Real estate agents are going door to door in Southaven on behalf of xAI, offering to buy homes in the Elon Musk Southaven housing buyout if owners agree not to join a lawsuit over noise from the company’s power plant. The offer has put Colonial Hills homeowners in Southaven in the path of a deal tied to both their property and their legal options.
One realtor told a resident the target is 418 homes, and another said 18 homeowners had already agreed to sell. The homes sit in Colonial Hills on the western flank of Southaven, near a former Duke Energy site that now houses 69 temporary gas turbines powering the datacenters.
Colonial Hills and Southaven
The buyout campaign comes after three datacenters sprang up in Southaven and adjoining Memphis, Tennessee, over the past two years. Since July 2024, xAI has constructed three vast datacenters in the Memphis and Southaven area, while the former Duke Energy site began its low-level growl in August last year.
Elizabeth Rose, a Southaven resident and piano teacher, said the noise sounds like an airplane engine but continuous and incredibly loud. “I’ve been woken up at 2am by it, I’ve been woken up at 3am by it. I sometimes have to just get away from it because it makes me so angry,” she said.
Rose also described how the neighborhood changed around her. “All of a sudden there was a plant there,” she said. “And now I get the feeling they are trying to expand the buyout to the entire neighborhood. It will become Elon Musk’s little playground, basically. Elonville.”
xAI and the lawsuit
xAI has said it intends to be a good neighbor, while also denying all claims in the noise lawsuit. Residents say the buyout links home sales to a condition that they not join that lawsuit, turning the offer into more than a simple property purchase.
The average house price in the area is about $180,000, and the offer has raised the possibility that a large part of one neighborhood could change hands through a buyout rather than ordinary market sales. Musk is currently spending up to four nights a week in an Airstream trailer in the Memphis area while overseeing the build-out.
Memphis and Southaven
Musk said during a SpaceX earnings call this month, “We’re seeing the fastest growth I’ve ever seen in my life for Grok bot.” He also said, “I’ve never seen anything grow this fast.”
The unanswered part is simple: how many Colonial Hills homeowners will take the money and how far the buyout will spread if the 418-home target is reached. For now, the offer gives affected residents a choice between selling into xAI’s plan or staying in a neighborhood still shaped by the noise dispute.
