Data Centers Lose Nearly Every Local Vote

West Texas Intermediate crude oil, November 2025 to November 2026. The latest reading is $99.64, on Nov. 3, 2026.

Chart by the Intelligencer from figures by the Energy Information Administration, via FRED

The 10-year Treasury yield closed Wednesday at 4.90 per cent and the 5-year at 4.69, according to the Treasury Department, down from 5.31 and 5.06 on Oct. 5. That is about four-tenths of a point off the price of long money in a month. Oil, the main cause of this year's rise in inflation, fell too: American crude futures were down nearly 8 per cent on Wednesday, at about $88.55 a barrel, their lowest in nearly two months, Investopedia reported.

Construction shrank in October. It was one of only two industries to contract in the Institute for Supply Management's survey of service businesses, with health care the other, while services as a whole grew for a 28th straight month. Real estate, rental and leasing was among the 15 that grew.

The Dow rose 1,569 points, or 3 per cent, to 53,356. The S&P 500 rose 1.6 per cent and the Nasdaq 1.4 per cent.

COLUMBIA, Nov. 4. In South Carolina, the counties are deciding where data centers go. York County is under a nine-month moratorium that runs to April, WSOC-TV reported, and Chester County leaders have weighed a six-month pause while pointing to the millions in tax revenue the projects could bring. In the Upstate, Spartanburg County's recent moratorium holds new data centers to 65 megawatts, the Post and Courier reported.

Annie Andrews, elected to the Senate on Tuesday, has called for a two-year moratorium on data center development to "empower our local communities and local elected officials," WSOC reported. A senator cannot stop a county from approving a data center on her own, and the station noted that any statewide pause would still take action beyond her. For now the decision stays with each county council.

The Pelham at Hyland flex buildings along Pelham Road in Greenville, seen from the air.

Courtesy of Trinity Partners

GREENVILLE, Nov. 3. Pelham at Hyland has sold for $16.4 million, about $137 a square foot and roughly twice what it brought in 2017. Charlotte's Insite Properties bought the four-building office and flex park at 7001 and 7005 Pelham Road, by Interstate 85, the Upstate Business Journal reported. Its 120,000 square feet last sold in August 2017 for a little more than $8 million, according to the sale records shown on Trulia and CompStak.

Insite plans to spend on it. The firm will add loading docks and roll-up doors, redo the parking, landscaping and signs, and build spec suites, space finished before a tenant signs, according to the deal's announcement. Trinity Partners will handle the leasing.

Edward Wilson, Grayson Burgess and Anthony Porchetta of Trinity Partners' Greenville office represented Insite. Rhett Craig of CBRE represented the seller, which was not named, and BWE's Charlotte office arranged the capital.

The short answer is that real estate pays you an income set by contract, lets you borrow most of the price against that income for years at a time, and lets your own knowledge and work change what it's worth. A stock gives you none of that, and a bond gives you only the first.

The income comes from a lease, which the tenant is legally bound to pay, while a dividend is something a company's board can cut. Commercial leases often run five to ten years with increases written in, and under a net lease the tenant pays the property taxes, insurance and upkeep on top of the rent.

The debt is patient. A bank lends against the building's income, with the building itself behind the loan, and the rate is often fixed for five to ten years. As long as you pay and keep to the loan's terms, the bank can't call it because values dipped, whereas a margin loan against stocks can be called the week prices fall. Over time, rents tend to rise with inflation while a fixed payment stays where it is.

You can also change what it's worth. A commercial building is valued on its income, the net operating income divided by a market rate called the cap rate, so raising the income raises the value directly. Leasing an empty suite or cutting an expense moves the price, and so do improvements like the loading docks and roll-up doors the new owner of Pelham at Hyland, on Pelham Road, plans to add. A shareholder can't do any of that.

The market is private and local. There is no ticker, and every price is negotiated among a handful of people, so there are mistakes and bargains, and someone who knows a submarket well has a real edge. Deals of a few million dollars are often too small for big institutions to bother with, which means an individual mostly competes with other individuals.

The tax code favors it as well. A commercial building, though not the land under it, is depreciated over 39 years, and that deduction can shelter much of the rent from income tax. A 1031 exchange defers the tax on the gain when you sell one property and buy another, and heirs inherit at the property's value on the day of death, so a gain deferred for decades can disappear.

Commercial property has advantages over houses beyond all of this. The tenants are businesses, the leases are longer, and tenants often pay for their own improvements and running costs. Above all, a commercial building's value comes from income you can raise rather than from what the neighbors sold for: a duplex is priced on comparable sales, and a strip center is priced on its leases.

None of it comes free. A building takes months to sell and costs several per cent of the price each way, and one building can be most of a person's net worth. The debt is where people get hurt. The classic way to lose a building is a loan coming due when rates are higher, or just after a big tenant leaves, and office buildings since 2020 are the textbook case. The leverage that makes the good years good makes the bad years worse.

Real estate suits someone with patient money and a long horizon, with enough cash in reserve to carry an empty space for a year, and either the time to learn one local market well or a partner who has. For that person it is one of the few investments where skill shows up in the return, rather than just owning the market and waiting.

"He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap." Ecclesiastes 11:4.

The Preacher isn't scolding caution here. The whole chapter is about working when you can't see ahead. He tells us to give a portion to seven and to eight, "for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth." He says plainly that we don't know the work of God. Then, two verses on, he gives the answer: "In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."

I've known men who studied the wind for twenty years and never planted. They were usually right about the wind. The Preacher's point is that being right about the weather isn't the same as bringing in a harvest.

So I take two things into the week. Spread the work out, because I can't know which part will bear. And put my hand to it in the morning, leaving the clouds to the One who made them.

Dear Editor: On Tuesday I parked in a garage downtown and found no attendant, no ticket and no slot for money, only a sign instructing me to scan a square with my telephone, download a program and make an account. I wished to park a car, sir, not to join a society. I left the car on the street and walked two blocks, which I am told is good for me. [The walk was free, and nobody asked for your password. ED.]

A Motorist, Coffee Street

The National Weather Service expects patchy fog in Greenville on Thursday and a brief chance of rain before noon, then a partly sunny afternoon with a high near 76. Thursday night turns mostly cloudy, with a low around 58.