Why Ashburn's Property Tax Rate Is So Low, and the Homes Near the Silver Line Where It Isn't

A data center stands next to Chick Ford & Ryan Bickel Fields in Ashburn. The Loudoun Times-Mirror used a photo of it to open its recent feature on what these buildings mean for the county budget. For buyers comparing Ashburn with Fairfax County, the photo is a good summary of the tax bill. Part of every Ashburn homeowner's property tax is effectively paid by the servers inside buildings like that one.

That arrangement is real, and it is large. It is also uneven across Ashburn, and Loudoun's own budget office expects its growth to level off. If you're running monthly-payment numbers on an Ashburn home, the rate printed on most comparison charts may not be the rate that home actually pays.

Start with the parcel, because the headline rate doesn't cover all of Ashburn

Loudoun County's general real property tax rate for tax year 2026 is $0.805 per $100 of assessed value. That's the same as 2025, as the county confirmed when the Board of Supervisors adopted the FY2027 budget in April 2026.

The county's adopted rate table shows another line. A Metrorail Service Tax District adds $0.20 per $100, and the charge has stayed at that level every year from 2022 through 2026. The separate Ashburn Station and Loudoun Gateway-Airport Station service districts are each set at zero. That means a home inside the Metrorail district pays a combined $1.005 per $100.

The extra $0.20 isn't limited to office towers. The Commissioner of the Revenue's 2026 tax year assessment report for the district counts 2,008 urban single-family residential parcels inside it, with a combined taxable value of about $1.43 billion. It also lists 21 apartment parcels and 892 commercial and industrial parcels worth about $27.2 billion. Commercial property makes up most of the district's value. Homeowners are still in it, and they pay the same per-$100 levy.

Loudoun's GIS documentation says the district boundary follows physical features near the stations, within roughly two miles of them. That description dates to 2013. The reliable answer for any single address comes from that parcel's tax record.

What the stack looks like side by side

Here are the 2026 per-$100 rates that apply broadly to homes in each place. Leaf collection in Fairfax and Loudoun's Route 28 district aren't included, because they don't apply to homes across the board.

Fairfax's Board adopted the $1.12 rate on May 5, 2026, down from $1.1225. The county's tax rates page lists the stormwater levy at $0.0325 and the integrated pest management levy at $0.001. A $0.019 leaf collection charge applies only in certain districts.

To turn those rates into dollars, take Loudoun's average 2026 home value of $797,700. By our arithmetic, the same assessment comes to:

• About $6,421 a year at the general Loudoun rate. That matches the county's own average bill figure.
• About $8,017 inside the Metrorail district, roughly $1,595 more.
• About $9,201 at Fairfax's base rate plus its two countywide add-ons.

So the standard Ashburn comparison shows a gap of nearly $2,800 a year on that home. Inside the Metrorail district, the gap shrinks to about $1,185. That still favors Loudoun, but by much less than the $0.805 rate suggests.

Why the base rate is low in the first place

The rate gap comes from the mix of property in each county's tax base. In Loudoun's FY2027 adopted budget, tax year 2026 real property valuation is 57% residential, 35% commercial and industrial, and 7% other. Data center construction is named as a major reason the commercial share is so large. Fairfax's FY2027 adopted budget summary puts commercial and industrial property at 14.42% of its real estate tax base. The two counties classify property a little differently, so treat these as rough indicators, not a precise match. Either way, Fairfax relies far more on homes to fund its budget.

Real property is only part of it. The bigger contribution comes from the equipment inside the buildings. Loudoun taxes computer equipment, including servers in data centers, at $4.15 per $100. The county kept that rate for both 2026 and 2027. The Times-Mirror reported that data centers will supply 45% of Loudoun's local tax revenue in fiscal 2027, which began July 1, 2026. That's nearly $1.3 billion, and about $880 million of it comes from the equipment tax, up from $466 million five years earlier.

That revenue has gone into rate cuts. The Times-Mirror reported that Loudoun's real property rate fell from $1.245 per $100 in 2009 to $0.805 in 2026. In the same article, Commissioner of the Revenue Bob Wertz said "the residents historically have borne the significant portion of the tax base, and so I think data centers have definitely helped in that aspect." Buddy Rizer, the county's economic development director, told the paper that Loudoun recruited data centers 20 years ago because "we were worried about tax revenue."

The 2026 bills reflect that. Holding the rate at $0.805 still raised the average homeowner's real property bill by $141, because the average value of the same homes went from $780,100 on January 1, 2025, to $797,700 on January 1, 2026. In the same budget, the county cut the vehicle personal property rate to $3.09 for 2026. The county estimates that lowers the bill on a $30,000 vehicle by $352, which more than offsets the real property increase for the average homeowner who owns a vehicle. Fairfax's adopted budget estimates its typical residential bill will rise $336.68 for the year.

The county is already planning for the growth to stop

A buyer who expects to own for ten years is betting on how long these rates last. Loudoun's own budget documents speak to that directly.

County Administrator Tim Hemstreet's FY2027 budget message says plentiful revenue in past years let the Board manage spending growth through real property rate reductions. It recommends planning for slower growth ahead. The county's forecast expects data center revenue growth to plateau in the early 2030s, once already-planned space is built and outfitted. After that, it expects no material new revenue from the sector beyond swings tied to equipment replacement.

The county is acting on that forecast. The Times-Mirror reported that the FY2027 budget held county operating growth to 9% and school budget growth to 8%, with plans to bring both down to 5% by FY2032. Data center money above those growth targets now goes to county projects and Loudoun's housing fund. The FY2026 budget added $39.7 million to a revenue stabilization reserve, bringing it to $119.7 million, or 10% of annual data center property tax revenue, as a cushion against volatility in the equipment tax.

Land use policy is changing too. On March 18, 2025, the Board ended by-right data center approvals. Most new applications now need a special exception and public hearings, according to a Holland & Knight summary. In 2026, Loudoun Now reported that two supervisors were trying to end grandfathering for pending by-right projects. The paper later noted that after an error in a county document was corrected, the by-right total was estimated at 18.2 million square feet, up from the 10 million first shown. WUSA9 later reported that the Board shelved a proposed $200,000 audit, which left 15 projects totaling about 10.5 million square feet on track. County staff had warned that ending grandfathering outright could expose the county to $45 million to $60 million in potential liability.

Supervisor Juli Briskman described the near-term outlook as steady. "Honestly, we don't need to vote to approve one more data center for the revenue to continue to grow," she told the Times-Mirror, adding that she doesn't think the county is "in severe danger" of shifting more of the burden to homeowners. Julie Bolthouse of the Piedmont Environmental Council gave the paper a more cautious view. "Just a slowdown could quickly reduce high expected future revenues, resulting in budget shortfalls for planned projects," she said.

Taken together, the published plans point to a revenue stream that keeps growing for several more years and then levels off. None of them predicts the rate going up. They do describe a county that no longer expects to keep cutting the rate the way it did from 2022 to 2025.

Three checks before you compare monthly payments

1. Pull the parcel's tax record and see whether it carries the Metrorail Service Tax District levy. That's $0.20 per $100 on top of the general rate.
2. Compare the actual 2026 assessment to the asking price. Loudoun's figures run January 1 to January 1, and the 2026 rates apply to 2026 assessments.
3. If you're also comparing a Fairfax home, add the stormwater and pest levies to the $1.12 base, and check whether that address is in a leaf collection district.

This post explains how the two counties' taxes are set up. It isn't tax, legal, or financial advice, so please confirm a specific property's bill with the county or a qualified professional before you rely on it.

FAQ

Does Ashburn have a town tax on top of Loudoun's rate? No town tax appears in the county rate sources reviewed here. The parcel-level levies to check are the Loudoun special districts listed in the county's rate table, especially the Metrorail Service Tax District.

Does the Route 28 tax district apply to Ashburn homes? Loudoun lists a Route 28 Highway Transportation Improvement District rate of $0.105 for 2026. The sources reviewed don't show it applying to residential parcels in general. Check the tax record for the specific property.

Is the data center equipment tax rate scheduled to change? The county's adopted budget keeps it at $4.15 per $100 for both 2026 and 2027.

If you're weighing an Ashburn home against one in Fairfax, or near the Silver Line versus a few miles farther out, The Gaskins Team can look up the actual tax line for each address and fold it into a side-by-side cost comparison. Let's connect for a free market consult and put the real numbers next to each other.