The Baker House Newsletter Issue XIII
Buy Before the Announcement
New York is negotiating its next chip plant, and the press conference may come before Election Day. This issue covers what the last two announcements did to land and rents, how to find the next site in the public record, and what an announcement does not promise.
THE LEAD
The Press Conference Moves the Market
The New York Post reported on October 20 that Governor Hochul is in advanced talks with Solidigm, the American arm of South Korea’s SK Hynix, to build a memory chip factory near Utica, backed by state tax breaks through the Green CHIPS program, and that Albany wants to announce it before the November 3 election. No deal is signed, and the company calls the reporting speculation. If the announcement comes, it will be a press conference about a factory that is years from its first shift.
| Change | Measure |
|---|---|
| +9.4% | Clay, NY median sale price in a year, June 2026 |
| +22% | Clay-area two-bedroom asking rents in five quarters |
| +125% | Licking County, OH farmland per acre, 2021 to 2022 |
Micron announced a 100 billion dollar, 20-year fab complex in Clay, outside Syracuse, in October 2022. Ground was not broken until late 2025, and the first fab is not expected to be complete before 2029 or 2030. The market moved anyway. The median sale price in Clay reached about 313,000 dollars in June 2026, up 9.4 percent in a year in a county where the overall median was roughly flat, and asking rents on two-bedroom units in the Clay area rose 22 percent in the five quarters following the announcement, from 1,050 to 1,280 dollars a month. Other forces were moving the region at the same time. What the numbers establish is that Clay outran its own county after the announcement.
Intel announced two fabs outside Columbus in January 2022 and broke ground that September. Farmland in Licking County went from about 20,000 dollars an acre in 2021 to about 45,000 in 2022, more than doubling in a year, per the county auditor, who put the rise in nearby residential values at 30 to 40 percent. The assembled project site itself traded to Intel at roughly 110,000 dollars an acre, a figure from a different category: hundreds of entitled, utility-served acres in a single parcel, priced as an industrial site. The fabs’ completion has since slipped from 2026 to 2030 and 2031. The price moved on the announcement, and the jobs are still eight years out from the land’s repricing.
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CHART
Licking County, Ohio, Per Acre
Farmland, 2021, before the Intel announcement
| Price per acre | |
|---|---|
| $20,000 |
Farmland, 2022, the year of the announcement
| Price per acre | |
|---|---|
| $45,000 |
A DIFFERENT ASSET
The assembled, entitled industrial site, sold to Intel
| Price per acre |
|---|
| $110,000 |
Price per acre. Farmland figures and the 30 to 40 percent rise in nearby residential values per the Licking County Auditor. The site figure is not farmland appreciation: it is one assembled, utility-served industrial parcel, shown for scale, per local reporting. The fabs the land was priced on are now expected to be complete in 2030 and 2031. Sources: Licking County Auditor via WBNS-10TV; Manufacturing Dive.
THE TURN
The press conference is the event the market prices. Construction follows years later, production years after that, and the price of land and houses moves in the window between the podium and the payroll. Professionals know this, which is why acreage against the fence line gets repriced within weeks. A first-time buyer does not win that auction and does not need to. The rent data points somewhere else: construction workers, then suppliers, then employees all need places to live, and they rent in the ordinary towns within commuting range. The Clay numbers fit that pattern. A buyer should still test it against local listing and rent data, because this issue establishes it for one market, with a second consistent with it.
These projects are assembled in public documents for years before any podium: state agencies certify shovel-ready megasites, county development agencies quietly piece together farmland, rezoning and environmental notices get published, and water and sewer money appears in budgets. The White Pine site Micron chose had been assembled by Onondaga County’s development agency years before Micron’s name was attached. The paper is public record, and almost no one reads it.
Farmland near the Intel site more than doubled in a year. The factory’s opening then slipped five years.
THE FRAME
One Announcement, Two Ways to See It
| WHAT THE MARKET SEES | WHAT A DISCIPLINED BUYER SEES |
|---|---|
| The jobs arriving in 2030 | The rents moving in year one |
| Acreage at the site gate | Houses in the towns 15 to 25 minutes out |
| A bet that needs the plant | A deal that carries itself today |
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
The site lists. States publish the candidate sites before companies pick them. New York’s Green CHIPS program, certified shovel-ready site lists, and county development agencies’ megasite inventories are the public map of where the next announcement can land. A site with hundreds of assembled acres, highway access, and committed water and power is on somebody’s shortlist whether or not a company has been named.
The paper trail. Land assembly shows up in county deed records years early, often through a development agency or a quiet LLC. Rezoning dockets, environmental review notices, and utility budgets are published. Utility money is among the strongest public signals of serious preparation, and it promises no particular tenant: counties also extend water and sewer for speculative parks that sit empty.
The ring, not the fence line. Acreage beside the site is a professional’s trade and gets repriced within weeks of the news. A buyer with 50,000 to 500,000 dollars buys houses and small multifamily in the towns 15 to 25 minutes out, where construction workers and then employees look for housing. Prices there have moved later and by less in the markets this issue covers, a pattern to verify locally before buying on it.
The deal that works without the plant. Underwrite every purchase on the rents the town pays today. A duplex that clears on current rents is a sound purchase if the project dies, and a windfall if it ships. A purchase that needs the plant to pencil is a bet on a corporate board’s schedule, and the schedules are slipping everywhere.
The hold. These timelines run a decade. Micron’s first fab is now expected around 2030 and full production by 2045; Intel’s fabs slipped to 2030 and 2031. The buyer who wins is the one whose financing and reserves let them hold through every delay announcement without selling.
HOW THE MATH WORKS
| A $260,000 DUPLEX IN THE CLAY CORRIDOR | MONTHLY |
|---|---|
| Rent collected, two 2-bedroom units at the area’s $1,280 asking rent | +$2,560 |
| Loan payment, $195,000 at 7.5% after 25% down | −$1,365 |
| Property taxes at the area’s 2.2% effective rate | −$475 |
| Insurance | −$130 |
| Repairs and reserves | −$260 |
| Vacancy allowance, 5% | −$130 |
| Margin, self-managed | +$200 |
| Margin with a property manager at 8% | about $0 |
The margin is thin on purpose: the plant is upside, never the basis. Two cautions sit inside the numbers. The rent line assumes both units achieve the area’s asking rent, and asking rents run ahead of what sitting tenants actually pay. And the downside case is simplified: if rents retrace to their 2023 level of 1,050 dollars, the property runs roughly 260 a month negative with the other expenses held fixed, which is what the reserves exist to carry and the purchase price exists to limit. The same listing at 290,000, the price an announcement puts on it, erases the margin entirely. The discipline is to walk from any price where the table does not clear.
THE RISKS
The counterexample is Foxconn. Wisconsin announced a 10 billion dollar plant and 13,000 jobs in 2017; by 2022 the company had hired 579 people and completed about 520 million dollars of its promised 1.4 billion in property improvements, while the village of Mount Pleasant had separately spent roughly 700 million dollars of public money on land and infrastructure. Prices that rise on an announcement can fall on a cancellation, and a chip market downturn can shelve a project a governor swore was certain. Delay is the mild version of the same risk: Intel slipped five years, Micron slipped two, and a buyer who needs the upside on schedule can be forced to sell into the quiet stretch, which Central New York is in now, with the county median roughly flat this year. Reassessment arrives either way: the county auditor who marks values up 30 to 40 percent is also marking up the tax bill, project or no project. And a town bet on one employer’s board is concentrated in a way no rent roll fixes. The strategy survives all of this only when the deal worked without the plant.
THE WIRE
The Deal, the Delays, and the Paper
The Solidigm deal is not done. Per the New York Post’s October 20 reporting, the talks are advanced but unsigned, the company calls the story speculation, and two complications sit in plain view: the governor’s statewide moratorium on AI data centers, which the Post’s reporting flags as a tension because data centers are the main buyers of the chips the plant would make, and a Reuters report that SK Hynix has tied a US factory to federal export approvals for its China operations. An announcement made to beat an election is still subject to both afterward.
The delay scoreboard. Intel’s Ohio fabs, announced for 2025, then 2026, are now expected in 2030 and 2031, per the company’s February 2025 guidance. Micron’s final environmental approval came in November 2025, three years after the announcement, with the first fab’s completion moved from 2028 to around 2030, all four fabs projected for 2041, and full production by 2045. The land around both sites was repriced years ago.
The paper is public. Everything that preceded these announcements sat in open records: the county agency’s land assembly at White Pine, the state’s certified site lists, the rezoning dockets, the utility budgets. The same documents exist today for sites that have no company attached yet, in New York and in every state running a subsidy program.
The sites for these projects sat in public records before any company was named. The records identify candidates, never winners, which is why the underwriting carries the strategy. The buyer who reads the county agenda still gets there ahead of the buyer who reads the headline.
WHERE TO START
1. Pull your state’s certified shovel-ready site list and map every site within an hour of you.
2. Search the county clerk’s deed records around each one for land assembled by a development agency or a single LLC over the past three years.
3. Price duplexes in the towns 15 to 25 minutes out against the rents those towns pay today, and set the number at which each one carries itself. That number is your offer whether or not an announcement ever comes.
OFFICE HOURS
How to read a county’s public record for the next big site, whether the towns around an announced plant are already overpriced, and what a deal that works without the plant looks like: Richard takes questions on all of it every Wednesday at 2pm ET in his free office hours. He answers whatever attendees ask, live, for an hour. If this issue raised a question for you, bring it.
SOURCES
- Hochul’s talks with Solidigm and the pre-election push: New York Post, Oct 20, 2026; Reuters, Oct 14, on SK Hynix’s export-approval condition.
- Micron’s $100 billion Clay announcement, Oct 2022: Schumer press office. EIS approval and 2030-2045 timeline: WRVO, Nov 2025.
- Clay median sale price, June 2026: Redfin. Clay-area and Syracuse rents: RenPro CNY rent report. North Syracuse 2.2% effective tax rate: Ownwell.
- Licking County land and residential values, per the county auditor: WBNS-10TV. Intel’s 2030-2031 timeline: Manufacturing Dive, Mar 2025.
- Foxconn’s 2017 promises and outcomes through 2022: Wisconsin Examiner.
- The duplex table is illustrative with anchored inputs: the area’s reported asking rent and effective tax rate, and a $195,000 loan at 7.5 percent over 30 years.