” said the Supervisor.

If the County were to buy the land, it would need to be voted on, right? The Board of Supervisors meets on the second Tuesday of the month. That’s next week, June 9, three days before the June 12 auction.

But if the auction is indeed cancelled, the selling side would have to be really confident about the sale going through.

In the real estate world, it’s kind of like cancelling an Open House. An early offer can be so good it would be worth cancelling the opportunity to invite other buyers to a potentially lucrative (for the seller) multiple offer situation.

And you can think of it this way, as well. A property in your neighborhood goes on the market as “Coming Soon” with an anticipated on-market date. But within hours of it finally hitting the market, the property goes under contract!

Game over. Thanks for playing.

Some final napkin math:

2% agent commission offered, the flyer says. Just for fun, let’s go with my “cancel the auction” price of $10,000,000. That commission is $200,000, if an agent was used or even requested the seller to contribute to that commission.

I haven’t seen the offer but all I can say is it must have been a good one.

If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you and me a steak dinner. Even an Alpha-Gal Syndrome diagnosis can’t tear me away from a good ribeye.

My phone rang again this evening.

This time it was to plant some doubt about the accuracy of the claim that the auction had been cancelled. So is the ink technically still drying? Or is this the kind of ink that dries on the second Tuesday of the month?

This is a developing story and I’ve sent the county administrator an email asking for an official comment.

Even so, more than 14 hours have passed since last night’s call and I'm hitting the publish button on this post. You can thank a data center for that.

Update: 6-4-2026 6:09 PM.

The county just replied. Nelson County bought the land for just shy of $9 million.

The author is a licensed real estate broker in the Commonwealth of Virginia serving Nelson County and the Wintergreen area.