The Housing Project Thats Putting Datacenters In Your Home

In this episode, Jennifer talks about a concerning new trend in the housing market: new construction homes featuring unexpected corporate infrastructure. Jennifer explains how major builders like Pulte are partnering with companies like SPAN to install 'mini data centers' directly on the side of new houses. While buyers pay for their home, mortgage, and taxes, Jennifer reveals they won't actually own these boxes, nor can they remove them without facing significant legal penalties. She delves into SPAN’s business model—selling the data capacity generated by these units to AI companies—and unpacks the dubious benefits offered to homeowners, such as ‘reduced utility costs’ and a ‘free backup battery,’ which primarily serve the corporate entity. Jennifer highlights critical downsides including increased homeowner’s insurance, potential fire risks, unknown long-term health effects, and a likely negative impact on resale value. Jennifer emphasizes the importance of asking questions and being informed to avoid turning the dream of homeownership into a corporate burden.

Transcript

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This is a home buyer alert for new construction homes. In this video, I'm going to cover a worrying trend so that if you're looking at new construction later this year, next year, you're aware of this so that you can make an educated decision. We live in a time right now where many communities do not want data centers in them. The fears are taking all the water, increasing electrical costs, humming sounds. You see it everywhere on social media. You see people banding together to try to stop the current data centers. Data centers, in many cases, raise alarms for environmental concerns and health concerns. That is what we're seeing. I was shocked recently when I saw the headline that Poulty Homes was partnering with Span. What Poulty Homes and Span are doing together is they're going to be putting mini data centers on the side of new construction homes. So that community of a hundred houses now will have a hundred mini data centers. That's right. And the theory from a technological aspect is these mini data centers will work together to act as a big data center that will increase capacity for AI. You're like, well, I love AI. Jen, this is great. I get my own AI. No, no. So you buy the house, you pay the mortgage, you pay the taxes, you pay the insurance, you own the land, you own the walls, you own the roof. But there's a box on the side of your house that you don't own, that you cannot legally remove. And if you legally, if you remove it, if you take it off the house, there can be fines, penalties, and a lot of legal bills. That's right. It's corporate property and it has an easement to your home. Wait, you're telling me that a new construction builder is gonna put all these boxes on our house that are mini data centers to act as one big data center, it doesn't even benefit me. And if I try to get it off my house because I don't like it, that I can have to pay money and get sued? Yeah, yeah, that is what I'm saying, guys. And that's why I wanted to do this video is because I always think a year or two down the road and I go, okay, if someone was gonna sell this to a consumer, how would they sell it? And here's what you need to know before I cover what the sales pitch likely will be. The company span, the way they make their money is these boxes create the capacity, they sell the capacity to AI companies. So all those companies that need the data centers, they need that capacity, they will be buying it from span and it will be generated from the side of your house. Well, don't I get a cut of that? No. No, no. You get the promise of reduced utility costs. It goes like this. This is how I see the sales pitch. Hey, yeah, they've got these boxes. We need more data centers. It just increases capacity. They don't have the fan. When people complain about the humming or noise, it's because of the fan. These are super advanced units where they just recirculate a coolant type fluid, and that's how they stay cool. So you don't have to worry about that fan noise. And oh, by the way, you're gonna have reduced utility costs. And we're gonna give you a free backup battery. And you're like, okay, cool, like I get lower utilities, I get a backup battery. Like, why is this not good? Well, how long do you get the free, or not the free, excuse me, the reduced utility cost? How much is it actually reduced? How much will your homeowner's insurance be? Is your homeowner's insurance going to be more expensive because of this box on your house? The preliminary research I did said it would. Because your average homeowner's insurance policy doesn't cover corporate infrastructure, with which is what this is. The box on your home, it's not your box. You can't even move it. It's a company's infrastructure on your home. But I get a backup battery, so if I lose power, yeah, you get a backup battery. And let's be real the backup battery is to keep that box churning so that it creates capacity so that the company can sell it to other companies. Well, Jen, that sounds like they're making money off the back of my investment in my home. Yes. Well, Jen, that sounds like I am paying to keep their company infrastructure in a position where they can make money off of it, but I'm not necessarily financially gaining from it. Yeah, 100%. 100%. And the thing that bothered me, there's so much that bothers me about this. And one of the big things was that the utility, it's like, okay, so you're promising them lower utilities because they're hosting your company's hardware. That's what it is. Like, let's not play. Your house is becoming a host for company's hardware, like you should get something. But for how long? Well, it's gonna be an introductory period. Okay, how long and how much will they save? What if they sell the house? Does the new buyer get the same benefit? What happens after that introductory period? I don't know about you guys, but I don't trust any of those periods. Like, let's think about Hulu, okay? What was your Hulu subscription like 10 years ago versus now? Mine was like $3, now it's $27. Do I really trust that any company is going to continue to give me a financial benefit unless they are legally obligated? It's sad to say, but no, I don't. So as a home buyer, why would you want to buy a house where you are hosting corporate infrastructure for a company that you don't have any financial benefit from? You have no ability to remove the box if it causes any disturbances. No one knows if it will yet. We don't know if it's gonna cause humming. We don't know if it's gonna cause a frequency. These haven't been long-term tested near people, these haven't been long-term tested near people's bedrooms. We don't know. So you have this corporate infrastructure on your house, you can't take it off, you get reduced utilities from a period of time and some backup battery. I just can't. I can't, you know, because I was reading some of the articles and the articles were like, well, people aren't gonna want these. And some of the responses experts were saying were, well, they won't have a choice. And that really bothered me because the American dream is to own a home and it's your home. It's not to own a home and be a corporate, you know, servant where you're hosting their infrastructure. And that's the thing too. Like you can end up with higher insurance costs. Also, it's a higher fire risk. So you have a higher risk on your personal home that you're not even financially benefiting from long term. Why would you do that? You wouldn't. You wouldn't. That's the thing. If you look at it this way, you don't say, oh yeah, I want one of those special boxes on my house. No, but it's gonna get sold to you where you don't know that's what it is. I know it. I know this. And that's what bothers me the most. And I'm not saying this is pull tea salespeople or anything else. I'm saying this is the industry. And to be clear, in the announcement, they mentioned pull-ti, but they also said other home builders. And I was like, why aren't they doing this commercial first? It makes more sense for this to go commercially first. Simple. If you put it on home builders, home builders build a lot of houses. It's a lot easier to deploy a ton of these quicker than if you went door to door going to businesses. And getting the data centers approved in towns and states now can be problematic. So the path of least resistance would be to put it on people's homes and not necessarily have them know what it is. I don't want you guys to be those people. No, no, you watch this channel. So if you decide you want to buy a house that has a data center on the side of it, that's your choice. But I want to make sure you're educated and you understand what it is. Because the long-term concern, besides like, hey, these haven't really been tested by humans, like what's the real benefit to the homeowner? There's increased fire risk, the utility, lower prices aren't guaranteed forever. Who's gonna maintain this equipment? If there's any issues, who's gonna maintain it? And if something looks like it's going wrong, how quickly are they gonna be out there? Because it's on the side of your house, right? It's on the side of where your kids play, it's on the side of where you sleep. So many questions. So many questions. So I was like, okay, you know, if someone determines they want to have this on their house, that is their choice. Do I think it will long-term affect resale? Yeah, totally. Totally. I'm gonna tell you why. People like me, people like me, if you said to me, if I saw a house and it was the perfect house but it had a data center on the side and I couldn't remove it, I'd walk away. No way. We see that with solar, and solar's not even controversial. But people who have solar, I've got buyers that are like, well, if it has solar and I have to pay a monthly amount, I don't want it. Well, if it has solar, even if it's paid off, I don't want it because A, a lot of times solar is not properly maintained, so it doesn't work properly. Or B, I don't want to maintain some, I don't want to pay someone to maintain it. There's certain states where having solar on your roof is harder to insure because it's more likely to do damage. We're gonna have the same issues with these boxes, and we're gonna have the same people who don't want to buy a house because of. So if I was looking, let's say this is a long-term investment, would I buy it as a rental property? Uh-uh. Would I buy it in any regards? No way. No way. If someone knocked on my door and said, I want to put a data center on your house, I'll pay you $100,000 a year, I would say no. Uh-uh. Because it's going to affect resale. There's too many people against data centers. There's too much information that's coming out that says it's harmful for your health. There is not enough testing on this equipment. And the fact that anyone's even considering just throwing it in new construction kills me. Kills me. It kills me. You know, it's like builders have gotten it so wrong for the last five years. They're like, oh, well, builders aren't selling as many houses. It must be the market. No, it's because you're building houses on small lots. You're not listening to the consumer. There's no pride of ownership or pride of work in most of these houses. And guess what? Now we have to worry about if you're sticking a data center on the side of the house so that some corporation can sell off the capacity to another corporation and we can't remove it? And then I go, well, why would a builder even do this? This is like, this is suicide from a business point. No one wants a corporation's infrastructure on their home. Why would they do this? And a lot of the articles have been like, oh, we'll lower utilities. Okay, but it's not guaranteed for a long period of time. There's too many ifs, that's not gonna work. Well, it's a free backup battery for the home buyer. Yeah, that's not good enough. Why would a builder do this? And look, this hasn't come out. And in my world, the only reason I could see a builder doing this, and it'll be interesting to see if I'm right. This is an assumption, this is a wild guess, this is not a fact. This is me just looking at the world and going, why would they do this? Because from a business standpoint, knowing you, the home buyer, the consumer, I don't know any home buyers, maybe two. I might have two home buyers that would do this. I had one that bought a house by a data center and I was like, You sure? He was like, I like it, right? Two. Okay? Why would they do it? What's in it? The only thing I could think of was, are they going to get some level of residual income off of the houses? Think about it this way: if you could build a house and then sell it, but then you get a monthly or yearly recurring amount because you put these boxes on the house. That's interesting. For the shareholders, they're like, wow, you figured out how to make housing a subscription service. Fantastic. It's not even the home buyer paying it. You're giving the home buyer an easier way to get in with these lower utilities, but you have this other corporation giving you a cut. I don't have any proof of that, but that is the only way I see that this is working. Either that or they're getting some huge government tax credits. But I don't know that the government would even go near this right now. You know, the public sentiment against data centers is not great. So, bottom line, I could go on for days about this. I've actually filmed this video four times because I was trying to make it shorter. The bottom line is this this is happening. This is something that's being tried out. If you're looking at buying a new construction home, you want to know is there anything on this house? You want to see if there's an easement deed. You want to be asking questions, you want to pay attention. And if someone says, oh, it's just a box and you get this and this and you get reduced utilities, it's not just a box, okay? It's a potential long-term problem to resale. Period. You're gonna have people like me that do not want a data center on the side of their home. Period. Also, the utility, how long? What happens if I sell the house, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? What happens if it's determined there's some health difficulties because of this? How much does it cost to get this removed? Can I even get it removed? What are my rights? As long as you're answer asking those questions, great. I just don't want you guys to get into a position where you find your dream house, you buy it, and six months later you go, wait, I can't remove that? Wait, my utilities went up? Wait, what's that? So stay educated, stay informed. I'll be covering this as it develops. I hope Pulti hears what people were saying. And people are saying this is a horrible idea. That is what I'm seeing online the most. Of course, that's probably just my algorithm, but I hope they hear it. I hope they don't do this. I don't think homes should be data centers, period. I don't think that people should have to worry about if the company is gonna maintain the data center on the side of their house. I don't think people should have to worry about when the introduct introductory utilities payment is gonna change. Those are too many worries that make home ownership more of a burden than a benefit. And we want homeownership to be a benefit and not a burden. Thanks for watching, guys.