Case study · 13 min read

Case study — valuing a data center in Casa Anfa, critical infrastructure on an emerging market

Anonymised case study: a colocation data center within the Casa Anfa perimeter, leased to cloud and telecom operators under long-term leases. Neither an office building nor a warehouse: a hybrid specialised asset where the real estate represents only part of the value. Here is how our RICS-certified experts build a defensible value — income approach as the primary method, VPGA 5 replacement cost as a cross-check, international cap rates adjusted to the Moroccan context — without quoting a single market figure that is not publicly verifiable.

1. The asset valued (anonymised case)

The case concerns a mid-sized colocation data center located within the Casa Anfa perimeter in Casablanca. The asset combines IT rooms (white rooms with raised technical floors), power and cooling plant rooms, and a small share of operational offices. The building was designed for this use from the outset, targeting Tier III-type redundancy (concurrently maintainable) within the meaning of the Uptime Institute classification.

• Electrical infrastructure: dual supply feeds, redundant uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), backup generators with contractually secured fuel autonomy.
• Cooling: precision HVAC in a redundant configuration, contained hot and cold aisles.
• Physical security: multi-level access control, video surveillance, fire detection and suppression suited to IT rooms.
• Connectivity: several fibre operators present in the building (carrier-neutral), a decisive condition of letting attractiveness.
• Letting situation: long-term leases signed with cloud and telecom operators, firm multi-year commitments, service-level obligations (SLA) borne by the operator.
• Purpose of the report: securing a financing transaction and the investor's reporting — an independent valuation, distinct from any internal valuation.

2. Why a data center is not a building like any other

The valuer's first task is to delimit the scope being valued. In a data center, three layers of value coexist and must never be conflated:

• The real estate envelope — land, structure, weathertight shell. This is the layer closest to conventional real estate, but it is highly specialised: ceiling heights, floor loadings, grids and risers dimensioned for IT.
• The technical equipment — UPS, generators, HVAC, security. It represents a major share of the asset's cost and follows much faster obsolescence cycles than the building fabric.
• The operation — the colocation contracts, the operator's brand, the SLAs. This layer belongs to enterprise value, not real estate value.

Depending on the assignment, the valuer values the real estate alone (for example for a mortgage security), the combined real estate + equipment, or the asset in its leased state. The basis of value and the scope are made explicit at the head of the report, in accordance with the RICS Red Book Global Standards. It is the gap between “pure real estate” and “hybrid asset” that the valuer must master — and that improvised valuations almost systematically confuse.

3. Primary approach: the income from the operator leases

When the asset is leased under long-term leases to cloud and telecom operators, the income approach imposes itself as the primary method: the contractual flow is predictable, the counterparties are solid, and it is precisely this flow that the investor buys. The construction follows the logic described in our case study on the DCF valuation of an office building in Hay Riad, Rabat, with specificities proper to the data center:

• Revenue structure — a data center's rent may be expressed per square metre of IT room, per rack, or per unit of electrical capacity made available. The valuer normalises these structures to make them comparable with one another.
• Powered shell vs. turnkey — a building delivered as a “powered shell” and a turnkey colocation do not carry the same risk or the same revenue level; the capitalisation rate retained takes this into account.
• Firm term and options — operators' long firm commitments reduce vacancy risk; exit or scope-reduction options are analysed clause by clause.
• Charges and energy — the re-invoicing of electricity and the site's energy efficiency (measured by indicators such as PUE) influence the net margin that can actually be capitalised.

The central question remains: which capitalisation rate to apply? The Moroccan market does not yet offer public data center transactions in sufficient volume to observe a local cap rate. The valuer therefore starts from the ranges published by international brokers for this asset class, then adjusts them explicitly: country risk premium, very limited liquidity of the Moroccan secondary market, depth of the substitute tenant pool, quality of the site's power supply and connectivity. Each adjustment is reasoned in writing in the report — an imported cap rate without justification has no methodological evidential value.

4. Cross-check: depreciated replacement cost (VPGA 5)

For a specialised asset with a narrow resale market, the Red Book (VPGA 5) provides for the use of depreciated replacement cost (DRC) as a cross-checking method — or even as the main method when no market income is observable. The approach, already illustrated in our case study of the Tanger Med logistics platform, takes on particular relief here:

• Land cost — the value of an equivalent plot in a comparable sector of Casablanca, fit for the use (power supply, fibre, zoning).
• Envelope cost — rebuilding the specialised structure as new, fees and expenses included.
• Technical equipment cost — power, backup, cooling and security packages: this is the item where the data center differs radically from conventional real estate.
• Depreciation — physical wear of the building fabric on the one hand, technological obsolescence of the equipment on the other. Renewal cycles for IT and power equipment are short; ignoring this obsolescence leads to massively overvaluing the asset.

Confronting the two approaches is instructive: if the income value comes out durably below the depreciated replacement cost, the market is signalling that local letting demand does not yet remunerate the capital invested — a frequent finding in emerging markets, which the report documents rather than conceals.

5. The Moroccan data center market in 2026: emerging, structurally supported

The market context is an integral part of the report. Without quoting non-public figures, several qualitative dynamics structure the demand for digital infrastructure in Morocco:

• Sovereignty and data localisation — Morocco's regulatory framework for personal data protection and sector-specific requirements (banks, insurers, public operators) push sensitive data to be hosted on national territory.
• Cloud adoption — the migration of Moroccan companies to regional cloud services creates demand for nearby, low-latency hosting capacity.
• Geographical position — Casablanca for economic depth, the Tanger Med axis for international connectivity: submarine cable landing points and fibre corridors draw the geography of candidate sites. Our typology of Moroccan industrial real estate situates the data center within this asset landscape.
• Energy constraint — the availability of firm, high-quality electrical power is the first location criterion, even before the land; the rise of Moroccan renewable energy is a growing argument for international operators.

For the valuer, this emerging character has a direct methodological consequence: few comparables, little liquidity, hence a higher risk premium and wider sensitivities. The report systematically presents a sensitivity analysis on the capitalisation rate and the letting assumptions, so that the reader — bank, investor, statutory auditor — can gauge the robustness of the value range retained.

6. Reconciliation, delivered report and the role of the independent expert

The final value results from the reconciliationbetween the income approach (primary, because it reflects the investor's logic) and the depreciated replacement cost (cross-check, a safeguard against exuberance). The delivered report comprises: the scope and basis of value, the technical and legal description of the asset, the analysis of the operator contracts, the two detailed methods with their assumptions, the sensitivities, the value retained and its limitations. In an amicable framework — financing, arbitration between partners, reporting — this independent valuation serves as a negotiation and documentation reference for all parties.

ReaConsult, founded in 2019, carries out more than 1,000 appraisals per year — over 5,000 assignments in total — across 6 cities in Morocco, with client reviews published on Google. Our assignments start from 3,500 MAD net of tax for simple assets; a data center is a specialised mandate priced by quote according to the scope retained (pure real estate, real estate + equipment, leased asset), the documentation volume and the purpose of the report. Firm quote within 24 hours.

Going further

• See our dedicated service: property valuation in Morocco (methods, scope, fees).
• Browse the industrial real estate Morocco hub for other specialised asset classes.
• Back to the blog.

Note: This case study is anonymised and strictly methodological. No rent, cap rate or value figure is quoted, because these parameters depend on market conditions, the contracts in place and the precise characteristics of each asset. The value of a real data center always results from a case-by-case analysis carried out on documents and on site. Read the version française of this article.