Seven Slopes

Why People Are Leaving North Texas: The Housing Market Truth

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 13:34:00 GMT

People are still pouring into Collin County. I meet them every single day. Celina was called the fastest growing city in the entire country by The Real Deal just back in June. But while thousands of moving trucks roll in monthly, you're not hearing about the ones rolling out.

I get those calls all the time. Buyers who purchased in 2022 are calling me to list their home just a few years later. When I ask why they're leaving, it's never the weather, the food, or the people. It's about the home they purchased and a completely different picture than what they expected. I moved my family here and went through the same learning curve: the tax bill surprised me, the commute surprised me, the pace of construction surprised me. None of that made me want to leave, but I'm not surprised when others do.

After working with buyers and sellers in McKinney , Frisco , Prosper, Celina, Plano, Melissa, and Anna, the same five questions continuously come up. The one that costs people the most money comes first. In this article, I'm going over the five main reasons people are leaving North Texas, what buyers really need to know about this market right now, and what sellers need to hear before they decide to list their home.

Property Taxes: The Number That Shocks Out-of-State Buyers
School Closures and Boundary Changes Across Collin County
McKinney: Established Neighborhoods with Mature Trees
Frisco: Fast Sales at $600K, Slow Absorption Above $1.2M
Prosper: Strong Absorption in the $700K, $900K Band
Celina: The Fastest Growing City with the Longest Commute
Plano: Completely Built Out and Pricing Buyers Farther North
Melissa: New Construction Communities for Priced-Out Buyers
Anna: The Next Stop on the Treadmill
Living in a Construction Zone for Four or More Years
The Treadmill Effect: Trading Commute Time for a Lower Price
Which North Texas City Is Right for You?
What Buyers Need to Know Right Now
What Sellers Need to Know Right Now
Conclusion

Property Taxes: The Number That Shocks Out-of-State Buyers

This is the single biggest reason people are leaving North Texas right now, and most of these buyers are coming from out of state. The combined effective tax rate in Collin County runs between 1.7% and 2.3%. Median bills land between $5,000 and $9,000 a year on higher value homes. This information is coming from TaxDrop, who also calls out Plano, Frisco, and McKinney for year-over-year increases. However, Ownwell puts the effective Collin County rate at just 1.3%. Those two numbers use completely different figures, so use that as a range and not a hard number.

Either way, the taxes here are higher, well above the national average at just 1.02%. For comparison, Prosper's effective tax rate is $1.87 per $100 of assessed value. That works out to be roughly 1.44% according to Inside Prosper. The tax rate generally depends on the city you end up in, but there's more to it.

This is where people get it completely wrong here in Texas. They hear no state income tax. It's just a completely different tax state. You're paying for it on the house and not your paycheck. But trust me, it gets completely worse when you don't check the specific address you're planning on purchasing.

Some newer neighborhoods, especially those that come here for the new construction boom, sit inside a MUD or PID tax district, and that alone sits on top of your regular tax rate. Think about this: two homes on the same exact street across the street from each other can be in completely different tax zones. Before you fall in love with any address, that sparkly brand new constructed home, make sure you check the actual effective tax rate for that property. Don't trust the city's average and the lender's estimate, because if the taxes are a surprise, you're going to feel that every single month for as long as you own that property.

School Closures and Boundary Changes Across Collin County

A lot of buyers moving here pick their street based on the school district. This is just what buyers tell me on day one of their home search, so this one definitely catches them completely off guard.

McKinney ISD plans on closing three elementary schools at the start of the 2026-2027 school year. Over in Frisco, Frisco ISD has accumulated 62,000 students as of October 2025. That was roughly 2,800 fewer students than it had the year before. When there are fewer students, they end up closing schools, and that's what they did in Frisco. They closed Staley Middle School, and Odyssey reported that aging infrastructure had a lot to do with that decision as well.

Go back and hear that again. Two areas where most people move to from out of state because of the school districts are closing schools right now. So really, what's driving it? A state demographer quoted, "We are seeing migration outside of the core urban areas into the suburbs." Families are pushing out of these areas and going to more of the rural areas that are more affordable. The older suburbs mature, kids start growing up, and the enrollment lowers in the middle of it all.

The practical impact is what matters to you the most though. Campus closures mean boundary changes. That means the home that you purchase on that street that you wanted because of the school means that your kid is going to be going to a completely different school than you intended on them going to. I see this continuously with relocation buyers who pick their home off of Zillow 1,500 miles away. They get here and they get completely zoned out.

My piece of advice for you, whether we work together or not, is call that district directly. Ask about the boundary plans for that specific address or neighborhood before you write an offer on it. It only takes ten minutes of your time.

McKinney: Established Neighborhoods with Mature Trees

Zillow has the average McKinney home value at just $480,000 as of July, down 6% year over year. Correctly priced homes sell within 38 days. McKinney has established neighborhoods with mature trees, and that's a big advantage over new construction right now.

But here's the reality for someone that purchased their home at the top of the market in 2022. Life happens. That person gets a job offer, has a baby and needs additional space, or decides North Texas just isn't for them. They go to sell that home and they don't get anywhere near the price what they bought it for. Add closing costs on top of it, and they end up writing a check just to walk away from that property. That's when leaving stops being a choice and becomes an expense.

That's the misconception I fight the most here in North Texas. People still think North Texas is a one-directional market like it was in 2021. It just isn't. It's a normal market. I run the actual monthly numbers for buyers on a daily basis. The price is only part of the picture. What really matters is if you need to sell that home by year three. If you're planning on being here for five or more years, that should not scare you off. If you're really not sure though, that changes the conversation entirely.

A well-priced home in an established neighborhood like McKinney typically does well. If you show up with a lowball offer in one of these established communities, there's a good chance you're gonna miss out on that property to another offer. McKinney homes are going pending in roughly 33 days as of July, even with the values being down 6% year over year.

Frisco: Fast Sales at $600K, Slow Absorption Above $1.2M

Frisco's current inventory sits at 580 homes with over 100 days on market, 11% relist rate. That means you signed a contract with the realtor with the understanding and the impression that you're going to sell that home. Then you don't sell it and have to try and sell that home again. Thirty-one percent of the Frisco listings have had a price reduction. That's almost one in every three homes having reductions right now.

But here's what people miss. There is no such thing as a single Frisco market. There are several different markets stacked on top of each other. That's the price band. Homes in Frisco priced around $600,000 sell the fastest in little to under 40 days. Meanwhile, homes in Frisco priced between $1.2 and $1.8 million sit over 100 days with little absorption. Same city, same month, two completely different experiences.

Frisco ISD has 62,000 students as of October 2025, down 2,800 from the year before. They closed Staley Middle School due to declining enrollment and aging infrastructure. Frisco is completely built out. There's no more room for expansion. Buyers priced out of Frisco move to McKinney or farther out.

What This Means for Buyers

When you're talking to a family friend or someone that you've talked to about moving to North Texas and they say that North Texas is a slow market, ask them what price point though. In the busy bands you are still competing for that home. At the higher price bands, you have all the negotiation power in the world. Know which band you're shopping in before you write your first offer, because that's going to change everything when you decide what you're going to negotiate for.

Prosper: Strong Absorption in the $700K, $900K Band

Prosper's at $790,000 average, down 6% year over year. But Prosper homes are going pending in just 18 days. In the recent June market, Prosper homes priced between $700,000 and $900,000 made up 25 of the 63 recent sales in that month. That's roughly 40% of everything that closed in that month with an overall median of 40 days on the market.

Prosper's effective tax rate is $1.87 per $100 of assessed value. That works out to be roughly 1.44%. A well-priced home in an established neighborhood like Prosper typically does well. If you show up with a lowball offer in one of these established communities, there's a good chance you're gonna miss out on that property to another offer.

Celina: The Fastest Growing City with the Longest Commute

Celina was called the fastest growing city in the United States by The Real Deal back in June. Think about it: small town Celina, all that farmland, is now the fastest growing city in the United States, taking all the absorption from Plano and Frisco buyers. The reason for that is they simply can't take any more people. Those two areas are completely built out.

Celina's median sales price at $478,000 as of February is down 15% from the year before, and days on market stretched to 140 days compared to 95 days. The Real Deal reported in June that Celina home sales jumped 61% from April 2025 to April 2026. Here's the crazy stat: homes sold for 22% less than they did before at $520,000. More homes coming out of that ground at lower prices right next to the home that you purchased.

Buyers are trading that 20 to 30 minute commute time for $60,000 off the price tag. On paper it looks like a great deal. You move into that new home in Celina, then you're trying to commute on a Monday morning at 7:30 AM stuck in hour-long traffic to areas like Plano, Richardson, or even Dallas. It gets backed up here because the infrastructure is not there yet. You traded for that home for a $60,000 price tag cut, but you have to sit in that every single day until you decide to sell.

Selling that home is going to be difficult. I've gotten those calls from people that have moved here. They trade the Plano, the Frisco, the McKinney experience to get that opportunity up in Celina, but I end up getting that call two years later trying to sell that home. That's a tough conversation to have with that seller.

The Most Negotiable Market in Collin County

I talk to relocation buyers daily and they always ask me, Connor, where can I negotiate the most right now in Collin County? It's simple. It's new construction in Celina. Builders right now are selling volume at much lower prices. Builders right now have inventory. They're willing to negotiate that inventory because the builder has holding costs. If that property continuously sits month to month, the builder has to pay for those costs monthly. So they're willing to take that property and negotiate everything.

If you go into that sales office, just know there is more you can negotiate than just the price, but there's also incentives involved as well. I'm not only going to ask for the price, I'm going to ask for what incentives they're offering. Based on the incentives they're offering, we're going to have a game plan put together on trying to get more, whether that's rate buydown incentives or closing cost incentives as well.

I go to these sales offices daily in areas like Celina, Prosper, Melissa, McKinney, Anna, and I'll tell you, those incentives on a finished product are much better than the incentives on the dirt alone. Builders are more motivated on that spec home because they're willing to wait on that dirt because they're just going to build a spec home on that property anyways.

My advice to you is free and simple. Come out here and do the drive. Spend a week here and do the drive on a Tuesday morning from the area you want to live in to the area you think you're going to have to commute to. Don't do it on a Saturday or Sunday. Do it during rush hour. Figure out if that location is the right spot for you and if you're willing to commute daily from that area, because that one drive that you do on a Monday afternoon will tell you more than any other research that you do.

Plano: Completely Built Out and Pricing Buyers Farther North

Plano is completely built out. There's no more room for expansion. Somebody goes to look at a home in Plano, but they're priced out. So where do they go? They go to Frisco. Frisco's gotten too expensive, so where do they go? They go to McKinney. McKinney has gotten expensive, so where do they go? They end up going to Celina.

Plano is the commute destination for Celina residents. That hour-long commute during rush hour to Plano, Richardson, or Dallas is what buyers are trading for that $60,000 price cut. Buyers priced out of Plano move to Frisco, then McKinney, then Celina, then farther out to areas like Anna, Van Alstyne, and even Sherman.

Melissa: New Construction Communities for Priced-Out Buyers

Melissa is one of the areas absorbing buyers as they get priced out of the closer suburbs. I go to these sales offices daily in areas like Celina, Prosper, Melissa, McKinney, and Anna. Melissa has new construction communities that are part of the treadmill effect pushing buyers farther and farther out.

Anna: The Next Stop on the Treadmill

Celina is not cheap anymore, by all means. When they're in Celina, they start realizing the taxes are a bit higher. So you start going farther, farther away into areas like Anna, Van Alstyne, and even Sherman. That's the treadmill effect here in North Texas. Everyone wants the next affordable suburb that's potentially going to pop. But what that means, those affordable suburbs are farther and farther away.

Anna is one of the farther out options as buyers get priced out of closer suburbs. That same state demographer that I mentioned earlier simply put that Celina is one of the main reasons we're seeing a lot of these school enrollments drop. Families just keep moving farther and farther out of these main suburbs for those affordable options.

Living in a Construction Zone for Four or More Years

You buy that beautiful, sparkly, brand new home here and you end up being in a construction zone for four or more years. Consider this: construction trucks in the community at 6:30 in the morning, nails in your tires from the amount of construction going on, dirt covering your car, an amenity center that's had a coming soon sign on it for two years. And the worst part, the model home advertising homes that you purchased just a year before, thousands of dollars less than what you actually purchased it for. That last one is the absolute killer.

Collin County inventory has spiked over 62% above its long-term average to 4,300 listings. Active listings sat over 12,000, up 8% year by year, with a countywide median of 40 days on the market. More homes coming out of that ground at lower prices right next to the home that you purchased.

I'm in these new construction communities daily, sitting down with the builder and the sales rep running the actual math on these homes. I'll be completely honest, the builder is not going to hold prices to save your equity. The builder is going to sell their inventory because they need to sell those homes in order to build more.

I'm not trying to scare you though, and that's not the reason to not buy new construction. You just need to buy new construction with your eyes wide open. You need to ask those sales reps or your realtor what phase they're currently in, because if you buy in phase one, and they plan on having five, six phases, you are going to need to plan on being in that neighborhood for at least five years.

The Treadmill Effect: Trading Commute Time for a Lower Price

The exact thing that brings people here to North Texas is the same thing that actually pushes them away. Somebody goes to look at a home in Plano, but they're priced out. So where do they go? They go to Frisco. Frisco's gotten too expensive, so where do they go? They go to McKinney. McKinney has gotten expensive, so where do they go? They end up going to Celina. And Celina is not cheap anymore, by all means. And when they're in Celina, they start realizing the taxes are a bit higher. So you start going farther, farther away into areas like Anna, Van Alstyne, and even Sherman.

That's the treadmill effect here in North Texas. Everyone wants the next affordable suburb that's potentially going to pop. But what that means, those affordable suburbs are farther and farther away. Celina is one of the main reasons we're seeing a lot of these school enrollments drop. Families just keep moving farther and farther out of these main suburbs for those affordable options.

This is where I think people get it wrong though. They're trading that 20 to 30 minute commute time for $60,000 off the price tag. Don't get me wrong, on paper it looks like a great deal. You move into that new home in Celina, then you're trying to commute on a Monday morning at 7:30 AM stuck in hour-long traffic to areas like Plano, Richardson, or even Dallas. It gets backed up here because the infrastructure is not there yet. But you traded for that home for a $60,000 price tag cut, but you have to sit in that every single day until you decide to sell.

Which North Texas City Is Right for You?

Stop shopping by city and start shopping by price band. There is no such thing as a single Frisco market. There are several different markets stacked on top of each other. Homes in Frisco priced around $600,000 sell the fastest in little to under 40 days. Meanwhile, homes in Frisco priced between $1.2 and $1.8 million sit over 100 days with little absorption. Same city, same month, two completely different experiences.

Prosper works in the same way as well. In the recent June market, Prosper homes priced between $700,000 and $900,000 made up 25 of the 63 recent sales in that month. That's roughly 40% of everything that closed in that month with an overall median of 40 days on the market.

Here's what to consider:

Choose McKinney if you want established neighborhoods with mature trees and you're planning to stay five or more years. Homes go pending in 38 days when priced correctly. Values are down 6% year over year, but correctly priced homes in established neighborhoods compete well against new construction.
Choose Frisco if you're shopping in the $600,000 range and want fast absorption. Avoid the $1.2, $1.8M band unless you have time to wait. Frisco is completely built out with no more room for expansion.
Choose Prosper if you're in the $700,000, $900,000 band and want strong absorption. Homes go pending in 18 days. Effective tax rate is roughly 1.44%.
Choose Celina if you're looking for the most negotiable market in Collin County right now and you're willing to commute an hour to Plano, Richardson, or Dallas during rush hour. Plan to stay five or more years if buying in early phases. Median sales price is $478,000, down 15% from the year before.
Choose Plano if you can afford it, but know that buyers priced out move to Frisco, then McKinney, then Celina. Plano is completely built out.
Choose Melissa or Anna if you're being priced out of closer suburbs and you're willing to trade commute time for a lower price.

The tax rate, the school boundary lines, and the resale picture are all different depending on what town or city you end up in. McKinney is not Celina, and Celina is not Prosper. Pick the wrong one for your budget or your timeline and you end up paying thousands of dollars or more in taxes a year, or you end up being stuck in that home because you can't sell it a few years down the road.

What Buyers Need to Know Right Now

Before you come out here and write an offer, get the tax rate on that exact address, not the city or the town that you're looking in. Once you get that tax rate, make sure you also confirm if there's a MUD or PID tax district as well. Do that math into your monthly budget before you have to pay thousands of dollars a year for the entire time you own that home. The difference between a 1.4% tax rate and a 2.3% tax rate on a $500,000 home is thousands of dollars a year that you have to budget for. That number alone is gonna help you decide if you love the home or you're gonna resent it years later.

One thing though, I do want to mention before you call that sales rep at that community you like, talk to me first because once you do so, they're going to register you in their own community. Once they do so, you have lost a majority of all your negotiation power. Then I can't represent you and help you negotiate the price, the terms, the incentives, and all those buydowns that you can get right now on that spec home that you like online.

Don't let the price cuts convince you that everything out here is absolutely negotiable, because in certain micro markets here, it isn't negotiable. A well-priced home in an established neighborhood like McKinney or Prosper typically does well. If you show up with a lowball offer in one of these established communities, there's a good chance you're gonna miss out on that property to another offer.

What Sellers Need to Know Right Now

If you're planning on selling and your number is based on what your neighbor purchased at 2022, you're probably going to be completely off. In Frisco today alone, 31% of the Frisco listings have had a price reduction. That's almost one in every three homes having reductions right now. A price cut does not mean there's anything wrong with your home anymore. It's just what happens when people price their homes at yesterday's price. And what I mean by yesterday's price, 2022 prices.

According to the Frisco data, correctly priced homes sell within 38 days. Price wrong and trying to obtain a different number, those homes are sitting for over 100 days. This is the whole game here in North Texas. It's not that your home has anything wrong with it, but price it incorrectly and there's a good chance you have holding costs ahead of you and over 100 days on market. So testing a price right now, it's just not the time for it.

You price it high, your property goes stale, buyers assume there's something wrong with the property, and you end up selling for far less than what you should have priced it at from the get-go. Price it to what it should close today, not to what you think it's worth.

Your Competition Is the Builder

The biggest reality of selling your home in North Texas is your competition is not your neighbor. Your competition is the builder. Collin County inventory is up 62% above its average. Active listings countywide are at 12,000 listings, up over 8% year over year. In Celina, builders have sold 61% more homes at a 22% discount.

A builder can do a lot right now. They can slash prices, they can give crazy incentives, they can buy down an interest rate to what you can't get in today's market. They're probably going to throw in a refrigerator, washer, dryer, blinds. It's something you just can't do as a seller.

But you can compete on two things a builder cannot give a buyer: the condition and the finished neighborhood. You have mature trees in your neighborhood, your yard is fully grown in, and you don't have new construction dump trucks coming in at 6:30 in the morning every single day. If you live in an established neighborhood, you have the upper hand than a seller trying to sell their home in a new build community.

You still have to be smart right now. I'm not telling you that you need to completely remodel your home. You need to do the smart things. Paint, minor landscaping, and minor repairs around the home go a long way in this market right now. This isn't 2021 or 2022. You can't just put a sign up and expect 15 offers in the first day. the buyer is still going to compare your home to a new build because they're just going to go in there and get the incentives that they can get.

The First Two Weeks Matter Most

The market is not dead because the numbers tell us otherwise. Zillow has McKinney homes going pending in roughly 38 days, Prosper homes in roughly 18 days. Those are not dead numbers, they're just normal numbers. Sellers overpricing are getting punished right now. There's a big difference between both of those.

When you're planning on selling your home, think about this. The first two weeks matter the most, especially when buyers are set up on a search with their realtor or on their own on a third-party site and they have your neighborhood on their own search. They see that home for the very first time online. It pops up on those sites as a new listing and you only get that window once. If you price it wrong, and what I mean by wrong is too high in the first 14 days, you're most likely going to burn that opportunity and lose all those buyers. Make sure you go into those 14 days with recent home sales in your neighborhood, not the ones from 2022.

I'll be transparent though, sellers should be aware that buyers are most likely going to be asking for closing cost concessions. Rates are high right now, things are expensive, so make sure you budget that into your overall seller net sheet. But also consider this: whatever you don't make on the sale of your home, if you purchase your next home, there's a good opportunity you're going to make that back because that house you're going to be moving into is most likely down 6%, 8%, or even 20% from the year before. Once you compare both sides between selling and buying, it usually gets a lot easier to make a decision.

Conclusion

Those are the five reasons people are leaving North Texas right now. None of those mentioned anything about hating Texas. It truly comes down to the taxes the buyers did not budget for, the commute time they did not drive prior to purchasing that home, and the home they purchased at the wrong place at the wrong time. Get those wrong and you're either writing a check at closing just to step away from that home you purchased two years ago, or you're sitting on a listing for over 100 days because you didn't price that property correctly in the first place.

If you're planning on moving here to North Texas or already live in Texas and planning on making the move here, I'm happy to have a conversation. I relocated my entire family here to North Texas, and now I help people relocate as well. I run the actual monthly numbers for buyers on a daily basis. I walk buyers through the tax rates, the school boundary plans, the commute times, and the resale picture before they write an offer. I do this for clients every single day.

Schedule a free 20 to 30 minute call with me . Let's find out if this is the right time for you or if you need to hold off until next spring. I'll run the numbers on the exact address you're looking at, and we'll figure out if that location is the right spot for you.

5 North Texas Areas Out-of-State Buyers Should Avoid (Without the Right Research)

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:05:00 GMT

You're sitting in New York or California or Washington with fourteen browser tabs open, and every single one of them is telling you the same five suburb names. You see the photos. You see the prices. You read the blog post that ranks them one through ten. And then you book a flight, tour a few model homes, and put in an offer.

Here's the part nobody tells you from two thousand miles away: those five places don't all work the same way once you're actually living here. Some of them are perfect if you work remote. Some of them will cost you an extra four hundred dollars a month in tolls and HOA fees you never budgeted for. And some of them are taking over two hundred days to sell a home right now, which matters a lot if there's any chance your job relocates you in two years.

I moved my own family here from Northern California, so I sat exactly where you're sitting. I know what the research looks like from out of state, and I know what it feels like six months after you close when the first HOA bill hits your account and you realize the commute is longer than you thought. None of these communities are bad places to live. I sell homes in all of them, and I have clients who would not move for anything. But every one of them fits a different buyer, and if you pick wrong, you're going to feel it in your bank account every single month.

Melissa: The Lowest New Construction Price in Collin County
Celina: Master-Planned Lifestyle with a Long Market Sit
Prosper: The Premium Product with Premium Monthly Costs
Frisco: Everything Built Out, But You're Paying for It
McKinney: My Number One (With a Tax District Warning)
Which North Texas Suburb Fits Your Budget and Commute?
Conclusion

Melissa: The Lowest New Construction Price in Collin County

Melissa is one of the very few places left in Collin County where you can buy a brand new home for just over three hundred thousand dollars. I'm not talking about a fixer-upper or a resale that needs work. I'm talking about new construction, and that number is real.

Starlight Homes has a community called Meadow Park with plans around fourteen hundred square feet and above listed at three hundred fifteen thousand dollars. That's the kind of price that lands Melissa on every out-of-state buyer's search. It sits just outside Highway 75 running north through the metro. You're a short drive from McKinney for anything you need, and it still feels like a small town rather than a suburb within a suburb.

But here's the honest part. Melissa is the newest of everything on this list. New neighborhoods, new roads, new retail that hasn't even fully arrived yet. Just ten years ago there was nothing there. Some of the infrastructure is still catching up, and the market has moved.

According to Redfin, the median sales price in Melissa is four hundred thirty-five thousand dollars, down thirteen percent from a year ago. Homes are sitting on the market an average of forty-two days, and that number is climbing. Think about the resale for a second. If you buy a brand new home at full price and try to sell it two years later, you're going to be competing with a builder who can offer better pricing, better incentives, and a lower interest rate than what the market is offering right now.

Melissa works great if you want new construction at the lowest realistic price in Collin County. Just plan on staying put for at least five years. If there's a decent chance your job may relocate you within the first year or two, I would really consider another area. The resale math does not work in your favor if you're trying to move fast.

Celina: Master-Planned Lifestyle with a Long Market Sit

Celina is the fastest growing name in North Texas right now, and there's a reason for it. Big master-planned communities, resort-style pools, miles of walking trails, and a charming old-school downtown. If you want that master-planned lifestyle and a small town center, Celina delivers.

But here's the number you need to hear. Homes in Celina as of July have been sitting on the market for a median of two hundred twenty days. Last year it was ninety-six days. You can see it in the pricing too. Redfin has the median price at four hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars, down eleven percent from last year.

What's driving that? It's pretty simple. Builders have been putting up homes in Celina faster than buyers can absorb them. That's great news if you're a buyer because you have leverage and choices. It's a different story if you need to sell.

Then there's the monthly cost side that out-of-state buyers almost never budget for. Master-planned communities in Celina run HOA fees somewhere between six hundred and twenty-four hundred dollars a year. That's fifty to two hundred dollars a month. It seems high. It is high. The higher end of that scale is where you get the resort pool, the fitness center, and the event programming. It's not a scam. You're just getting something for it. But it needs to be one of the numbers you think about before you move here.

The commute is another one. Celina is still about forty-five to sixty minutes to downtown Dallas. It's a great buy if you work remote. If you're planning on going to the office four to five days a week, I would maybe rethink that decision before you have to drive a total of two hours plus a day. That's the reality of living in the fastest growing corridor. The infrastructure is catching up, but the distance is the distance.

Celina works if you want the master-planned amenities and you're not commuting daily. It does not work if you're trying to flip the home in two years or if you're driving to an office in Dallas every single day.

Prosper: The Premium Product with Premium Monthly Costs

Prosper is where out-of-state buyers land if they want the nicest version of pretty much everything. And honestly, the product is impressive. Windsong Ranch has gone viral for its man-made lagoon. Big lots, big homes, real space between you and your neighbor. Zillow has the average price in Prosper sitting at just under eight hundred thousand dollars. That's the top of the price range we're talking about today by a wide margin.

The brochure won't tell you this part though. Prosper sits roughly forty miles north of downtown Dallas. Under normal conditions, that's about forty to fifty-five minutes to downtown on the tollway. And that tollway is not free.

If you're driving daily into Frisco, Plano, or Dallas, budget somewhere between one hundred fifty and three hundred dollars a month in tolls alone. That's over thirty-six hundred dollars a year. Then add the HOA, and in Prosper that typically runs one hundred fifty to four hundred dollars a month. Windsong Ranch charges one hundred ninety-three dollars a month. It's beautiful, it's amazing, but that's the number.

A lot of the buyers tell me they choose Prosper because of the school district. I'm not going to rate school districts on camera, and honestly no agent should. Go pull the rankings yourself on GreatSchools or niche.com. The reason for that is because it changes from one side of town to the other.

The thing I see over and over with relocation buyers is this: they budget perfectly for the house and they get blindsided by the monthly extras. Tolls, HOA, special tax districts. These all add up and most people do not budget for this. Prosper works perfect if the budget generally works out. But if you're planning on moving here and having to commute to downtown Dallas every single day, including the tolls and HOA, I would definitely rethink Prosper before you make that decision.

Tolls, HOA dues, and which tax district your subdivision sits in, those three things change the Prosper math by hundreds of dollars a month. None of them show up on the listing or the brochure when you walk into the sales office. Get those wrong in a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar house and you're locked into an extra four hundred dollar a month payment for as long as you own that property. That's real money out of your family's pocket every single month.

People move here because of the cost of living, because you can fly everywhere, because we're centrally located. When you have to add up HOAs, tolls, and extra tax districts, that definitely is going to hit the budget for you and your family to go on vacation.

Frisco: Everything Built Out, But You're Paying for It

Frisco is the default answer. Ask anybody in the country to name a Dallas suburb and there's a good chance Frisco comes out of their mouth. The Cowboys headquarters is there. The PGA of America headquarters is there. Corporate campuses, restaurants, shopping, all of it is in Frisco. If you want a suburb that already has absolutely everything built out and open, Frisco is the place. It's earned that reputation.

But Frisco is also one of the most expensive price per square foot anywhere in the DFW suburbs, and that's the trade you're making when you move to Frisco. According to Redfin's data from March, Frisco's median sales price is just over seven hundred thousand dollars, down two percent year over year. There were four hundred forty-two new listings in the thirty-day window, down eight percent from last year. Median days on the market: twenty-seven, up from twenty-four last year.

Frisco is still the quickest moving market on the list. It has not softened the way Celina and Melissa have. Out-of-state buyers get caught right there. They see seven hundred thousand dollars in Frisco, compare it to what seven hundred thousand buys them back home, so they picture the big yard. In Frisco you're mostly buying a great house on a modest lot. The land is generally just built out, and that's the reality of a suburb that filled in early.

Drive fifteen minutes north to Celina or Prosper and the same money buys you noticeably more dirt. HOA in Frisco splits hard depending on where you land. Smaller, lower amenity communities run roughly fifty to one hundred dollars a month. The big amenity-heavy master-planned communities run one hundred fifty to four hundred dollars a month.

I run the monthly payment out loud on camera for a reason so you don't have to do the research. Two homes at the exact same list price in Frisco can be three hundred dollars a month apart, and buyers researching from out of state almost never catch it until they're already under contract.

Frisco is the right call if you want everything built out and open now. Frisco is also a great buy if you want to be close to the corporate corridor and the lot size generally doesn't matter that much to you. If you need the big yard and you're willing to drive a little farther, look north.

McKinney: My Number One (With a Tax District Warning)

A lot of agents around here won't say this about my hometown out loud, McKinney is still my number one. It's where I live, it's where I work, it's where most of my videos get filmed. Historic downtown square, great restaurants, and more variety of housing than anything else in Collin County offers.

Right now it's the slowest moving market out of all five I'm covering. Zillow has the average McKinney home value at four hundred eighty thousand dollars, down six percent over the past year, with homes going pending around thirty-three days. But let's look at the full picture. In August, homes sat in McKinney for one hundred fifty-one days on the market. Back in April they had it at one hundred fourteen days compared to forty-eight days the year before. Forty-eight days to over one hundred, that's a big shift.

That's not a disaster. It's a buyer's market. If you're a buyer, that's generally good news for you. What does that mean? That does not mean we have bad housing. That means you have room to negotiate more than you did two years ago. But if you're the kind of person who assumes McKinney is an automatic safe bet because it's the most established name, that assumption needs some adjusting.

The bigger trap is the one that costs people the most. The once small town McKinney is a huge city now. The historic side near the downtown square is a completely different world from the brand new master-planned neighborhoods up north. And the tax situation changes everything for your payments.

Trinity Falls is one of the most popular new construction communities out there. It sits outside of the city tax jurisdiction and is inside its own MUD, that's a Municipal Utility District. It means a separate tax layer on top of what you'd already expect. Tucker Hill carries a PID, which is a Public Improvement District. Same idea, different mechanism, extra money out of your pocket yearly.

Two homes both listed as McKinney, Texas at the same price can carry a completely different yearly payment based on the tax district you're in. I mean thousands of dollars a year to own it. Texas cities readapt their tax rates every August and September, so any rate I quote you today could be out of date fast. Pull the current one from CollinCAD and check the specific subdivision, not the city. The subdivision.

HOA dues generally run you between one hundred and four hundred dollars a month. McKinney works for almost everyone, honestly. That's why it's my number one. But the buyer who gets burned is the one who picks it off the map from out of state and never asks the tax district questions.

Which North Texas Suburb Fits Your Budget and Commute?

Melissa, Celina, Prosper, Frisco, McKinney. Five great places and five completely different answers depending on your commute, your budget, and how long you're planning on staying.

Choose Melissa if you want the lowest new construction price in Collin County and you're planning to stay at least five years. Skip it if your job might relocate you in two years or if you need established retail and infrastructure right now.

Choose Celina if you work remote and you want the full master-planned lifestyle with resort amenities. Skip it if you're commuting to downtown Dallas four to five days a week or if you need to sell within two years. The market is slow and the commute is long.

Choose Prosper if your budget accommodates the house plus the monthly extras, tolls, HOA, and tax districts, and you want the nicest version of everything. Skip it if you're commuting daily to downtown Dallas and you're not ready to spend thirty-six hundred dollars a year on tolls alone.

Choose Frisco if you want everything built out and open now, you're close to the corporate corridor, and lot size doesn't matter much to you. Skip it if you need a big yard and you're not willing to pay the highest price per square foot in the DFW suburbs.

Choose McKinney if you want variety, negotiation room, and the most established name in Collin County. Just ask the tax district questions before you buy. Skip it if you assume every home listed as McKinney costs the same to own monthly. It does not.

Pick wrong and you're automatically out of pocket an additional three hundred to four hundred dollars a month in a market where homes are currently taking over one hundred days to sell if you change your mind. That's the real cost of not doing the research.

Conclusion

The biggest mistake I see when people move here is not having the right person helping you. I watch this happen. Somebody relocating from out of state gets connected to an agent from a referral chain. That agent is perfectly nice, perfectly licensed, and sells a decent amount of homes in a different part of the metro. They show up to the builder's home with you. They never ask whether the community sits in a MUD or PID district. They don't know which builders are offering rate buydowns this quarter and which ones aren't. They don't run the monthly payments out loud with insurance, taxes, HOAs, and those PID or MUD districts.

If you sign with that builder and six weeks later you find out your escrow payment is four hundred dollars a month more than what you had in your head, there's nothing you can do. There's a second version of this that costs even more. Buyers walk into a builder sales office by themselves, register with the builder, and then they try to find an agent. Do that and in a lot of cases you've given up your right to negotiate anything with that builder. The builder sales rep is a lovely person. I love all of them. But they don't work for you. They work for the builder.

You have to be represented before you even register with that builder or no one else can help you. That's the ballgame with new construction, and almost nobody from out of state knows that.

I know this stuff because I did it myself. I packed up everything from Northern California, moved here, and learned my own lessons. That's why I run the numbers on camera, down payment, interest rates, insurance, HOAs, estimated monthlies, out loud every time. You are not buying a suburb. You're buying a specific street with a specific HOA and a specific builder incentive. Nobody can figure all of this out from a listing photo thousands of miles away.

Before you register with any builder, give me a call! I'd love to hear about your relocation plans and help you compare communities, calculate your actual monthly payments, understand local tax districts, and find out which builders are offering the best incentives and negotiating opportunities.

I made this exact move myself from out of state, so I know the questions you may not have thought to ask.

Call me today , and let's find the right new construction home for you in North Texas!

North Texas Housing Market 2026: What's Really Happening in McKinney, Melissa, Celina & Beyond

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:23:00 GMT

The North Texas housing market is about to look nothing like it does today. I'm not saying that to get your attention, I'm saying it because my team and I spent weeks pulling city data, builder pricing, and Collin County tax records across McKinney , Melissa , Celina , Anna , Prosper , Van Alstyne , and Frisco , and we found seven things happening right now that will change how this market actually works.

You've probably seen a headline this year telling you the Dallas housing market is cooling off. The problem is there's no single Dallas housing market. There are dozens of them, and they're moving in completely different directions. When you average all of those into one number, you get a number that doesn't describe the actual house.

I'm Connor Hornsby, your North Texas realtor. I walk model homes across most of these communities every single day, and the pricing gap between them changes month to month. National reporters look at one metro-wide number. I'm looking at what builders in each corridor are actually pricing this month. Once you separate those markets out, you start seeing the shifts underneath, and some of them will cost you real money if you don't know they're coming.

In this article, I'm going to walk you through what's actually happening in McKinney , Melissa , Celina , Anna , Prosper , Van Alstyne , Frisco , and Farmersville right now. I'll show you the real numbers, the builder competition resale sellers are facing, the tax districts that can add hundreds to your monthly payment, and the road decisions being made right now that will do more to your home's value over the next decade than anything else on this list.

McKinney: Mixed Market with Builder Competition
Melissa: Lower Entry Price, Longer Commute
Celina: West Side Growth with Lagoons and Trails
Anna: Lower Purchase Price, Higher Tax Districts
Prosper: Higher Pricing, Closer to Job Corridors
Van Alstyne: Significant Savings, Significant Commute
Frisco: Established Infrastructure, Higher Cost
Farmersville: Acreage Properties with No HOA
How to Choose Between These North Texas Cities
Conclusion

McKinney: Mixed Market with Builder Competition

Zillow has the average home value in McKinney at $480,000, down 6% in the past year, with that data updated from July 21st, 2026. Values down 6%. Homes under contract in about a month. A truly weak market does not move homes in 30 days. So what is actually happening here?

McKinney has more than 30 years of resale homes in it. Older neighborhoods east of 75, newer sections on the west side, and brand new construction pushing out past that. When you average all of that into one number, you get a number that doesn't describe the actual house. I've seen homes in McKinney listed at $350,000, and they're moving despite the fact that the overall average is down.

Here's the thing that hurts if you're selling a resale home in McKinney right now: you cannot buy down a buyer's rate the way the builder can. You are not actually competing on price with the guy down the street. You're competing on the payment the builder three miles up the road is offering. With interest rates over 7% right now, builders are spending their money buying down your interest rate instead of dropping the sticker price. That means they pay the lender upfront, you get a lower rate for the first few years (sometimes for the life of the loan), your purchase price stays the same, and your payments drop.

For example, if I purchase a home in McKinney right now at $350,000 at a 7.25% interest rate compared to a McKinney home at $350,000 at a fixed 4.99% interest rate that the builder paid down to get to you, you're going to be saving hundreds of dollars a month with that new construction home. Just because that builder quoted you the 4.99% fixed rate doesn't mean that monthly payment is going to be lower once you factor in extra tax bonds like PID and MUD.

Per Redfin, in November 2025, homes in McKinney were taking around 64 days to sell compared to 57 days the year before. Sales went down slightly to 190 homes sold that month versus 203 the year earlier. That's not a crash, but it's a real change in pace, and it changes how you have to price things right now. The tax rate in McKinney sits around 1.75%, which is competitive for Collin County . Ten years ago, McKinney was considered the edge of the metro. That's not remotely true anymore.

In the finished sections of McKinney , resale sellers have a much easier time because no builder is competing against you. In the newer sections still building out, you're competing with builder incentives on the next street over, rate buydowns, washer, dryer, blinds, refrigerator all included, plus new warranties. Before we set a price on a resale home, I go look at what the builders in your area are actually offering that month. Their incentives change constantly and they move your buyer's payment more than a $10,000 price cut would.

Melissa: Lower Entry Price, Longer Commute

Melissa sits north of McKinney on Highway 75, and it's where the growth line has been marching for the past few years. McKinney filled in, then Melissa , then Anna . A huge share of sales in Melissa is brand new construction, which means when a builder there releases a smaller floor plan at a lower starting price, the median price in that city drops. Nobody's home lost value. The builder just changed what they're selling.

New construction in Melissa starts lower than McKinney or Prosper . Same builder, same floor plan can be hundreds less monthly. That's the trade: every 10 minutes north usually buys you more house for the same money or more land. The catch people don't think about until they've actually moved in is your commute. Say you're driving to Plano, Richardson, or North Dallas most days. The gap between McKinney and Melissa is real time out of your week.

Many communities in Melissa are still building out, which means resale sellers there are competing with the builder on the next street over. That builder is offering brand new homes with builder incentives attached, lower interest rates, washer, dryer, blinds, refrigerator all included. Put yourself in the buyer's shoes. They can buy your three-year-old home or they can go buy a brand new one from that builder with their own finishes, get the new warranties, and get the new incentive rates that they're offering now. That's a tough spot to sell in.

MUD and PID tax districts are common in new communities in Melissa , and they can add significant monthly cost. Before you get attached to a house, ask the builder for the total tax rate on that exact address. Then ask straight out whether the community sits in a MUD or PID district. Then go verify it on the Collin Central Appraisal District site yourself. I do that on every single new construction deal I write to double check. It takes 10 minutes and it saves my buyers real money.

If you're planning to sell within five to ten years, ask how many sections are still left to build before you buy. If they're almost completed with that phase and they have no more phases left, it may be a good buy for you because you could possibly sell it without builder competition. However, if you're not planning on being in that community for five to ten years and the builder still has multiple phases to go, I would highly think about the numbers and what your ultimate goal is with living in that community.

Celina: West Side Growth with Lagoons and Trails

Celina is the west side growth corridor north of Prosper , and it's where the same pattern that happened through Frisco into Prosper is now playing out. On the west side, the growth line went Frisco filled in first, then Prosper , now Celina . New construction in Celina starts lower than McKinney or Prosper , which is why buyers are absolutely willing to buy further north if the price makes sense.

Some communities in Celina have lagoons and miles of trails. You're paying for amenities, and sometimes you're happy to. But you have to know what you're paying for before you sign the dotted line. A huge share of sales in Celina is brand new, and the median price is affected by builders releasing smaller floor plans. That doesn't mean values are dropping, it means the builder changed what they're selling.

Many communities in Celina are still building out with ongoing builder competition. If you're selling a resale home there, understand that this is your competition now. Buyers can drive two minutes down the road, walk into a model home, and see a brand new house with builder incentives attached. MUD and PID districts are common in Celina , and they can add hundreds per month to your payment. Ask the builder for the total tax rate on that exact address, then verify it yourself.

The 380 corridor and tollway extensions north of Celina will impact future commutes and values. Those alignment decisions are being made right now in city council meetings and highway alignment maps most buyers never see. Those decisions determine which side of the road becomes a commercial corridor and what side stays quiet residential. They decide whether your commute drops by 20 minutes or stays exactly where it is currently. That's the research I'm doing every month because there's so many changes right now.

If you're buying in Celina , this is a reason to look hard at the finished sections of the neighborhood, not just the newest ones. In communities that are fully built out, no builder is competing against you. Resale sellers there have a much easier time. If you're selling in Celina right now and the builder is still selling brand new homes in the same exact neighborhood, sometimes on the next street over, you need to price accordingly.

Anna: Lower Purchase Price, Higher Tax Districts

Anna sits north of Melissa on Highway 75, and it's where the growth line has kept marching. McKinney filled in, then Melissa , then Anna . Now Van Alstyne is getting real attention from buyers who would have never looked that far out before. A huge share of sales in Anna is brand new construction, and new construction there starts lower than McKinney or Prosper , sometimes 20% less than a McKinney resale.

Here's the catch: PID districts in Anna can add $3,500 or more per year in taxes. I had a buyer relocate here from California, and they were looking in McKinney . Going resale versus new build. McKinney's tax rate sits around 1.75%. I had that buyer go to another community in Anna and look at properties that were about 20% less than the resale, and they got a fixed interest rate at 4.99%. Problem though is it was in a PID district, so that 1.75% actually turned into about 2.5%. So the numbers actually didn't match up. Yes, they got the incentive packages, but they also had to pay an extra $3,500 a year in that PID tax bond.

Every 10 minutes north usually buys you more house for the same money or more land. That's the trade. But the gap between McKinney and Anna is real time out of your week if you're driving to Plano, Richardson, or North Dallas most days. Builder rate buydowns are common in Anna , 4.99% fixed versus 7.25% market, and they save hundreds monthly. But you have to verify the total payment with PID and MUD taxes included.

Many communities in Anna are still building out, which means resale sellers there are competing with the builder on the next street over. Ask how many sections are still left to build before you buy. If they're almost completed with that phase and they have no more phases left, it may be a good buy for you because you could possibly sell it without builder competition. However, if you're not planning on being in that community for five to ten years and the builder still has multiple phases to go, think hard about the numbers and what your ultimate goal is.

Buyers now shop by monthly payment, not purchase price. I'll get on a call with somebody moving from California or Colorado or Washington and they don't tell me a purchase price anymore. They tell me they need a monthly number. They say, Connor, I need to stay around $2,800 a month. That's the whole brief. Builders out here figured that out before most agents did. So instead of dropping the sticker price, a lot of builders now spend their money buying down your interest rate. Your purchase price stays the same and your payments drop.

Prosper: Higher Pricing, Closer to Job Corridors

Prosper sits on the west side between Frisco and Celina , and it's where the growth line went after Frisco filled in. New construction in Prosper is higher than Anna , Melissa , or the Farmersville corridor for the same builder. You're paying for proximity to job corridors. Prosper is closer to Plano, Richardson, and North Dallas than Celina or the communities further north, but it's more expensive.

The west side growth went Frisco filled in first, then Prosper , now Celina . Tollway extensions north of Prosper will impact future commutes and values. Those alignment decisions are being made right now, and they will do more to your home's value over the next decade than anything else on this list. Think about what happened to Frisco when North Dallas Tollway pushed north. Land that was farmland became some of the most valuable real estate in the entire state. That was not luck. That was a road.

If you're selling in Prosper , understand that buyers are absolutely willing to buy further north if the price makes sense. Your competition is not just the neighbor down the street. It's the builder three miles north in Celina offering brand new homes with builder incentives attached. Before we set a price on a resale home in Prosper , I go look at what the builders in Celina and further north are actually offering that month. Their incentives change constantly and they move your buyer's payment more than a $10,000 price cut would.

If you're buying in Prosper , you're paying for established infrastructure and proximity to job corridors. You're also paying more than you would in Celina , Anna , or Melissa for the same square footage. That's the trade. Every 10 minutes north usually buys you more house for the same money or more land. Every 10 minutes south usually costs you more but saves you commute time.

Van Alstyne: Significant Savings, Significant Commute

Van Alstyne sits north of Anna , and it's getting real attention from buyers who would have never looked that far out before. Ten years ago, McKinney was considered the edge of the metro. Now Van Alstyne is on the map for buyers who are willing to trade commute time for purchase price. Buyers can save $60,000 or more on the purchase compared to McKinney . More land is available in Van Alstyne than in the communities further south.

Here's the catch: the commute to Plano, Richardson, or North Dallas is much longer, 30 minutes or more each way. I've had buyers save $60,000 on the purchase. A year later, they told me they'd pay it back to get the 30 minutes of commute back daily. The gap between McKinney and Van Alstyne is real time out of your week. That's the trade you're making.

Every 10 minutes north usually buys you more house for the same money or more land. That's absolutely true in Van Alstyne . But you have to be honest with yourself about whether you're willing to make that commute every single day. Some buyers are. Some buyers regret it a year later. I'd rather you know now than find out years later.

Buyers wanting acreage are now heading east and north to Farmersville , Blue Ridge, out around Van Alstyne and north of there. Five years ago, nobody was searching out there. Now they are. Acreage properties are more common in Van Alstyne than in the communities further south. You've got the room to actually spread out. You want to put in a pool, build a shop, put a batting cage in the backyard. You want to not have somebody tell you what color your front door can be. That's a real lifestyle and nobody is making more land out here.

If you're buying in Van Alstyne , understand that this is a different transaction from buying a house in a subdivision. You need to know where you're getting water, city water or well. You need to know if it's septic and what condition that septic system is in. You need to know about the road frontage, easements, and whether the land actually drains. None of that shows up on the listing photos on Zillow. That inspection is not optional out here.

Frisco: Established Infrastructure, Higher Cost

Frisco sits on the west side south of Prosper , and it's where the growth line filled in first. New construction in Frisco is higher than communities further north. You're paying for established city infrastructure. Frisco has the roads, the schools, the shopping, the amenities already in place. You're not waiting for the city to build out around you.

The west side growth went Frisco filled in first, then Prosper , now Celina . Think about what happened to Frisco when North Dallas Tollway pushed north. Land that was farmland became some of the most valuable real estate in the entire state. That was not luck. That was a road. The same decisions are being made right now around the 380 corridor and the tollway extensions north of Prosper and Celina .

If you're selling in Frisco , understand that buyers are absolutely willing to buy further north if the price makes sense. Resale sellers in Frisco are competing with builders in Prosper and Celina offering brand new homes with builder incentives attached. Before we set a price on a resale home in Frisco , I go look at what the builders further north are actually offering that month. Their incentives change constantly and they move your buyer's payment more than a $10,000 price cut would.

If you're buying in Frisco , you're paying for proximity to job corridors and established infrastructure. You're also paying more than you would in Prosper , Celina , Anna , or Melissa for the same square footage. That's the trade. Frisco is closer to Plano, Richardson, and North Dallas than the communities further north, but it's more expensive. Every 10 minutes north usually buys you more house for the same money or more land. Every 10 minutes south usually costs you more but saves you commute time.

Farmersville: Acreage Properties with No HOA

Farmersville sits east of the McKinney and Anna corridor, and it's where buyers wanting acreage are now heading. Five years ago, nobody was searching out there. Now they are. A few years ago, you could find an acre with a house on it, no HOA, within reasonable driving distance of McKinney . Now those listings are genuinely rare, and when one shows up in decent shape, it gets attention quickly.

New construction in Farmersville starts lower than McKinney or Prosper . Many properties in Farmersville have no HOA, which means you've got the room to actually spread out. You want to put in a pool, build a shop, put a batting cage in the backyard. You want to not have somebody tell you what color your front door can be. That's a real lifestyle and nobody is making more land out here.

Buying acreage is a completely different transaction from buying a house in a subdivision. You need to know where you're getting water, city water or well. You need to know if it's septic and what condition that septic system is in. You need to know about the road frontage, easements, and whether the land actually drains. None of that shows up on the listing photos on Zillow. I've walked properties out that way and the house was perfect, then the septic situation would have cost the buyers a fortune to fix. That inspection is not optional out here.

If you're selling acreage in Farmersville right now, you're in a decent position. Supply keeps shrinking while demand keeps pushing outward. Buyers wanting acreage are now heading east and north to Farmersville , Blue Ridge, out around Van Alstyne and north of there. Acre lots with houses, no HOA, within reasonable distance of McKinney are now rare. When one shows up in decent shape, it gets attention quickly.

The commute from Farmersville to Plano, Richardson, or North Dallas is longer than from McKinney or Prosper . That's the trade you're making. Every 10 minutes north or east usually buys you more house or more land for the same money. But the gap is real time out of your week if you're driving to job corridors most days. I'd rather you know now than find out a year later.

How to Choose Between These North Texas Cities

Picking between McKinney , Melissa , Celina , Anna , Prosper , Van Alstyne , Frisco , and Farmersville is generally the hardest part of moving out here, and it's the question I get more than any other. Get that wrong and you're either sitting in traffic for an extra hour a day or you're paying $80,000 more than you needed to for the same square footage two exits up.

Here's how I walk buyers through it. Two houses, same builder, same floor plan, same price, and one of them costs a few hundred dollars more per month in taxes. This is the part of buying in North Texas that catches relocating buyers completely off guard, and honestly, it's the thing I spend the most time on. It comes down to three letters: MUD or PID. MUD is a Municipal Utility District. A developer builds a brand new community on land with no water or sewer lines running to it. Somebody has to pay for that infrastructure, so they set up a district and the homeowner inside it pays an extra tax to cover it. A PID is a Public Improvement District. Same idea, except it usually pays for the roads, entry monuments, homes, trails, lakes, and amenity stuff.

Neither one is automatically bad. Sometimes you're paying for a community with a lagoon and miles of trails, and you're happy to. But you have to know this before you sign the dotted line. A buyer compares two homes on Zillow, sees the same asking price, and picks one with a nicer kitchen. Then at closing, they find their tax rate is higher and their payment is more than what they budgeted for. And that follows them for a very long time as they own the home.

Ask the builder for the total tax rate on that exact address. Then ask straight out whether the community sits in a MUD or PID district. Then go verify it on the Collin Central Appraisal District site yourself. I do that on every single new construction deal I write to double check. It takes 10 minutes and it saves my buyers real money.

Here's what to consider when choosing between these cities:

Choose McKinney if you want a mix of established neighborhoods and newer construction, a tax rate around 1.75%, and a commute to Plano or North Dallas that's manageable. Understand that resale sellers in newer sections compete with builder incentives nearby.
Choose Melissa if you want lower entry pricing than McKinney and you're willing to add 10 minutes to your commute. Ask about MUD and PID districts before you buy, and verify how many sections the builder has left to build.
Choose Celina if you want west side growth with amenities like lagoons and trails, lower entry pricing than Prosper, and you're willing to wait for infrastructure to build out. Watch the 380 corridor and tollway extensions, they'll determine your commute and your home's value.
Choose Anna if you want the lowest entry pricing on the 75 corridor and you're willing to add 15-20 minutes to your commute. Verify the total tax rate including PID districts, which can add $3,500 or more per year.
Choose Prosper if you want proximity to job corridors and you're willing to pay more for it. You're closer to Plano, Richardson, and North Dallas than Celina or the communities further north, but you're paying for that proximity.
Choose Van Alstyne if you're willing to trade a 30-minute commute each way for $60,000 or more in purchase price savings. More land is available here, but the commute is real. Some buyers are happy with that trade. Some regret it a year later.
Choose Frisco if you want established infrastructure and you're willing to pay more for it. Frisco filled in first, so you're not waiting for the city to build out around you. You're also paying more than communities further north.
Choose Farmersville if you want acreage, no HOA, and room to spread out. Understand that this is a different transaction requiring septic, well, drainage, and easement verification. Supply is shrinking while demand is pushing outward.

The difference between two houses in this market is almost never the house. It's the tax district, the builder competition, the build-out timeline, and where that next road is going. Get one of those wrong and it costs you real money. That's a buyer paying an extra $400 a month in MUD tax they never budgeted for, or a seller sitting on the market for five months because the builder up the street is still selling brand new homes.

Conclusion

The North Texas housing market isn't one market, it's dozens of them, and they're moving in completely different directions. National reporters look at one metro-wide number. I'm walking model homes, looking at what builders in each corridor are actually pricing this month. Once you separate those markets out, you start seeing the shifts underneath.

Buyers now shop by monthly payment, not purchase price. Builders are buying down interest rates instead of dropping sticker prices. Resale sellers are competing with builder incentives they cannot match. MUD and PID districts can add hundreds per month to your payment. Communities still building out mean resale sellers compete with the builder on the next street over. Acreage supply is shrinking while demand is pushing outward. And the road decisions being made right now will do more to your home's value over the next decade than anything else on this list.

If you're moving to North Texas or thinking about selling, grab my relocation guide. It breaks down every one of these cities side by side, price changes, commute times to Plano and North Dallas job corridors, and how the tax situation differs between them. Or book a 30-minute call with me. I'll run your actual monthly numbers with you city by city, including the tax rate on the specific community you're looking at. I'm Connor Hornsby, your North Texas real estate agent , and I look forward to seeing you in North Texas .

Moving to North Texas: 12 Facts About McKinney, Celina, Prosper & the Highway 75 Corridor

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 14:05:00 GMT

I've watched people move to North Texas on the sticker price alone, then they spend the next year finding out that cheap houses don't fix everything. I moved my family here from Northern California just over two years ago, so I've been through this exact relocation myself. What follows are twelve facts you need to know before moving to North Texas, the costs that never show up in the affordability rankings, the commutes that don't match the map in your head, and whether this move actually makes sense for you and your family.

We'll cover McKinney , Celina , Melissa , Anna , Van Alstyne , Prosper , and Frisco , the Highway 75 corridor where most of my clients land. I'll walk through the property tax picture, the MUD and PID charges that can add $400 a month to your payment, the school rezoning happening right now, the year-two tax jump on new construction, and the infrastructure reality of living in the fastest-growing corner of the country. By the end, you'll know which town fits your budget and which commute you're actually signing up for.

McKinney: Middle Price Point with Historic Roots
Celina: Fastest Growth and a Construction Site for Years
Melissa: 14.5% Growth and Infrastructure Catching Up
Anna: Lower Price, Longer Commute
Van Alstyne: Still Small, Still Land Around It
Prosper: Top of the Price Range with Settled Rhythm
Frisco: Top Prices and Newer MUD Communities
Which North Texas Town Fits Your Commute and Budget?
Conclusion

McKinney: Middle Price Point with Historic Roots

McKinney sits about 30 miles north of downtown Dallas. That's my home base, and it's where most people picture themselves when they search "moving to Dallas." The reality is different. When you pictured yourself grabbing dinner downtown Dallas on a Friday night, that's a real drive both ways on Highway 75 or the Dallas North Tollway, and both of them back up with traffic. That surprises people coming from a city where everything sat inside 20 minutes.

The median sales price in McKinney over the last three months was $505,000, down 3.4% from the same period a year ago, according to Redfin. The average price per square foot came in at $209, down 2% year-over-year. Homes are sitting for 44 days on the market compared to 39 days last year. Zillow has the average McKinney home value at $480,000, down 6% over the past year as of their July 2026 data. So you've got the fastest-growing corner of the country and softening prices all at the same time. That confuses people, but it makes sense when you look around. Builders in this corridor have kept putting houses in the ground, and right now there's more supply than there are buyers ready to sign.

The west side of McKinney is the more developed side now. That's where most of the newer retail and the newer construction sits. The east side is the older side of McKinney, where you'll find the historic downtown square with the courthouse and all the local restaurants and shops. Two different feels, same city, and the price per square foot is not even close. If you want a town with 100 years of history and settled rhythm to it, look hard at McKinney and the area around the historical downtown square. A brand new master-planned community 20 minutes further north is a completely different life, and the price difference is real.

HOA dues in McKinney's master-planned communities typically run $150 to $200 a month. Property taxes are where people really get hit. McKinney's own property tax page uses an average home value of $550,000, total property tax bill of $9,000. That's the whole bill, and the city notes only 23 cents of every dollar you pay actually goes to the city of McKinney. The rest goes to the school district, the county, and the college. Tax Drop puts the combined effective tax rate across Collin County somewhere between 1.7% and 2.3%, depending on exactly where you land. The city just proposed an $880 million budget for the fiscal year 2026-2027. According to The Cooldown, the property tax rate goes to 41 cents per $100 of assessed value, up from 40 cents. It's a small increase on paper, but taxable property value in McKinney is expected to climb by more than $1.5 billion this year. So the rate barely moves and the total pot grows anyways.

If you're coming from California, Washington, or Illinois, you're used to Proposition 13 keeping your assessed value roughly locked. That protection does not exist here. Your value gets looked at every single year. When you run your budget, do not use the number the mortgage calculator spits out on Zillow. Take the tax rate for the exact address, multiply it by the full price, divide by 12. That's the real number. On a $500,000 home, it usually is somewhere between $700 and $900 a month before you've paid a dime of principal.

Schools are another moving target. McKinney ISD's board approved a realignment plan that sets new elementary, middle, and high school attendance boundaries starting in the 2026-2027 school year. That's straight from the district's own announcement in December 2025. The reason is just pure math. Community Impact reported that under the old zones, one McKinney high school was projected to hit nearly 4,300 students by the 2034-2035 school year. The district's other two high schools would stay below 2,200. If schools are driving your purchase, do not take the campus name off a builder's brochure as a promise. Go to the district's own boundary map, confirm the address, and then ask the district directly whether that zone is under review. I do this for clients before we write any offer in specific areas, and I've had it change the house my clients picked.

Celina: Fastest Growth and a Construction Site for Years

Celina was the fastest-growing city in the country last year. It grew 24.6% and added more than 12,000 residents between July 2024 and July 2025. CBS News Texas reported Celina had about 6,000 people in 2010 and more than 64,000 people in 2025. By 2040, Celina is expected to have over 200,000 people. Celina sits about an hour north of downtown Dallas, and that's a real drive on Highway 75 when traffic backs up.

That growth sounds exciting on paper, but being in it is completely different. A Celina realtor told CBS News Texas that people driving around say, "No, we're not ready. The traffic has gotten terrible." The city is still working on catching up with the infrastructure that they haven't caught up with yet. What does this mean for you? It means the dirt lot behind your fence is a framing crew at 6:45 in the morning. It means the grocery store you were promised is a sign on chain-link fence. It means the two-lane farm road you drive to work on gets torn up and widened while you live here.

I walk buyers through brand new sections in Celina every single week. I've watched entire streets go from pastures to occupied in as little as 18 months. Some people love being early and some people hate it. Just know which one you are before you sign. Almost nobody in your new neighborhood is from here. That's not a criticism, it's just the reality of a place that went from 6,000 people to over 64,000 people in 15 years. On my street, the neighbors come from California, Washington, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, Louisiana. The good side is it's genuinely easy to meet people. Everybody arrived recently, so nobody has a close circle from high school. Somebody knocks on your door with a plate of something your first two weeks of living here. The neighborhood group chat is active before the sod is even down in your front yard.

But the hard side is that there's no built-in support system. Back home, you had parents 20 minutes away on a Tuesday night to babysit. Out here, you don't. Every trip back to see family is a flight out of DFW or Love Field and a chunk of your vacation days. That's the thing my clients underestimate the most, and it usually hits them around month 8 to month 12.

Newer communities in Celina often carry MUD or PID taxes. A MUD is a Municipal Utility District. A PID is a Public Improvement District. In plain English, when a developer builds roads, water lines, and sewer out in a field, somebody has to pay for that infrastructure. Instead of the city funding it, they create a district and the homeowners inside it pay it back through an extra charge on their tax bill. A DFW New Construction Guide updated in August 2026 lays out the real cost. MUD taxes add about $2,000 to $7,000 or more per year on top of your regular city, county, and school taxes, and they typically last for 20 to 30 years. On a $500,000 home, a $5,000 a year MUD or PID works out to $417 a month. That same source points out it's equivalent to financing an extra $67,000 of house for nothing you can see or touch. This is the thing I check on every single property before my clients write an offer, and it's the thing that decides which of these towns actually fits your budget.

Melissa: 14.5% Growth and Infrastructure Catching Up

Melissa sits north of McKinney along the Highway 75 corridor. Community Impact reported Melissa grew 14.5% to 29,000 residents. That makes it one of the three fastest-growing cities in America in this corridor that I sell in every week. Like Celina, you're buying into a construction site and you might be living in one for the next five or more years. The infrastructure is catching up, but it hasn't caught up yet.

Every 10 to 15 minutes you're willing to drive north, you buy back roughly $50,000 to $75,000 of house at the same monthly payment. That's the real trade in this market. Melissa sits in the middle of that trade. You're further from downtown Dallas than McKinney, closer than Anna or Van Alstyne. The question isn't whether the town is the best, it's how much of your week you're willing to spend in the car to get the price per square foot you want. That decision follows you for years.

Check for MUD or PID taxes in newer Melissa communities. Two identical houses, same builder, same exact floor plan, two streets apart, one costs $400 a month more to own. Nothing about the house explains it. The difference is a MUD or PID tax. A MUD is not automatically bad. It's often what makes a brand new $300,000 house possible out here at all. But you need to know it's there, you have to know the rate, and you have to know how many years are left on it before you sign anything. It's not on Zillow, it's not on the builder's flyer. If nobody pulls it for you before you sign, you find out on your first full tax bill, and by then you own the home.

From our own findings in June 2026, buyers who budget only for mortgage principal and interest routinely miss 30 to 40% of their actual monthly housing costs in Texas MUD and PID communities. Think about what that means. You get quoted a payment of $2,100 and your real number is closer to $2,900 a month. A $300,000 home in one of these districts typically carries $7,500 to $9,000 a year in property taxes plus $150 to $200 a month in HOA dues. Move up to the $500,000 range and you're looking at $12,000 to $15,000 a year in taxes plus that HOA. That's especially true in a master-planned community with a massive lagoon or a resort pool attached to it. Somebody has to pay for that lagoon. Somebody has to pay for that amenity center. It's you every single month for as long as you own that home in that community.

Anna: Lower Price, Longer Commute

Anna sits further north from Celina along Highway 75. Community Impact reported Anna grew 10.2% to 35,000 residents, making it one of the three fastest-growing cities in America in this corridor. A house in Anna might save you $60,000 compared to one in Prosper, but if your office is in Richardson, you just bought yourself an extra 30 to 40 minutes each day, five days a week.

I tell every single client the same thing: before you fall in love with the subdivision, open your map app and run the drive from that address to your office at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning, not at noon, not on a Sunday when you're out here visiting model homes. Do that one exercise and you'll cut half the towns off your list right away. Out here, you're not choosing a neighborhood, you're choosing a commute. Every 10 to 15 minutes you're willing to drive north, you buy back roughly $50,000 to $75,000 of house at the same monthly payment. Anna sits on the lower end of the price range in this corridor, but the commute is real.

Like Celina and Melissa, Anna is a construction site environment. The infrastructure is catching up. Check for MUD or PID taxes in newer communities. That MUD or PID tax is the difference between a house you can comfortably afford and the one that costs you $400 a month more than you planned for the next 25 to 30 years. Our own research found that buyers who rely on the builder's estimated taxes in marketing materials typically underestimate their actual first full-year tax bill by $2,000 to $4,000. The upgrades that hold value and the ones that don't are not the ones the rep pushes. That's a conversation worth having before you spend $30,000 in that showroom.

Van Alstyne: Still Small, Still Land Around It

Van Alstyne sits further north from Anna along Highway 75. It's still small and there's still land around it. Every 10 to 15 minutes you're willing to drive north, you buy back roughly $50,000 to $75,000 of house at the same monthly payment. Van Alstyne is at the far end of that trade. You're an hour or more from downtown Dallas, but the price per square foot reflects it.

Check for MUD or PID taxes in newer communities. The same rules apply. A $5,000 a year MUD or PID works out to $417 a month on top of your regular taxes and HOA. That's equivalent to financing an extra $67,000 of house for nothing you can see or touch. If you're looking at Van Alstyne or anywhere in this corridor, get a real insurance quote on the specific address during your option period, not after closing. Ask two questions: How old is the roof? And what is my wind and hail deductible? Those two answers will move your monthly payment more than negotiating $5,000 off the sales price.

The Dallas Morning News reported in May 2026 that frequent North Texas hailstorms have caused billions in damage and are pushing Dallas-Fort Worth home insurance premiums higher. For the statewide picture, the average annual cost of home insurance in Texas was $4,300 in 2024, up 14% from the year before. Insurify projects another 3% average increase across the state in 2026. If you're moving from a market where you paid $1,000 a year, that's a jump of a few hundred dollars a month once it's rolled into escrow. Roofs in this part of the state take an absolute beating from our weather. Claims history follows the property. Deductibles on wind and hail are often structured differently than the rest of your policy, so read that page very carefully.

Prosper: Top of the Price Range with Settled Rhythm

Prosper sits between McKinney and Frisco. It's at the top of the price range with Frisco. If you want a town with 100 years of history and settled rhythm to it, look hard at Prosper. It's a different life than a brand new master-planned community 20 minutes further north, and the price difference is real.

Prosper ISD went from a projected $12 million surplus to a $29 million shortfall for the 2025-2026 school year, and it pushed back the opening of a new middle school by a year. This was covered in October 2025 by the Community Impact Report. None of that is a knock on the district. It's a great school district. It's what happens when you add tens of thousands of people faster than you can pour the concrete. But it matters for you. If schools are driving your purchase, do not take the campus name off a builder's brochure as a promise. Go to the district's own boundary map, confirm the address, and then ask the district directly whether that zone is under review.

Check for MUD or PID taxes in newer Prosper communities. The DFW New Construction Guide updated in August 2026 names the exact places to check: Prosper, Celina, Melissa, Anna, and newer Frisco communities. Those are the towns I sell in weekly and see this happen weekly. A MUD is not automatically bad, but you need to know it's there. You have to know the rate, and you have to know how many years are left on it before you sign anything. This is the thing I check on every single property before my clients write an offer, and it's the thing that decides which of these towns actually fits your budget.

Frisco: Top Prices and Newer MUD Communities

Frisco sits south of Prosper. It's at the top of the price range with Prosper. Newer Frisco communities may have MUD or PID taxes. The same rules apply. Two identical houses, same builder, same exact floor plan, two streets apart, one costs $400 a month more to own. Nothing about the house explains it. The difference is a MUD or PID tax.

Check the district boundary map. Schools are a moving target across this corridor. McKinney ISD, Prosper ISD, and Frisco ISD are all managing growth faster than they can pour the concrete. If schools are driving your purchase, confirm the address on the district's own boundary map and ask the district directly whether that zone is under review. I do this for clients before we write any offer in specific areas, and I've had it change the house my clients picked.

Most of what sells in this corridor is new construction, and that's what brings a lot of buyers to the state. McKinney, Melissa, Celina, Anna, Prosper, and Frisco are all full of it. The number one thing to know is this: take your own agent with you the very first time you walk into the model home and have them register you at the door. If you tour alone and give them your information, you can lose the ability to bring your own representation on that community later on when you do get represented. It costs nothing to bring an agent to that model home. It can cost you a lot if you don't. The friendly person who greets you at the model home does not work for or represent you. That's not me being cynical. It's the job. The builder sales rep is paid by the builder and represents the builder's interest in that transaction. They're often great at their job. They're just not on your side of the table.

Your property tax bill in year two can be 40 to 60% higher than year one, and you did nothing wrong. Here's why: If your house wasn't finished by January first, the county only taxed the land, an empty lot. So your first tax bill is small and your first year of mortgage payment is built around that small number. What I make sure to do with all my buyers that are purchasing new construction is to review their first year payments based on what their taxes are going to be on that land value. Then the appraisal district comes back the following January and puts the finished house on the rolls. Now they're taxing the entire thing. LRG Realty documents that exact jump at 40 to 60% in their June 2026 breakdown of Texas new build taxes. You don't get a phone call about it. You get a letter from your mortgage servicer saying your escrow account is short, and it is shocking, and your monthly payment is going up, sometimes by $400 or $500 a month on a house you've owned for only 14 months. This is the single most common shock I hear about from people who bought new construction here in North Texas without anyone explaining it to them. The fix is easy if you know it's coming. Ask your lender to escrow based on the full finished value of the home, not the land-only value. Yes, your real payment starts higher, but it's your real payment and you never get that shocking letter in the mail.

Which North Texas Town Fits Your Commute and Budget?

People treat North Texas like it's one big place. It really isn't, and the differences show up in your budget fast. When you ladder heading north, Frisco and Prosper sit at the top of the price range. McKinney sits right in the middle. Melissa at 29,000 residents and Anna at 35,000 per Community Impact sit lower. Keep going up Highway 75 and you hit Van Alstyne and Sherman, and they're still small with still land around them.

Here's the practical version: every 10 to 15 minutes you're willing to drive north, you buy back roughly $50,000 to $75,000 of house at the same monthly payment. That's the real trade in this market. The question isn't whether the town is the best, it's how much of your week you're willing to spend in the car to get the price per square foot you want. That decision follows you for years.

Choose McKinney if you want the middle price point, a historic downtown square, and a settled rhythm. You're 30 miles north of downtown Dallas, property taxes run $9,000 a year on a $550,000 home, and school zones are under realignment starting 2026-2027.

Choose Celina, Melissa, or Anna if you're willing to drive further north to buy back $50,000 to $75,000 of house. You're living in a construction site for the next five or more years. The grocery store you were promised is a sign on chain-link fence. The two-lane farm road you drive to work on gets torn up and widened while you live here. Check for MUD or PID taxes in newer communities.

Choose Prosper or Frisco if you want the top of the price range and a settled rhythm. Check for MUD or PID taxes in newer communities. Check the district boundary map. Schools are a moving target.

Choose Van Alstyne if you want small, land around it, and the lowest price per square foot. You're an hour or more from downtown Dallas. Check for MUD or PID taxes in newer communities.

Never compare two houses on just price. Compare them on the total monthly number. That total monthly number is different in every single one of these towns, and it changes street by street inside the same city. Get that wrong and you don't find out for a year. You find out when your mortgage company sends you an escrow shortage letter and your payment jumps $400 a month with no warning.

Conclusion

North Texas keeps showing up on every list of the most affordable places in America to buy a brand new house. For most people moving here from out of state, that's exactly the appeal. But affordable doesn't mean it's right for you. I've watched people move to North Texas on the sticker price alone, then they spend the next year finding out that cheap houses don't fix everything.

The sticker price is the easy part. The bill that comes every January is where people really get hit. Texas has no state income tax. You've heard that 100 times. Nobody tells you where the state gets the money instead. Your value gets looked at every single year. When you run your budget, do not use the number the mortgage calculator spits out on Zillow. Take the tax rate for the exact address, multiply it by the full price, divide by 12. That's the real number. On a $500,000 home, it usually is somewhere between $700 and $900 a month before you've paid a dime of principal.

A cheap house in Texas is not the same as a cheap monthly payment. Buyers who budget only for mortgage principal and interest routinely miss 30 to 40% of their actual monthly housing costs in Texas MUD and PID communities. That MUD or PID tax is the difference between a house you can comfortably afford and the one that costs you $400 a month more than you planned for the next 25 to 30 years. It's not on Zillow, it's not on the builder's flyer. If nobody pulls it for you before you sign, you find out on your first full tax bill, and by then you own the home.

If you're looking at McKinney, Melissa, Celina, Van Alstyne, Anna, Prosper, Frisco, or anywhere here in North Texas, call or text me at 214-326-2323 . I'll run the full monthly number on any address you're considering, MUD and PID taxes included, and tell you straight whether that town fits your budget. I made this move from California myself, so I've been on the same side as you.

Everything NEW & Coming SOON to North Texas in 2026: McKinney, Prosper, Celina & More

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:17:00 GMT

The center of downtown McKinney is open ground right now. Two full city blocks where City Hall used to stand are cleared and waiting for whatever comes next. The McKinney Performing Arts Center sits dark through most of 2026 while crews gut the interior and rebuild the seating. And out at Craig Ranch, 327 apartments are going up on 4.7 acres inside the town center, targeting pre-leasing by mid-2027.

None of this shows up on a Zillow listing. You can tour a house four blocks off the square and have no idea the entire center of town is under construction. I read through the city council agendas and local news archives so you don't have to, and I pulled together what's actually changing across McKinney, Craig Ranch, Aster Park, Melissa , Anna , Van Alstyne, Celina, and Prosper heading into 2026.

Here's what matters: the projects reshaping these suburbs right now, the neighborhoods where new homes are actually being built, the school district lines that don't follow city boundaries, and the events happening across the region later this year. I'm Connor Hornsby, your North Texas realtor. I moved my family here from Northern California, and I work across all seven of these cities and more.

Historic downtown McKinney is the single biggest reason people pay more to live here instead of the suburb next door. The square, the shops, the restaurants, the weekend crowds. When I take buyers from California, Washington, New York, or Florida through McKinney, the square is the thing that sells them every single time. And a lot of folks assume downtown is finished, that it's just a preserved little historic district and nothing ever changes. That's far from the truth.

McKinney: Downtown Demolition and What It Means for Buyers
Craig Ranch: 327 Apartments Coming to McKinney's Walkable Town Center
Aster Park: Luxury Homes in Northwest McKinney Starting at $600k
Melissa: Downtown Square Development and New Rental Communities
Anna: Following McKinney's Downtown Playbook
Van Alstyne: Early-Stage Downtown Investment
Celina: Building a Square from Scratch
Prosper: Why the ISD Matters More Than the City Name
Timing Your North Texas Scouting Trip: Oktoberfest and Holiday Events
Here's My Honest Take on North Texas Heading Into 2026

McKinney: Downtown Demolition and What It Means for Buyers

On April 13th, crews started demolition on the former City Hall at North Tennessee Street. The old Development Service Building right across at 221 North Tennessee came down as well. City Council approved the contract on March 17th, and the demolition phase was expected to take about 120 days. It's all part of what the city calls the Downtown City-Owned Property Redevelopment Project.

Two full city blocks in the center of downtown McKinney are now open ground. What goes back on that site hasn't been fully laid out yet, so I'm not going to guess for you. But this is a big deal in a place where the square is the main attraction. If you're shopping homes for sale in McKinney TX within walking distance of the town square right now, you're walking into construction traffic today and a very different downtown in a few years.

The demolition isn't the only thing going down there. The McKinney Performing Arts Center is closed for most of 2026 while it goes through a $10 million renovation, according to Community Impact. This is the first major renovation that building has had since the early 2000s. The plans include new theater seating, a refresh on the public restrooms, plus a bunch of infrastructure work you'll never see but absolutely need in a building that old.

The Performing Arts Center sits right on the square. It's the old Collin County Courthouse, and for a lot of people around here, it's the anchor of the downtown nightlife. Dinner on the square, then a show. That closure hits the businesses around here harder than you think. When a venue like that goes dark for the better part of a year, the restaurants and bars feel it. Fewer people driving in on a Friday night. When it reopens with new seating and a better system, it pulls those crowds back into the nightlife we have here.

Add it up with the demolition and you've got a downtown that's being rebuilt in two places at once. This is the kind of detail that never shows up on a listing you view on Zillow. I tell every buyer I take through downtown McKinney this exact thing. It changes how you read the neighborhood. And this isn't just a McKinney thing. Downtown squares in Melissa, Celina, and Van Alstyne are all in earlier stages of the same kind of public investment. Expect more of this as those cities catch up.

Craig Ranch: 327 Apartments Coming to McKinney's Walkable Town Center

Three hundred twenty-seven apartments are coming to Craig Ranch according to Community Impact. The project is called Palladium Craig Ranch. It's going in at 7909 Colin McKinney Parkway on about 4.7 acres inside the Craig Ranch Town Center. All in, it's over 275,000 square feet of rentable space. The mix is mostly one- and two-bedroom units. Construction was expected to start in early 2026. Pre-leasing is targeted for mid-2027 with the first move-ins that summer.

I know what you're thinking, why am I talking about apartment complexes instead of single-family homes? Because of how relocation works. A huge chunk of the people I work with don't buy the first month they land here. It's great if they do, but they rent for a year first. Sometimes they want to drive the commute and figure out which side of town fits their needs. They also want to see a Texas summer before they commit to six figures. And the best part about it, those builders can help you break rent if you find something during that first year lease.

Craig Ranch is one of the few places in McKinney that can do that inside a walkable town center, not out on a highway frontage road. Melissa and Anna are starting to see the same kind of rental community show up in those areas as well. A lot of things here are just a step behind where McKinney is headed.

The other side of it is what it says about Craig Ranch itself. Nobody puts 327 units on 4.7 acres in a place they think is slowing down. That's a bet on density and demand in that pocket. So if you're not ready to buy yet or unsure of the location, put this on your radar for 2027. And if you already own near Craig Ranch, know that a few hundred new households are moving in within walking distance of you.

Aster Park: Luxury Homes in Northwest McKinney Starting at $600k

The other end of the price range looks completely different. I've covered some of the most affordable new construction homes North Texas has to offer in other videos. That's a real part of this market and I'll keep covering it, but northwest McKinney is where the other end lives.

Aster Park is a newer luxury community on the northwest side of McKinney in Collin County . Homes start here around $600,000 and go past $1.2 million. Some addresses in it are rare because they're zoned for the sought-after Prosper ISD rather than McKinney ISD. And no knock on McKinney ISD, it is a good school district. Prosper is just one level above.

That school district detail is something I want you to hold on to, because in this part of Collin County, district lines do not follow city lines. I know it's confusing. You can buy a house with a McKinney address that sits in Prosper ISD. This isn't unique to McKinney either. The same mismatch shows up in Celina and Prosper too. It happens wherever new development fills in the gaps between cities.

I've watched buyers assume the city name on the mailbox tells them the district. It doesn't. And by the time you find out, you're already under contract and putting in your final deposit. What's bigger than the school district though is finding out your tax rate. Two houses on the same road can carry two different tax rates depending on whether they're inside a MUD district or a PID district. Those are special districts that add to your tax bill to pay for things like roads and water lines.

On a $700,000 house, a difference in the rate is real money every month, pretty much forever. So when you're comparing new construction homes North Texas across the region, pull the real district and real tax rate for that specific lot, not the community, the lot itself. That's exactly the kind of detail that costs people real money when they get it wrong. I've seen people move here and after one year try to sell in those districts, and they end up having a hard time and ultimately losing a lot of money.

Melissa: Downtown Square Development and New Rental Communities

Melissa is working on its own downtown square development right now, just a step or two behind McKinney. Rental communities are starting to appear here as well, following the same pattern Craig Ranch is seeing. Melissa has its own downtown holiday events, and the city is investing in the kind of public spaces that pull people in on weekends.

The downtown square isn't finished yet, but the bones are there. If you're looking at homes for sale in North Texas and you want the walkable town center vibe without paying McKinney premiums, Melissa is worth a look. The trade-off is that you're buying into a place that's still building out its identity. The square isn't the draw yet, it's the promise of what it will be in a few years.

Builder incentives, tax rates, and school district lines all change depending on which suburb you're in and what your budget actually is. Get the MUD or PID tax rate wrong on a $500,000 house and you're paying for that mistake every month for the next 30 years. Register with the builder before you have representation and you may have just handed away the one person negotiating on your side, because that sales rep does not work for you, they work for the builder.

Anna: Following McKinney's Downtown Playbook

Anna is on the same timeline as Melissa. The city is working on a downtown square development, and rental communities are starting to appear here as well. Anna has its own downtown holiday events, and the city is following McKinney's playbook step by step.

The difference between Anna and McKinney right now is about five to seven years of development. McKinney's square is the anchor of the city. Anna's square is still being built. If you're okay with that gap, Anna offers a lower entry point into the same kind of community McKinney has become. If you need the square to already be there, stick with McKinney or wait a few years.

The school district lines here don't follow city boundaries either. You can buy a house with an Anna address and end up in a different ISD than you expected. Verify the district for the specific lot, not just the community or city name. That's the rule across this entire region.

Van Alstyne: Early-Stage Downtown Investment

Van Alstyne is working on its own downtown square development as well, and it has its own downtown holiday events. The city is earlier in the process than McKinney, Melissa, or Anna, but the investment is happening. If you're looking at moving to North Texas and you want to buy into a place before it takes off, Van Alstyne is worth a look.

The trade-off is that you're buying into a place that's still figuring out what it wants to be. The square isn't the draw yet. The schools, the commute, the tax rate, those are the things that matter right now. The square will matter in a few years, but it's not there yet.

Same rule applies here: verify the school district and tax rate for the specific lot. City lines don't tell you the district, and the district is what drives resale value in this part of Collin County .

Celina: Building a Square from Scratch

Celina is working on a downtown square development from an earlier stage than McKinney. The city has its own downtown holiday events, and the investment is real. But Celina is building a square from scratch, not renovating one that's been there for a hundred years.

District lines don't follow city lines here either. You can buy a house with a Celina address and end up zoned for Prosper ISD instead of Celina ISD. That's a huge deal if you're moving to North Texas with school-age kids. Verify the district for the specific lot before you make an offer.

Celina is one of the fastest-growing cities in the region, and a lot of that growth is happening on the north side where new construction is filling in. If you're looking at homes for sale in Celina TX , know that you're buying into a place that's still building out its infrastructure. The square will be a draw eventually, but it's not there yet.

Prosper: Why the ISD Matters More Than the City Name

Prosper ISD is considered one level above McKinney ISD. That's not a knock on McKinney, it's just the reality of how buyers rank districts in this part of Collin County . And here's the thing: district lines don't follow city boundaries. You can buy a house with a McKinney address or a Celina address and end up zoned for Prosper ISD.

That mismatch shows up all over northwest McKinney, Celina, and Prosper. It happens wherever new development fills in the gaps between cities. I've watched buyers assume the city name on the mailbox tells them the district. It doesn't. And by the time you find out, you're already under contract.

Two houses on the same road can carry two different tax rates depending on whether they're inside a MUD district or a PID district. On a $700,000 house, a difference in the rate is real money every month, pretty much forever. So when you're comparing new construction homes North Texas across the region, pull the real district and real tax rate for that specific lot, not the community, the lot itself.

Timing Your North Texas Scouting Trip: Oktoberfest and Holiday Events

The biggest weekend on the downtown square happens in September. McKinney Oktoberfest runs September 25th through the 27th of 2026. It's an incredible event where McKinney residents and those from outside come in for three days of live music, food, activities, and the admission is free.

If you've never been, understand the scale of this thing. The square shuts down completely. Tens of thousands of people come in from all over Collin County . People know McKinney for this event across the entire region. So it's a cool event, I get it. Why would you fly in for it?

I bring this up for a specific reason. If you're moving to McKinney Texas from out of state and you're planning a scouting trip, this is the weekend to probably book. You get to see the downtown at its absolute best, you get a feel for the crowd, and you can spend the rest of the weekend driving neighborhoods while everyone else is downtown. You can go to areas like Melissa, Celina, Van Alstyne, Anna, Prosper, and Frisco, or anywhere in North Texas that you want to see, and I'm happy to accommodate you as well.

I tell people all the time that you can't judge a suburb from a Google Street View. You have to stand in it and feel as if you're living there for that weekend. And there's no better weekend to stand in downtown McKinney than the last weekend of September. One quick note though, it's a great event, but downtown parking on that weekend is an absolute fight. Plan for it, get there early, and don't try to drive across the square between noon and 10 PM because there's a lot going on and it's going to be shut down.

If fall doesn't work for your trip, there is another one. McKinney does Christmas on the square and it starts the last weekend of November. The event is called Home for the Holidays and it takes over the historic downtown McKinney square just like Oktoberfest. Friday night is the Christmas tree lighting and that kicks off the full month of holiday programming downtown through December.

It's worth coming, it's worth checking out. You can even bring your kids and get a picture with Santa Claus as your first Christmas in Texas. If you're coming from an area that has snow, we probably won't have snow since last year we had 85 degrees on Christmas Day, but trust me, the weather is going to be different this year.

I'll be honest with you about why this one matters more than it sounds. When my family moved here from Northern California, the thing we were nervous about wasn't the house, it was whether the place would feel like home. You leave everything you know and you're betting on a town you visited just twice? It's stressful, I get it, and doing it by myself made things even harder.

Downtown McKinney in December is the answer to that question. The square lights up, the shops stay open late, and it looks like a movie set. And there's a practical angle to this. A lot of relocating buyers move over the winter because of the school calendar. If that's you, this is a good week to be here. And trust me, it's not going to be that cold.

Rates and prices tend to be softer late in the year as well, and builders are pushing to hit year-end numbers. Whether you're looking in McKinney or the surrounding suburbs I work in, it's a good idea to try to catch a deal by the end of 2026. And if you can't make it to McKinney that weekend, Melissa, Celina, Van Alstyne, and Anna all have their own downtown holiday events as well. So if you're timing a trip, late November gives you the holidays downtown and a decent window to negotiate. And trust me, these builders will negotiate incentives, rate buydowns, and price.

Here's My Honest Take on North Texas Heading Into 2026

The teardown downtown, the 327 apartments going up in Craig Ranch, the new luxury homes out in Aster Park, all of it hits your wallet differently depending on which street you buy on. And the same patterns are showing up everywhere.

Buy on the wrong side of the district line in northwest McKinney and you're in a school district you didn't plan for. Miss the MUD or PID tax rate on a new build and you're overpaying every month for the next 30 years. Walk into a builder's model home before you have representation, and you may have given up your negotiating power on a $500,000 purchase. And like I mentioned before, the builder does not work for you.

So if you're moving to Dallas Fort Worth or anywhere else across North Texas, talk to somebody who lives here. I made the same move myself with my family, and I run the real payment math on new construction before you sign anything. Click the first link in my description below and grab my free North Texas relocation guide . It's going to break down cities like McKinney, Melissa, Celina, Van Alstyne, Prosper, Anna, and Frisco by budget, plus the school district lines and the tax rates on each one will be included.

Call or text me , and I’ll help you find the option that best fits your needs. I hope to hear from you soon, and I look forward to seeing you in North Texas.

North Texas Suburbs Buyers Regret: Frisco, Prosper, Melissa, McKinney, Celina & Van Alstyne Compared

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:54:00 GMT

You've got a list of North Texas suburbs saved on your phone. Frisco, Prosper, McKinney, maybe Celina. You've scrolled through the photos, read the builder websites, and started picturing your life in one of these towns. But here's the question nobody asks until it's too late: do you know what your actual monthly payment is in each one?

Two houses at the same price, ten minutes apart, can be over $300 a month apart in taxes alone. That's not a typo. That's the difference between a comfortable payment and one that stretches you thin every single month for thirty years. The sticker price on the builder sign tells you almost nothing about what you'll actually pay.

I'm Connor Hornsby, and my family made this exact move from Northern California in 2024. I sell new construction in all six of these towns every week, and I run the real monthly payment math with relocating buyers before they fall in love with a floor plan. In this article, I'm walking you through the trade-offs in Frisco, Prosper, Melissa, McKinney, Celina, and Van Alstyne, what buyers get surprised by after they close, and who each town genuinely works for.

Frisco: The Corporate Premium Suburb
Prosper: Master-Planned Living with a Tax Stack
Melissa: Where the Math Finally Works
McKinney: New Construction Value with a Real Downtown
Celina: Fastest Growth in the Country (and the Friction That Comes with It)
Van Alstyne: The One Nobody Sees Coming
Which North Texas Suburb Fits Your Budget and Lifestyle?
Conclusion

Frisco: The Corporate Premium Suburb

Frisco is the name that travels. If you live in California or Illinois, you've heard exactly one Dallas suburb. It's probably this one. The sports teams, the corporate campuses, the shopping, it's the version of North Texas that shows up in the news. Zillow has the typical Frisco home at $673,000 as of the end of last June. Not the big custom homes. The typical average suburb home.

Frisco isn't the budget suburb anymore. It's the corporate premium suburb, and the price reflects that. Bale Real Estate Group put out a cost of living breakdown in May. They figure a family of four needs $130,000 to $150,000 or more in household income to live here comfortably. I know that doesn't sound like much if you're coming from New York, California, Washington, or Illinois. But here, that's been a massive jump year by year.

Property Taxes and MUD/PID Assessments

On the Collin County side, the combined property tax rate in Frisco ISD runs around 1.96%. On a $600,000 house, that's somewhere in the $9,000 to $12,000 range a year. A lot of the newer neighborhoods carry a MUD or PID tax on top of that. That can add an additional $2,000 to over $8,000 a year.

MUD and PID just means the neighborhood is paying off its own roads, water, and sewer through your tax bill. It's not a scam. It's just money you did not budget for when you planned on moving here. I had a family last year who found this out the hard way. They'd already picked out the furniture for a house in one of the newer Frisco sections. Then we ran the actual numbers. Once the PID assessment was added in, their estimated monthly payment was almost $350 a month higher than the builder sales rep had quoted them.

They bought a different floor plan one lot over in a section that didn't have a PID tax.

Who Frisco Works For

Frisco works great for people commuting to one of the corporate campuses. People who want everything built out and open today. People whose budget starts around $700,000. For them, Frisco delivers exactly what it promises. The regret shows up when someone arrives with a $500,000 or below budget expecting Frisco and finds out what $500,000 actually buys here. That leads straight into where those buyers usually go next.

Prosper: Master-Planned Living with a Tax Stack

Prosper is the one people fall in love with on a Saturday drive. Wide roads, big master-planned communities, horse property still sitting next to brand new construction. It feels calmer than Frisco, less corporate, more like the suburb people picture when they imagine leaving a big city.

The numbers back that feeling up. Zillow has the typical Prosper home at $789,000. Orchard put the median sales price at $850,000 over its recent thirty-day window. Buyers expect the higher price. What they don't expect is the tax stack.

The Tax Rate Nobody Budgets For

Inside Prosper broke it down in April. School district, town, and county combined, you're at about $1.87 per $100 of value. That's roughly 1.44% of your assessed value every single year. The town of Prosper's own FY 2026-27 tax document confirms the town portion. On an $850,000 house, that's real money every single month. When I run that math with people on a call, the number is usually a few hundred dollars a month higher than what they penciled in.

The second thing that catches people is how the resale side moves. Orchard had the median days on market at 40 days, up from 37 a year earlier. It matters a lot if you're the kind of buyer who moves every three years for work.

The Master-Planned Community Misconception

There's a misconception I hear constantly. People think a master-planned community automatically means lower maintenance costs. In Prosper, a lot of these communities charge HOA dues on top of that tax rate. That money pays for the amenity centers, the trails, all the landscaping. It's a separate bill from your mortgage and your taxes. Ask about it before you fall in love with the amenity center.

Prosper works beautifully for a specific person. Someone with a budget genuinely in the high $600s and up. Someone who wants space and a master-planned setup. Someone who plans to stay put for more than ten years. Where it goes wrong is when someone stretches to their absolute maximum on their purchase price, then forgets the tax rate and needs to sell in a year or two.

Melissa: Where the Math Finally Works

Melissa sits just north of McKinney off Highway 75. For a lot of relocating buyers, it's the moment the math finally works. Zillow has the average Melissa home valued at $435,000. Brand new construction, decent sized lots, roughly half the price of a Prosper house. I sell a lot out there and I used to live there. I genuinely like it.

But there are two things I always say out loud before someone writes an offer.

The Pace of Change

World Population Review has Melissa at 32,000 people in 2026, up 129% since the 2020 census recorded 14,000 people. The city has more than doubled in six years. CBS Texas reported in May that Melissa was the fourth fastest growing city in the entire country from mid-2024 to mid-2025.

That kind of growth means the houses have arrived before all the amenities have. The restaurants, the grocery options, the retail, all of that is still catching up. If your idea of a Friday night is a fifteen-minute drive to something, I tell people to actually make that drive before you sign anything. Sit in your car at 5:30 on a weekday. Go from the subdivision you're considering to the nearest grocery store. See what that feels like with school traffic on the road. It reads very differently on a map than it does in the driver's seat.

Resale and School Growth

The second thing is the resale side. Zillow shows Melissa homes going pending in around 88 days. Compare that to Celina at 44 days. You're competing against the builders who are still putting up brand new inventory just a mile away. Your five-year-old resale takes longer to move.

Melissa ISD is growing as fast as the city is. That means new campuses, portable classrooms in some years, and boundary lines that can shift. That's not automatically bad. It's just a different experience than moving into a district that's already completely settled in.

Melissa works great if you want a new build in the $300s to $400s range. You have to be comfortable with driving to retail. You have to stay long enough for the town to finish growing up around you.

McKinney: New Construction Value with a Real Downtown

Here's a mistake I see almost every week when I'm touring with buyers. They fall in love with downtown McKinney. I get it. The historic square is one of the best things in North Texas. Old brick buildings, local shops, restaurants, actual character in a metro area that's mostly brand new.

People fly in, spend a Saturday morning on the square, and decide McKinney is the one. Then they buy a house twenty minutes from it because most of the McKinney inventory right now isn't near the square.

Where the Growth Is Happening

The city grew 5.8% a year from 2020 to 2025. It added roughly 14,200 people in 2025 alone, according to census data by U.S. Tech Automations. All that growth is happening on the edges. Newer subdivisions that look a lot like every other new subdivision in Collin County. Which is fine. Just know that's what you're buying when you're looking for new construction here.

Those newer sections come with a tax piece. McKinney MUD 2 adopted a 2025 rate of $1.05 per $100 of value. McKinney MUD 1 lists at $0.98. Same city, different districts, completely different bills. Ownwell puts McKinney's median effective property tax rate at 1.66%, above the Texas median of 1.48%. This is exactly why I run the payment math out loud on camera in almost every video I make. The address changes the number.

The Price Range and the Square

Zillow has the typical McKinney home value at $515,000. The MLS data shows 3,420 closings in 2025 at a median of $440,000. The range here is wide. There's something at almost every price point, from starter townhomes near $75,000 to acreage properties out towards the country line.

I've had clients ask me to only show them homes within a certain drive time of the Square. That one request alone can cut the available inventory by more than half in some price ranges. If the Square is a big part of why you're moving to McKinney, say it out loud early. It changes which neighborhoods actually make sense for you.

McKinney works great for people who want new construction value but still want a real downtown they actually use. Just be honest with yourself about how often you'll make that drive.

Celina: Fastest Growth in the Country (and the Friction That Comes with It)

Celina grew 24% between July 2024 and July 2025. That's the fastest growth rate of any city in the United States per census data reported by Community Impact and CBS Texas in May. You can feel it the second you drive in. Rooftops going up in every direction. Cranes. Dirt. Brand new elementary schools that were pastures just two years ago.

For a lot of buyers, that energy is the appeal. You're getting in early on a town everyone's talking about. Growth like that comes with real friction, and the city says so themselves.

Infrastructure Strain and Daily Life

Fox News interviewed Celina Mayor Ryan Tubbs in June. He described a city racing to expand roads, water systems, and schools just to keep up. That article also noted the strain on Celina's water supply and on the small-town identity that drew people here in the first place.

On a practical level, that means retail and dining are still thin. A Celina relocation guide published in March pointed out that most Celina residents still drive to Prosper or Frisco for shopping and restaurants. It also noted that Celina ISD currently ranks below Frisco ISD, Prosper ISD, and Allen ISD. That district is growing and improving fast, but that's where it sits today.

The Pricing Piece That Stings

Then there's the pricing piece, and this one stings. Zillow has the average Celina home value at $529,000, down 9.9% over the past year. The Real Deal reported in June that the median price of closed new home sales in Celina fell 22% to $520,000. New home sales volume jumped 61% comparing April 2025 to April 2026.

Think about that for a second. Sales are booming and prices are coming down. That's builders competing hard against each other with incentives and price cuts. Great if you're buying today. Frustrating if you bought eighteen months ago and now there's a cheaper, newer version of your house just three streets over.

I've had buyers call me exactly about this. They compared what they paid a year and a half ago to what the same builder now offers on the same floor plan with incentives included. It's a hard conversation. It's the one reason I push people to negotiate incentives just as hard as price when they buy new construction in a fast-growing town like Celina.

Celina works for a buyer with a seven to ten year horizon who's excited to watch the town grow around them. It's tough on anyone who needs to sell in one to three years.

Van Alstyne: The One Nobody Sees Coming

Almost nobody relocating from out of state has Van Alstyne on their list. There's a town just twenty minutes north of Melissa that had only 4,000 people in 2020. Today it has over 8,000. That's 95% growth in just six years. The city issued 377 single-family permits in one year, up from just 97 the year before, according to North Texas Market Insider.

When buyers find it, they usually find it the same way. They're driving up 75, looking at Melissa, they keep going for just about ten minutes more, and suddenly the lots are an acre and the price per square foot drops to somewhere between $200 to $220 a square foot.

What You Get and What You Give Up

The median price here runs roughly $450,000 to $480,000, with the averages climbing towards $556,000 once acreage properties pull the top up. The surprise here cuts both ways. Van Alstyne is a small town, not a suburb. There's no Target run. Your commute to Plano or North Dallas is a haul in traffic. If you're expecting the amenity level of Frisco, you will be disappointed within a month of moving here.

But it's not staying a sleepy town either. Mantua just opened up, 274 acres with lakes, creeks, 25 miles of trails, and a resort-style amenity center. It has its own elementary school and high school zoned for Van Alstyne ISD. Highland Homes, Perry, and David Weekley are all building there. Behind it is High Point Village , a 667-acre Centurion American community planned for 2,200 homes.

Why All This Is Happening

The reason all of this is happening is that Van Alstyne is getting pushed from two directions at once. The Metroplex pressing north and the semiconductor plants going up in Sherman pulling from the south.

The buyers who end up happiest here are usually the ones who never wanted a typical suburb in the first place. I worked with a family last year relocating for a job tied to Sherman expansion. Van Alstyne wasn't on their list until we drove it together. They got an acre with a shop building for half of what a quarter acre cost them back home. That mattered more to them than having a Target twenty minutes away.

Van Alstyne works for acreage buyers, remote workers, and anyone whose job is heading towards Sherman rather than Dallas. It's a terrible fit for someone who has to commute to downtown Dallas five days a week. The reason I bring it up last is simple. This is the kind of town you only find if someone's actually driving this corridor with you.

Which North Texas Suburb Fits Your Budget and Lifestyle?

I just went over six towns thirty to forty minutes of each other, and every one of them fits a completely different person. Here's how to think through which one actually works for you.

Choose Frisco if your budget starts around $700,000, you're commuting to a corporate campus, and you want everything built out and open today. Skip it if you're stretching to $500,000 and expecting the same experience.

Choose Prosper if your budget is genuinely in the high $600s and up, you want a master-planned setup with space, and you're planning to stay put for more than ten years. Skip it if you move every three years for work or if you're maxing out your purchase price.

Choose Melissa if you want new construction in the $300s to $400s range, you're comfortable driving to retail, and you're willing to stay long enough for the town to finish growing around you. Skip it if you need walkable amenities today or if you're planning to sell in three years.

Choose McKinney if you want new construction value but you also want a real downtown you'll actually use. Say it out loud early if the Square matters to you, it changes which neighborhoods make sense. Skip it if you think buying in McKinney automatically means living near the Square.

Choose Celina if you have a seven to ten year horizon, you're excited to watch the town grow, and you're willing to negotiate incentives as hard as price. Skip it if you need to sell in one to three years or if you expect fully built-out retail and dining today.

Choose Van Alstyne if you want acreage, you work remotely or your job is towards Sherman, and you never wanted a typical suburb in the first place. Skip it if you're commuting to downtown Dallas five days a week or if you need a Target run to feel at home.

Texas has no income tax. It makes up the money on your property tax bill. That first bill is usually a bigger number than you've seen on a house payment. Download the North Texas Relocation Guide, the link's in the description. It breaks down the tax rate and an estimated monthly payment for each of these communities. MUD and PID is included, so there's no surprises waiting when we're at the closing table together.

Conclusion

The sticker price on the builder sign is not the number that matters. Two houses at the same price ten minutes apart can be $300 a month or more apart. Monthly. Over a thirty-year loan, that's the difference between comfortable and stretched.

I made this exact move myself. I sell new construction in all six of these towns every week, and I run the real monthly payment for relocating buyers before they fall in love with a floor plan. If you're relocating here, call or text me at 214-326-2323 and we'll figure out which one of these towns fits your needs. I look forward to seeing you in North Texas.

Why Data Centers Are Reshaping North Texas Real Estate Markets

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:12:00 GMT

The hum is constant now in parts of North Texas, not traffic, not construction, but the industrial drone of cooling systems running 24/7 behind chain-link and concrete. Data centers have arrived in force across McKinney, Frisco, and the surrounding communities, and they're changing the conversation I have with buyers every week. You've probably heard about the tech boom bringing jobs and investment to DFW, but what you might not expect is how these massive facilities are affecting everything from your commute to your property taxes to the quiet you thought you were buying when you moved here.

This isn’t about whether data centers are good or bad. It’s about what they could mean for homebuyers. Maybe someone is trying to decide between McKinney and Frisco, or they’ve found the perfect lot only to discover that a warehouse-sized building is planned right next door.

The reality is more complicated than the headlines suggest. Understanding where data centers are being built, how they may affect nearby communities, and what to look for can help buyers make a more informed decision before making an offer.

Data centers are infrastructure, not the kind of development that brings retail or restaurants or the walkable energy that makes a neighborhood feel alive. They're essential to the digital economy, but they don't interact with residential areas the way an office park or shopping center does. That creates a specific set of trade-offs, and those trade-offs are playing out differently depending on where you're looking in North Texas.

What Data Centers Mean for North Texas Buyers
How Data Centers Affect Property Values and Neighborhood Character
Infrastructure Strain: Roads, Power, and Water
Which North Texas Cities Are Most Affected
What to Ask Before You Buy Near a Data Center
Conclusion

What Data Centers Mean for North Texas Buyers

Data centers are enormous. We're talking hundreds of thousands of square feet, sometimes more than a million, with cooling towers, backup generators, and security fencing that makes them look more like utility plants than office buildings. They're going up fast across North Texas because the region offers cheap land, access to power, and proximity to fiber networks. For tech companies, this is prime real estate. For homebuyers, it's a new variable in the equation.

The appeal is straightforward: data centers pay property taxes, and they pay a lot of them. A single facility can contribute millions of dollars annually to a city's budget, which theoretically means better roads, schools, and services without raising residential tax rates. That's the pitch, and it's not wrong. But it's also not the whole story.

What data centers don't do is create the kind of daytime population that supports local businesses. They employ relatively few people compared to their footprint, maybe a few dozen full-time staff for a facility that covers 50 acres. There's no lunch crowd, no after-work happy hour, no foot traffic. If you're buying in an area where data centers are replacing mixed-use development or retail space, you're trading tax revenue for the kind of walkable, vibrant community energy that a lot of buyers moving here are looking for.

The other issue is aesthetic and experiential. These buildings are functional, not designed to blend into residential neighborhoods. If you're looking at a home and there's a data center planned within a mile or two, you need to think about what that means for your view, your noise level, and your sense of place. Some buyers don't care. Others find out too late that the constant hum or the floodlights at night are deal-breakers.

How Data Centers Affect Property Values and Neighborhood Character

This is the question I get most often: will a data center near my house hurt resale value? The honest answer is that it depends on proximity, visibility, and what the buyer pool looks like when you're ready to sell.

If the data center is a mile away and tucked behind commercial zoning, most buyers won't notice or care. If it's across the street, or if your backyard looks out at cooling towers and security lighting, that's a different conversation. I've seen homes sit longer on the market when the listing photos can't hide the industrial backdrop, and I've seen buyers walk away during showings because the noise was more intrusive than they expected.

The tax revenue argument doesn't always translate to higher home values, either. Yes, the city benefits, but individual homeowners don't see a direct reduction in their tax bills. What they do see is increased traffic during construction, potential strain on local infrastructure, and a shift in the character of the area. If you bought in a neighborhood expecting it to stay residential or to transition into mixed-use retail and dining, a data center changes that trajectory.

There's also the question of future development. Data centers tend to cluster, once one goes in, others follow because the infrastructure is already in place. If you're buying in an area with one data center, ask what's zoned around it. You might be looking at two or three more in the next five years.

Infrastructure Strain: Roads, Power, and Water

Data centers are power-hungry and water-intensive. Cooling systems run constantly, and that puts pressure on local utilities in ways that residential development doesn't. In some parts of North Texas, that's leading to concerns about water availability during droughts and about whether the electrical grid can handle the load during peak summer months.

For buyers, this matters because infrastructure strain can mean longer wait times for new residential development to get utility hookups, or it can mean higher fees as cities scramble to upgrade capacity. I've had buyers surprised by special assessments or impact fees in areas where data centers are driving rapid growth, and those costs add up.

Roads are another pressure point. Data centers generate heavy truck traffic during construction, concrete mixers, equipment haulers, delivery trucks running for months. If you're living nearby during that phase, expect delays, noise, and wear on local streets. Once the facility is operational, traffic drops off, but the construction phase can be disruptive in a way that's hard to anticipate if you're not familiar with the timeline.

Which North Texas Cities Are Most Affected

McKinney and Frisco are seeing significant data center development, along with other cities in Collin County and parts of Denton County. The pattern tends to follow major highways and areas with available land that's still close to fiber infrastructure. If you're looking at homes near US-380, the Dallas North Tollway, or SH-121, you're in the zone where data centers are most likely to appear.

Each city is handling the influx differently. Some are embracing the tax revenue and approving projects quickly. Others are starting to add restrictions on where data centers can be built and how close they can be to residential areas. If you're serious about a specific neighborhood, check with the city's planning department to see what's zoned nearby and what's in the pipeline. That information is public, and it's worth the phone call.

What to Ask Before You Buy Near a Data Center

If you're looking at a home and you know there's a data center nearby, or if you're not sure, here's what I recommend asking:

How close is it, and what's between you and the facility? Distance matters, but so does buffering. A data center behind a commercial strip or a tree line is different from one with direct line of sight.
What's the noise level? Visit the property at different times of day, including evening and early morning. Cooling systems run constantly, and some are louder than others.
What else is zoned for data centers in the area? One facility might be fine. Three or four changes the equation.
How is the city managing infrastructure? Ask about road projects, utility upgrades, and whether there are any special assessments planned for the area.
What's the resale outlook? Talk to a local agent (like me) about how similar homes have performed when they're near industrial or data center development.

These aren't deal-breakers for every buyer, but they're factors that deserve honest conversation before you make an offer.

Conclusion

Data centers are part of North Texas now, and they're not going away. They bring tax revenue and infrastructure investment, but they also bring trade-offs that affect how neighborhoods feel and how homes perform on the resale market. If you're relocating here, the key is to go in with your eyes open, know what's nearby, understand the zoning, and think about whether the trade-offs align with what you're looking for in a home and a community.

Connor works with buyers navigating these decisions every week and can help them understand what’s happening in the specific areas they’re considering. Whether it’s McKinney, Frisco, or another part of North Texas, he can help buyers figure out what makes the most sense for their situation.

To learn more or discuss a specific area, book a call or text at 214-326-2323 , to help you work through the options.

5 Overpriced Areas in North Texas and Where to Buy Instead

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:20:00 GMT

The median price in McKinney is $504,000. The typical Texas home sells for $343,000. That gap, 47% above the state average, is not an accident. It's the brand premium, the zip code tax, the cost of living somewhere people already Googled before they landed here.

Overpriced doesn't mean bad. It means you're paying for something that has nothing to do with the house itself: the name on the welcome sign, the school district boundary, the amenity package people plan vacations around. For every one of these five suburbs, there's a town nearby where you can get the same house, same highway access, same builder floor plans, for tens of thousands less.

Melissa: Brand New Everything, But at What Cost?
Van Alstyne: The Small Town Melissa Used to Be
Celina: Paying Today for a Town That Doesn't Exist Yet
Blue Ridge: Actual Space, Not a 60-Foot Lot with Rules
Prosper: The Zip Code Purchase of North Texas
Farmersville: Where an Acre Costs Less Than a Prosper Lot Premium
Frisco: National Brand Recognition and 20-Year-Old Mechanicals
Little Elm: Keep the Access, Stop Paying for the Name
McKinney: The One I Live In (And Why It's Still Overpriced)
Anna: Same Highway, $150,000 Less
Which Area Is Right for You?
Conclusion

Melissa: Brand New Everything, But at What Cost?

Melissa sits directly north of McKinney on Highway 75. Fifteen years ago, it had one stoplight and no grocery store. Now it has new schools, new subdivisions, new roads, a brand new H-E-B, a brand new Walmart, a brand new Kroger, and restaurants going in left and right. Everything there is brand new. Melissa ISD is small, and that's exactly why parents love it. You're only about 10 minutes north of McKinney shopping, but you're not paying McKinney prices.

That's the pitch, and it's a pretty good one. Here's what's happening to the price, though.

Melissa is getting valued off McKinney's reputation. Builders know exactly who is driving north on 75, and they price accordingly. That discount Melissa used to offer has gotten much thinner. Then there's the part buyers don't see until the tax bill shows up: a lot of these newer communities sit inside a PID or MUD district. That's an extra charge on top of your regular property tax. It pays for the roads, the drainage, all these amenity centers going in. Nobody mentions it at the model home. It shows up on your statement and it changes your monthly payment drastically.

You also have to consider what a brand new build doesn't come with: fences, sod in the backyard, blinds, gutters, a fridge. That's real cash out of pocket in the first 60 days. So you're paying near McKinney money, 10 minutes further from work, with an assessment on top of that. It's worth asking what you're actually buying.

The PID/MUD Trap

The PID and MUD assessments are not small line items. They can add hundreds of dollars to your monthly payment, and they're not fixed, they change as the district pays down infrastructure bonds. That variability makes it harder to budget, and it's a cost that doesn't show up in the purchase price or the builder's payment calculator. You find out about it when your lender runs the final numbers, or worse, when the first tax bill arrives.

Melissa is a great town if you want everything brand new and you're willing to pay for it. Just make sure you're running the real monthly payment, not the one the builder showed you.

Van Alstyne: The Small Town Melissa Used to Be

Keep driving 12 minutes up the same highway and the math completely changes. Van Alstyne sits just north of Anna in Grayson County, right off Highway 75. It's got an actual old Texas vibe: downtown center, main street, water tower, Texas Friday Night Football. It's the kind of small town Melissa was 15 years ago, except it's still there today.

Van Alstyne has kept its small town charm, but it also has new construction going up. Not master-planned communities with mega amenity stuff, straightforward new builds on decent lots at a price point that's noticeably below what you'll pay one exit south.

Here's why the commute argument holds up better than most people expect. If you're driving to Plano or Richardson, Van Alstyne to Melissa is maybe an extra 12 minutes on a highway you're already sitting on. That's it. If you work remote or you're heading north toward the job growth in Sherman right now, you're going the right direction entirely. Everything in Collin County is going to continuously move north.

The Trade-Offs Are Real

You've got fewer grocery options, fewer restaurants, and you're driving into Anna or McKinney for a Target run. But you're likely getting more square footage, a bigger lot, and often no PID assessment on top of your taxes. If Melissa appealed to you because of the small-town charm and the new houses, Van Alstyne gives you both. You just have to be honest about whether you want a small town or the 10-minute drive to Chick-fil-A.

Van Alstyne works for remote workers, for people commuting north toward Sherman, or for buyers who want the small-town Texas experience without the master-planned price tag. It's 12 minutes north of Melissa on the same highway, and it's a completely different monthly payment.

Celina: Paying Today for a Town That Doesn't Exist Yet

Celina shows up in every fastest growing city in America headline. It sits north of Prosper on the Preston Road corridor. It's got one of the best downtown squares in the whole DFW area, real events on the square, a football culture people genuinely move there for, and master-planned communities like Light Farms with pools, trails, and amenity centers built in. You can see why people fall for it. I've walked buyers through Celina weekly and watched them decide in about 20 minutes.

Here's what's inflating the price, though. You're paying today for a version of Celina that doesn't exist yet. The rooftops arrived before the infrastructure did, so you're funding future roads, future retail, and future schools through your purchase price and through PID assessments inside a lot of these communities. Celina is still building out new strip malls, so you're driving 10 to 20 minutes south just for a grocery store run.

The Resale Competition Problem

The one thing buyers underestimate is the resale competition. When you go to sell in five years, look at who you're up against: a builder just three streets over with 40 brand new homes sitting empty. That builder can buy your buyer's interest rate down and you can't. That's a real problem on a house you paid a premium for.

A lot of Celina communities also have mandatory monthly HOA dues. That's a real line item in your monthly payment, and it's funding the pools, trails, and amenity centers you're buying into. So which one did you actually want, the community pool or the small town Texas vibe? If the answer was small town and elbow room, there's a place about 20 to 25 minutes east that no one's bidding up right now.

Blue Ridge: Actual Space, Not a 60-Foot Lot with Rules

Blue Ridge sits northeast of McKinney, out past Anna, and it's still genuinely rural. Farmland, big skies, and lots you can measure in acres instead of feet. Here's why I bring it up to every Celina buyer I talk with: a big part of what pulls people to Celina is the idea of space and a slower pace of life. But then they buy a house on a 60-foot lot inside an HOA with a mandatory monthly due and a rule about what color you can paint your front door.

In Blue Ridge, you can often get land, real land, no HOA, no PID assessment tacked onto your overall tax rate, room for a shop, a garden, a batting cage in the back for your kids. That HOA piece matters more than people think. The dues are only part of it. Nobody tells you where to park your boat.

The Honest Trade-Off

You're committing to a drive. If somebody in your house works in Frisco or Plano five days a week, this is probably not your town. If you work remote, hybrid, or self-employed and can work anywhere along the 380 corridor, it definitely works for you.

This is one of the topics I get the most questions about because acreage and no HOA options are getting genuinely harder to find in Collin County. Blue Ridge is a beautiful piece of Texas that's one of the last places you can still do it at a normal price. It's 20 to 25 minutes east of Celina, and it's the alternative for buyers who want space and a slower pace, not a 60-foot lot with a lagoon three streets over.

Prosper: The Zip Code Purchase of North Texas

Now we're getting into the towns where you clearly are paying for the name. Prosper is the zip code purchase of North Texas. Prosper ISD is a huge part of why people buy there. The lots are bigger than what you'll find in most of Frisco, and communities like Windsong Ranch built amenities that people literally plan vacations around. You're minutes from every restaurant and big box store in West Frisco, and you're right on Preston Road and just near the Dallas North Tollway.

Here's where the premium comes from. A chunk of what you're paying has nothing to do with your house. It's the lot premium, the amenity package, and the district boundary. In some of these HOA communities, the HOA dues are a real line item in your monthly payment. Somebody has to maintain the lagoon, the trails, and the staffed amenity centers.

The Finished-Out Trap

Then there's the finished-out trap. Buyers get to Prosper and they love the base price. Then they walk to the design center and add $80,000 of upgrades because everything shown in the model is just an option. That money does not come back to you dollar for dollar when you try and resell. And the 380 traffic through there is not getting better anytime soon.

The question I'd ask is very simple: are you buying Prosper for the house and the land, or the sign at the edge of the town? If it was the land, there's a town on the same highway where an acre costs less than a Prosper lot premium.

Farmersville: Where an Acre Costs Less Than a Prosper Lot Premium

Farmersville sits east of McKinney on Highway 380 out toward Lake Lavon. It's an old railroad town with a real square, and the whole area around it is just acreage. Here's the case for it: a lot of Prosper buyers tell me they want space for kids, room for a shop, and a house that isn't 10 feet from their neighbor's window. Then they end up in a subdivision because that's what's available at their price point.

In Farmersville, the space is the whole point. You can get land, you're usually outside of an HOA, and the price per acre out there is a completely different universe from Collin County's western half. You're also on the 380 corridor, which is the east-west road that connects the whole northern half of the entire metro. That matters for how the area develops over the next decade.

The Drive Is Real

The trade-off, and I'll be direct about it, is the drive. Farmersville to Prosper is a real commitment if you do it daily. This works for somebody who's remote or works in McKinney, Plano, or generally just wants out. If acreage was your true dream when you relocated to Texas, you will get 10 times more of it here than a big lot in a master-planned community.

Farmersville is the alternative for Prosper buyers who want the space, not the amenity package. You're trading the lagoon and the staffed amenity centers for actual land you can use however you want.

Frisco: National Brand Recognition and 20-Year-Old Mechanicals

Frisco is a suburb that put North Texas on the map for people who have never even been here. Frisco has the Star, which is the Dallas Cowboys headquarters and practice facility. It's got the PGA of America headquarters, Toyota Stadium, Stonebriar Center, a wall of corporate offices along the Dallas North Tollway. Frisco ISD is one of the main reasons people relocate here from out of state. If you're moving from California and you Googled "best Dallas suburb," Frisco is what probably came back to you. That's the premium right there, national brand recognition.

Here's what buyers from out of state don't realize until they actually start house hunting, though. Frisco is largely built out. So unless you're at the top of the price range, you are most likely buying a resale from the early 2000s. And that gets expensive in a way nobody quotes you.

The Hidden Costs of Established Neighborhoods

A 2006 house in Frisco is 20 years old. The roof, the HVAC, the water heaters, and the fence all hit the end of their life all at the same time. That's not a small repair bill. That's tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket on a house you already paid a premium for. Then you start adding the other items: pool needs to be replastered, dated finishes you'll want to update because everything else on the block already has been. You're paying new house money for a house that needs new house work.

Frisco is worth the money if you want the national brand recognition, the established neighborhoods, and the access to everything the city has built. Just know that you're paying for the name, and if you're buying resale, you're also paying for deferred maintenance.

Little Elm: Keep the Access, Stop Paying for the Name

Ten minutes west of Frisco, there's a town sitting on a lake that people drive past constantly and never really look at. Little Elm is on Lewisville Lake on the western edge of the Frisco and Prosper area. There's a beach park on the water, a real waterfront, and you can be in West Frisco for work, shopping, or dinner in just about 15 minutes.

Here's why it makes sense for a Frisco buyer. You keep the access, you just stop paying for the name. And what you get is water, which is generally rare for this part of Texas. Most of North Texas is flat and dry. Living five minutes from a lake is a lifestyle you cannot buy anywhere else in Frisco at any price.

School Districts and Housing Age

School districts out there vary block by block, so if that's a factor for you, check the boundary on specific addresses rather than the town. The other thing is age. A lot of Little Elm's housing stock is newer than Frisco's core, which means you're less likely to be replacing a roof and two HVAC units in year three.

You're getting a newer home on or near the water, minutes from the same jobs and the same shopping. You just don't get to say you live in Frisco at the neighborhood barbecue. Little Elm is the alternative for Frisco buyers who want the access and the lifestyle, not the brand.

McKinney: The One I Live In (And Why It's Still Overpriced)

This brings me back to one of the most overpriced suburbs in North Texas, which is the one I actually live in, work in, and sell more than anywhere else here in DFW: McKinney . Let me tell you why people love it here, because I'm one of them.

Downtown McKinney's historic square is the best in the metro, and it isn't even close. Real shops, real restaurants, Tupps Brewery, events on the square all year long. Adriatica Village on the north side looks like somebody dropped a Croatian fishing town in the middle of Texas. Town Lake Park, easy access to both Highway 75 and Highway 121. It's the whole package here, and that's exactly the problem.

The median sales price in McKinney is $504,000. That's 25% higher than the national average, and it's roughly 47% above the typical Texas home at $343,000. Meanwhile, the overall cost of living in McKinney is 3% below the national average. So the housing is 25% above the national and everything else is below it. That gap is the premium. That's the brand.

The Age Problem

The other piece is the age. Big parts of established McKinney west of 75 were built in the 1990s. Beautiful mature trees, great streets, and mechanical systems that are all coming due at once. Prices there are down 3.4% year over year. Homes are taking roughly 44 days to sell, up from 39 from last year. So you're paying peak name money in a market that's definitely softening right now.

Let me be fair to McKinney because I'm not talking myself out of my own backyard. If you want the historic town, mature trees on your street, and a 5-minute drive to hundreds of restaurants, McKinney is worth paying for. That's a real thing you're buying, and the alternative I'm about to name does not have that. But if what you want is a brand new house, four bedrooms, a yard, and a payment you are entirely comfortable with, you are handing over roughly $150,000 for the McKinney name.

Anna: Same Highway, $150,000 Less

Fifteen minutes north, straight up Highway 75, just 15 minutes from McKinney, the price drops by about a third. Anna's median sales price is $350,000. McKinney's is $504,000. That's roughly 30% less for a town on the same highway, same builders, same exact floor plans.

Anna is not a sleepy nothing town anymore. There's real investment in the old downtown. Slater Creek Park has a genuinely good playground and new retail keeps landing alongside Highway 75. Here's the number that tells you people are catching on: the average Anna home is going pending in about 24 days. That is not a slow market there. That's buyers doing exactly this math and acting on it.

The $150,000 Question

This is the exact call my family made when we moved out here from Northern California a few years back. Same highway, very different monthly payment. Anna doesn't have the historic downtown or the mature trees. It doesn't have Adriatica Village or the events on the square. But it has new construction, local schools, and a monthly payment that doesn't stretch you thin.

The gap between McKinney and Anna is roughly $150,000. That's not a rounding error. That's a different life. That's the difference between stretched thin and sleeping well at night when the mortgage payment hits. Anna is the alternative for McKinney buyers who want the access, the schools, and the new construction, not the name.

Which Area Is Right for You?

Every one of these five towns is worth the money to somebody. The trick is figuring out whether it's worth it to you. Here's how I'd break it down:

Choose Melissa if you want everything brand new and you're willing to pay near McKinney prices for it. Just run the real monthly payment with the PID/MUD assessment included.
Choose Van Alstyne if you want the small-town Texas vibe without the master-planned price tag, and you're okay with an extra 12 minutes on the commute.
Choose Celina if you want the downtown square, the football culture, and the master-planned amenities, and you're willing to pay today for a town that's still building out.
Choose Blue Ridge if you want actual space, acreage, no HOA, no rules, and you're not commuting to Frisco or Plano five days a week.
Choose Prosper if you want the zip code, the district, and the amenity package, and you're willing to pay the lot premium and the HOA dues.
Choose Farmersville if you want the space Prosper buyers talk about but rarely get, and you're okay with the drive.
Choose Frisco if you want the national brand recognition and the established neighborhoods, and you're prepared for the deferred maintenance on a 20-year-old house.
Choose Little Elm if you want the access to West Frisco and the waterfront lifestyle, and you don't need to say you live in Frisco.
Choose McKinney if you want the historic downtown, the mature trees, and the 5-minute drive to hundreds of restaurants, and you're willing to pay the $150,000 premium.
Choose Anna if you want the new construction, the schools, and the same highway access, and you'd rather keep the $150,000.

The gap between the priciest of these towns and the cheapest is real money. McKinney's median price is $504,000. Anna's is $350,000. That's a $150,000 gap on the same exact highway. Guess wrong and you're stretched thin on a payment you don't enjoy, or you're 25 minutes further from work than you wanted to be for the next 10 years.

Conclusion

I moved my family here from Northern California a few years back, and I made this exact decision with my own money. I chose Anna over McKinney because I wanted the new construction and the payment I could sleep on, not the name. A few years later, I moved to McKinney because the historic downtown and the mature trees were worth the premium to me at that stage of life. Both decisions were right for the moment I made them.

The point is not that one of these towns is better than the other. The point is that you need to know what you're paying for and whether it's worth it to you. If you're moving to North Texas, call or text me at 214-326-2323 . Tell me your budget and where your commute's going to be. I'll run the builder incentives, the tax differences, and the real monthly payment on each of these towns side by side so you know which side of that $150,000 gap you should be on.

Why Are People Leaving These 5 North Texas Suburbs?

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:41:00 GMT

The house three doors down from you just sold for 5.8% less than yours appraised for last year. The builder sales office in the next subdivision over is offering a rate buydown that drops the monthly payment $400 below what you can offer on resale. Your neighbor listed in March and still hasn't gone pending. That's the North Texas market right now, and it's not happening everywhere the same way.

I'm Connor Hornsby. I moved my family here from Northern California, and I've been walking buyers through McKinney , Melissa , Celina , Anna, Van Alstyne, Prosper, Frisco, and the rest of the DFW corridor since then. The suburbs everyone knows first, Frisco, McKinney, Prosper, are the same ones where prices are dropping the fastest. Meanwhile, new home sales in Celina jumped 61% in one year while the median price fell 22% to $520,000. More people buying, lower prices, same town, same month.

This is not a crash. This is a correction in the places that built the most during the boom, and it's creating the best negotiating position buyers have had in years. Homes in Melissa are taking 88 days to sell. Windsong Ranch in Prosper went from 75 days to 118 days. Van Alstyne is down 16% year over year. The heat in this market isn't showing up as higher prices. It's showing up as sales velocity and where people are actually moving.

I'm going to walk you through the 5 suburbs where activity is dropping off, the 3 places picking up the most traffic, and how to use this market instead of getting left behind. If you were priced out in 2024, the math has changed. If you're selling, the biggest mistake being made right now is pricing off last year's comps. Let's get into it.

Frisco: The Suburb Everyone Knows First
McKinney: More Inventory Than Buyers
Prosper: The High-End Corridor Where Supply Moves Fast
Windsong Ranch: Four Months on Market Instead of Two
Melissa: When Builders Respond Too Quickly
Van Alstyne: The Coldest One on the List
Farmersville and Blue Ridge: Land, No HOA, Different Buyer
Anna: Holding Up Better Than Anywhere Else
Celina: The Single Best Opportunity in the Corridor
Light Farms: Master-Planned Growth in the Fastest-Growing City
Which Area is Right for You: Price Point, Commute, and Tax Rate
Conclusion

Frisco: The Suburb Everyone Knows First

Frisco is usually the first word out of somebody's mouth when they call me about moving to North Texas. It's the one everyone knows, the PGA headquarters, huge master-planned neighborhoods, easy drive down the Dallas North Tollway. So it surprises people when I tell them Frisco is the first suburb on my list of places where activity is cooling.

The average Frisco home value is $673,000, down 2.7% over the past year. That doesn't sound like much, but this is Frisco. This is the suburb that was supposed to be completely untouchable. What's causing it? Frisco is close to being completely built out. There's very little cheap land left, so new construction moved north, and the price gap got hard to ignore.

A buyer sits down with me and compares a Frisco resale against a brand new build 15 minutes up the road. That Frisco home has to work a lot harder to win. I'm not telling you to skip Frisco. Homes there still go pending in about 8 days, so demand hasn't disappeared. What's changed is the price people are willing to pay to be there.

The Best Negotiating Position in Years

If Frisco has always been your target, this is the best negotiating position buyers have had there in a few years. Sellers can't price their home based on what their neighbor got in 2024. The market has moved, and the comps reflect that. You're not competing with last year's sale. You're competing with the builder sales office 10 minutes north offering a lower rate, a new home, and a closing date the buyer can pick.

Frisco is the mild one on this list. It gets much steeper from here.

McKinney: More Inventory Than Buyers

I live and work in McKinney, and it's the number one suburb on my own list of favorites in North Texas. The typical McKinney home value is $515,000, down 3.9% over the past year. McKinney has a lot going for it: the historic downtown square, restaurants, live music, the old courthouse, Adriatica over on the west side, trails, parks, and a huge amount of brand new construction east of Highway 75.

That east side construction is a big part of this story. Builders have been putting up homes at a serious pace, and every one of those competes with the homeowner trying to sell. That new build community on the east side of McKinney ranks number 5 in all of Texas on the most desired new build communities to live in right now. A buyer who three years ago had two or three options now has 15. That's what a 3.9% drop actually looks like on the ground.

Nothing Wrong with the Town, Just More Inventory

A price dip doesn't mean something is wrong with the town. Nothing is wrong with McKinney. It's the same city it was two years ago. There's just much more inventory than there are buyers lining up for it. I've shown homes in this corridor every day for the past two years, so I'll tell you what I tell my own clients: if you were priced out of McKinney in 2024, look again. The math has changed.

McKinney is still one of the strongest markets in the corridor. The difference is that buyers now have time to think, time to negotiate, and time to compare what a builder can offer versus what a resale seller can match.

Prosper: The High-End Corridor Where Supply Moves Fast

Prosper is the one that shocks people the most. This high-end corridor, big lots, big houses, resort-style amenity centers, has always been the place people relocate to specifically for the lifestyle. The typical Prosper home value is $789,000, down 5.8% over the past year. But that townwide number doesn't tell the real story.

At this price point, the buyer pool is much smaller. There are far fewer people shopping at $789,000 than $390,000. When supply moves up to the top, prices move faster. Builders are still delivering brand new construction with incentives attached, and if you're selling in Prosper right now, you're competing with the builder sales office that can do things you physically can't.

Most Room to Negotiate

If you're buying in Prosper right now, you have the most room to negotiate. I'm not just talking about price. I'm talking about closing costs, rate buydowns where the builder pays to lower your interest rate, and flexibility on closing dates. What actually moves your monthly payment is the interest rate. If a builder buys your rate down a point and a half, that does far more for your budget than knocking $12,000 off the sticker. Builders are doing that right now, and they're more willing to give you incentives heading into the back half of the year.

If you're selling, you need to price like you know that competition exists. Price to last year's comps and you're not slightly high, you're above the entire market.

Windsong Ranch: Four Months on Market Instead of Two

Windsong Ranch is probably the best-known community in all of Prosper, the one with the massive crystal lagoon. Prices there in March of 2026 were down 10.4% from a year before. The median price is around $790,000, and homes were taking 118 days to sell compared to 75 days the year prior.

A seller in Windsong Ranch right now is sitting for roughly four months instead of two and a half. That's three or four extra mortgage payments they weren't planning on making. Why is this happening? Builders are still delivering brand new construction with incentives, and at this price point, the buyer pool is much smaller. When supply moves at the top, it moves faster than anywhere else.

What This Means for Buyers and Sellers

If you're buying in Windsong Ranch, you have time and leverage. Homes have been sitting, and the seller's mindset is different than it was in 2022. If you're selling, the first two weeks decide everything. Get the home genuinely ready before it hits the market, price it like you know the builder competition exists, and don't wait for the market to come back to you. It won't.

Windsong Ranch is still a strong community with strong demand. The difference is that buyers now have options, and sellers have to compete for attention.

Melissa: When Builders Respond Too Quickly

Melissa was supposed to be the answer. It sits between McKinney and Anna off Highway 75, small town feel, quieter vibes, local schools, and an area where you can grow with it. For a long time, it was the town people moved to when Prosper and Frisco got too expensive. So why is it on this list?

The average Melissa home value is $435,000, down 6.3% over the past year. Here's the number that really tells you what's going on: homes there are going pending in 88 days. Compare that to Frisco at 8 days. Same corridor, same county, wildly different pace.

What Happened

Melissa got discovered, and then builders responded. A lot of new rooftops went up in a very short period of time. When a town that size adds that much inventory at once, the buyers get spread thin. There are just more homes available than there are people ready to buy this month.

That's not a knock on Melissa. I used to live in Melissa. It's a great area with local schools. If you still want a newer home without the Prosper or Frisco price tag, and you're fine with being a little farther away from the tollway, it's still a buy in my book.

The Practical Piece for Sellers

If you're a Melissa homeowner listing this year, you need to be honest with yourself. I sold my home in Melissa, and I had to be very conservative with my numbers and made sure the value was as good or better than what the builder was offering. If you're buying, 88 days on the market means the seller who listed in the spring is a very different negotiator by August.

Melissa is still a strong town. The difference is that buyers now have 15 options instead of three, and sellers have to price like they know that.

Van Alstyne: The Coldest One on the List

Van Alstyne is the coldest one on the list, and it's not even close. Van Alstyne sits up Highway 75 just past Anna, heading toward Sherman. Redfin has the median sales price at $361,000, down 16% year over year. That's the steepest drop in this entire video.

What's really going on? Van Alstyne got a huge amount of attention during the boom. It was cheap land at the end of a growing highway corridor. Builders bought up tracts and started delivering. But it's genuinely still a small town, and the drive really matters. If you're commuting into Plano, Richardson, or Dallas, Van Alstyne is a very different daily reality than McKinney. That drive is easy at 7 AM on a Saturday. It's not fine every weekday for 10 years.

Who Van Alstyne Works For

A chunk of people who bought up there for the price are now seeing the trade-offs, and the buyers coming in behind them are choosing to stop a few exits earlier. But let's make one thing clear: a 16% drop is not a reason to write off the town. If you actually want small town Texas and you're not commuting five days a week, Van Alstyne is about the best buying situation in North Texas right now.

Van Alstyne was one of the first towns on my list when I was relocating to North Texas. I understand the appeal. The question is whether the trade-offs work for your life, not just your budget.

Farmersville and Blue Ridge: Land, No HOA, Different Buyer

Farmersville and Blue Ridge sit east of McKinney out past Highway 380, and they are in a completely different area than anything else in this video. Out there, you're not buying a lot. You're buying land, an acre and sometimes much more. The best part? No HOA, no monthly dues, and nobody telling you what paint color you can paint your front door or where your boat can sit.

The whole appeal is room for a shop out back, room for the kids to actually run around, and space for things you can't do on a quarter-acre lot in Frisco. One of my clients wanted a space for a batting cage. Go for it. There's nowhere in Frisco you're going to do that.

The Trade-Off

You are going to be driving. It's a small-town vibe. Groceries are a trip, not a five-minute errand. If you commute into Plano or North Dallas, test that drive at rush hour before you fall in love with the property. But the people buying out here mostly aren't commuters anymore. They're remote workers, people who work in the trades, folks who got a taste of the big lot and will never turn back.

That's a different buyer than the Frisco buyer, and that demand doesn't move with DFW prices month to month. If land and no HOA is what you're actually looking for, this stretch is where I'd start.

Anna: Holding Up Better Than Anywhere Else

Anna is the town holding up better than anywhere else I cover. Anna sits on Highway 75 between Melissa and Van Alstyne, still in Collin County, and it's been the entry point for brand new construction in this corridor for years. Anna homes are selling at about 55 days, down from 82 days a year earlier. The median sales price is $349,000, down just 1.9% year over year.

Think about what that means next to everything else in this video. Melissa is at 88 days. Van Alstyne is at 116 days. Anna went the opposite direction. Homes there started selling faster, and the prices barely moved.

Why Anna is Different

Price point, plain and simple. Anna is where you can still buy a brand new home in Collin County without stretching. When you're shopping at $350,000 instead of $790,000, there are a whole lot more people standing in line next to you, and that's what keeps the market moving.

You also get easy access to the Highway 75 corridor, so your drive south into McKinney, Allen, Plano, and Dallas is a straight shot instead of back roads. I've built most of my channel out of finding new construction homes that people can actually afford, and Anna is where that hunt tends to end for a lot of my buyers right now.

What This Means for Buyers

Anna is within 20 minutes of Celina, Melissa, and McKinney. The same budget buys a very different house in each one. If you're shopping at this price point, don't just look at one town. Compare what you get in Anna versus what you get in Melissa or Celina, and run the tax rate on all of them before you decide.

Celina: The Single Best Opportunity in the Corridor

Celina is on a completely different level from everything else in this video. New home sales in Celina jumped 61% from April 2025 to April 2026. Overall home sales were up 39%. That's straight from The Real Deal, published in June of 2026. In that same report, Celina is named the fastest growing city by population in the entire United States, not just Texas, the entire country.

But the price went the other way. The median price of those new home sales fell 22%, down to $520,000. The MetroTex Association of Realtors chair pointed straight at the reason: Celina has built an extraordinary amount of new housing over the last several years.

More People, Lower Prices

More people are moving to Celina than anywhere else in America right now, and the price of new homes there just dropped 22%. That is a genuinely weird, unusual combination, and it's the single best opportunity in this corridor right now.

Celina is a real town with an actual square, not a highway exit with rooftops. You've got big master-planned communities with their own pools and trails, and a downtown that people actually drive to on a Friday night. On the resale side, Redfin shows homes average around 92 days over the three months ending May of 2026. The median price is right around $496,000, down 11.3%.

You Have Time and Leverage

You have time to think, and you have leverage. When a home has been sitting for that long, the seller's mindset is different than it was in 2022. The mistake I see people make is trying to use that leverage on just price. That's usually the wrong lever. What actually moves your monthly payment is the interest rate. If a builder buys your rate down a point and a half, that does far more for your budget than knocking $12,000 off the sticker. Builders are doing that right now.

Light Farms: Master-Planned Growth in the Fastest-Growing City

Light Farms is one of the big master-planned communities in Celina, with pools, trails, and the kind of amenity centers people relocate for. It's part of the same story driving Celina's growth: extraordinary amounts of new housing, strong sales velocity, and prices that dropped while demand climbed.

Light Farms is where you see the Celina story play out on the ground. New homes, strong builder activity, and a buyer pool that keeps growing even as prices soften. If you're looking at Celina, Light Farms is one of the communities worth walking.

Which Area is Right for You: Price Point, Commute, and Tax Rate

Here's the simple version. For the first time in years, you have time and leverage. Homes in Melissa are taking 88 days. Van Alstyne is at 116 days. Windsong Ranch in Prosper went from 75 days to 118 days. When a home has been sitting for that long, the seller's mindset is different.

The mistake I see people make is trying to use that leverage on just price. What actually moves your monthly payment is the interest rate. If a builder buys your rate down a point and a half, that does far more for your budget than a price cut. Builders are doing that right now, and they're more willing to give you incentives heading into the back half of the year.

Check the Tax Rate Before You Fall in Love

Some of these newer communities sit inside a MUD or PID district that changes your payment by a couple hundred dollars a month on the same price home. It's not a bad thing. It just has to be in your math from day one, not discovered at the closing table. Most often, you are not going to be told this upfront, especially if you try to go in without representation.

Don't Just Shop One Town

Anna, Celina, Melissa, and McKinney are all within 20 minutes of each other. The same budget buys a very different house in each one. Here's how to think about it:

Choose Anna if you want a brand new home in Collin County without stretching, easy Highway 75 access, and a price point where more buyers keep the market moving.
Choose Celina if you want a real town with a square, master-planned communities, and the single best combination of sales velocity and price drop in the corridor.
Choose Melissa if you want a small town feel, local schools, and a newer home without the Prosper or Frisco price tag, and you're fine being a little farther from the tollway.
Choose McKinney if you want the historic downtown square, trails, parks, Adriatica, and access to the huge amount of new construction east of Highway 75.
Choose Prosper if you want big lots, big houses, resort-style amenity centers, and you're shopping at the high end where you have the most room to negotiate.
Choose Farmersville or Blue Ridge if you want land, no HOA, room for a shop, and you're not commuting five days a week.
Choose Van Alstyne if you want small town Texas, the best buying situation in North Texas, and you're not commuting into Plano or Dallas every day.

Conclusion

The suburb you pick and the month you buy in are worth more to your wallet than anything else in the deal right now. Get that wrong and it costs you in a very specific way. Buy in the wrong town at last year's price and you're sitting on a house worth 6% less before you've even unpacked. Sell without adjusting and you're making three or four extra mortgage payments while your listing gets stale. Miss a MUD or PID tax rate and you're paying a couple hundred dollars a month you didn't even budget for every month for as long as you own that property.

If you're thinking about moving to North Texas or selling here, call or text me at 214-326-2323 . I'll run the actual monthly payment math with you on the call and tell you which of these towns fits your budget and which one to skip. I love North Texas, and I look forward to seeing you here.

If I Were Moving to North Texas in 2026, I'd Move to These 7 Suburbs

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 23:03:00 GMT

Two years ago, I sat in Northern California with a laptop open trying to figure out which North Texas suburb to move my wife and son to. I had never stepped foot in McKinney before. I had never even heard of Celina , Melissa , or Van Alstyne. I made the decision off Google Maps and a whole lot of guessing.

Since that move, I've toured about every new construction community between McKinney and the Grayson County line. I know exactly what I'd do differently now. I know what I'd pick if I were younger, if I had a bigger family, or if I were buying my first home. And I know the real numbers behind each one, median prices, year-over-year drops, days to pending, and the tax districts that can add hundreds of dollars to your monthly payment without warning.

In this article, I'm going to walk you through the town I chose and what it's really like to live here. Then I'll tell you where I'd buy today if I were starting over, and which suburbs work best depending on your budget, commute, and whether you want a master-planned lagoon or five acres with no neighbors.

McKinney: Downtown Character and Established Neighborhoods
Frisco: Jobs, Nightlife, and Corporate Campuses
Prosper: Master-Planned Communities and Amenity Centers
Celina: Builder Incentives and the Best Value in North Texas Right Now
Anna, Melissa, and Van Alstyne: Space, Acreage, and No HOA
Which North Texas Suburb Fits Your Priorities
Conclusion

McKinney: Downtown Character and Established Neighborhoods

I live in McKinney, about 30 miles straight north of downtown Dallas, right off Highway 75. The median home sold for $504,000 in May according to Redfin, down 3.4% from a year ago. Zillow puts the typical home value at $515,000, down 3.9% over the last year. Homes are going pending in roughly 12 days.

When my wife and I were still in Northern California, we had a spreadsheet going. Frisco was on it. Plano was on it. Allen was on it. But every time we looked at photos of those places, everything looked the same, nice, brand new, and completely interchangeable. McKinney had something the others didn't. It had an actual downtown, a real courthouse square with brick streets, a hardware store that had been there forever, restaurants with patios, live music on the weekends. It didn't feel like it was built by a developer in 2019 because most of it wasn't.

I live on the west side of McKinney in the El Dorado neighborhood, a beautiful established area where everyone knows each other and you're right off the El Dorado Country Club golf course. Here's how the town breaks down. West McKinney closer to Custer and Stonebridge is the more established side, bigger trees, homes from the 2000s, Craig Ranch over on the southwest corner, the golf course, and all the trails. East McKinney off Highway 75 is older and more affordable. North of 380, places like Trinity Falls, is where most of the new construction is going up right now.

The commute was the other piece for us. From McKinney, I can be in Frisco in 20 minutes, in Plano in 25 minutes, to the DFW Airport in roughly 45 minutes with no traffic. When you're relocating, you don't always know where you'll end up working. That flexibility matters more than you'd think one day.

Now let me tell you what I don't love about McKinney. Number one, McKinney is not cheap anymore. At the median price of $504,000, you are paying for an established suburb price. If you're coming from California, that still feels like a bargain. I remember that feeling. But if you're moving here from inside DFW or from Oklahoma or Arkansas on a tighter budget, McKinney is going to be a stretch. Anna or Melissa won't.

Number two, values have gone down, not up. Redfin has the median price down 3.4% over the year and Zillow has it at 3.9%. So if you're buying here and expecting homes to be worth 15% more in a year, the recent data doesn't support it. What I will say is the demand has not disappeared. It's just no longer a market where anything sells for what you ask.

Number three, traffic on 380. The stretch of 380 across the top of McKinney has been under construction for what feels like my entire time here. If you buy north of 380 and work south of it, you're going to sit in that. It's manageable, but nobody mentions it in the listing photos.

Number four, property taxes. Texas has no state income tax, which everyone knows. What people don't factor in is MUD or PID. Those are special districts that pay for the roads, water lines, and infrastructure of all the brand new neighborhoods. A lot of these newer communities sit inside one. When that happens, your tax rate is higher than the neighborhood two miles down the road, and it shows up in your monthly payment every single month for years. This is the number one thing I check before I let a client fall in love with a house. Two homes at the exact same price could have monthly payments hundreds of dollars apart purely because of which district they sit in.

Frisco: Jobs, Nightlife, and Corporate Campuses

Where I live isn't where I'd tell my 26-year-old self to go. If I were single in my 20s working in tech or corporate and I wanted to actually have something to do on a Friday night, I'd probably be in Frisco.

Frisco has the highest concentration of jobs and nightlife anywhere in the northern suburbs. The Star is there, which is the Dallas Cowboys headquarters, and around it there's a whole district of restaurants and bars. Legacy West is about 10 minutes south with more of the same. Toyota, Liberty Mutual, and JP Morgan all have big campuses down there off the North Dallas Tollway. So if you're relocating for a corporate job in North Texas, odds are you'll be working within 15 minutes of Frisco anyways. What that means practically is you can live close to work, which in DFW is worth a lot.

Here's the honest part: Frisco is expensive. The median sales price in Frisco was $687,000 in May according to Redfin, down 1.5% from last year. Zillow has the average value at $673,000, down 2.7%. Homes there are going pending in about 8 days.

So how does a young professional make that work? Two ways. I see it done all the time. You buy an older, smaller home in East Frisco off Preston or Legacy. Prices there are lower than on the newer western side. Or you buy in a townhome community and accept less square footage in exchange for location.

What I tell you not to do is buy the biggest home in Frisco you can technically qualify for. I've watched people do that and then they're house poor at 28 with nothing left to actually enjoy in the town they moved to.

Prosper: Master-Planned Communities and Amenity Centers

Say I were buying today with a bigger family and more kids and I wanted the whole master-planned community experience where you never really have to leave the neighborhood. I'd look hard at Prosper.

Prosper sits just north of Frisco, west of McKinney, mostly along Preston Road. It's the one that gets described as the country club version of North Texas, and honestly, that's not far off. The draw is the master-planned communities. Windsong Ranch is the one everyone knows, and the reason it's famous is its lagoon, a five-acre crystal-clear swimming pool in the middle of the neighborhood with a beach, paddleboards, the whole thing. There's also Star Trail and Ladera for folks who want single-family homes with the yard work handled.

The communities themselves are built around the amenity center, pools, trails, a fitness center, food trucks on certain nights, neighborhood events year-round. If you're relocating from out of state and you don't know a single person here, that structure generally helps.

Now the numbers. Prosper is the most expensive town I'm covering. Redfin has the median sales price at $869,000 in May, down 3.4% year over year. Zillow puts the typical value around $789,000, down 5.8% over the past year. Homes are going pending in roughly 18 days.

In Windsong Ranch specifically, Redfin shows the median price at about $798,000. That's down 10.4% from the year before. Homes there are taking 118 days to sell compared to 75 days the year prior. So read that carefully, prices came down and homes are sitting twice as long. That means you've got more room to negotiate as a buyer than you had a year ago, which is exactly the point most people miss about Prosper.

Celina: Builder Incentives and the Best Value in North Texas Right Now

If you handed me my 2024 budget back and told me to pick again right now knowing everything I know two years in, I'd buy in Celina.

Celina is directly north of Prosper, straight up Preston Road. It's got a genuine old downtown square with a courthouse, local restaurants, and Friday Night Football, then a ring of brand new construction going up around it in every direction.

Here's why it's my pick. The median sales price in Celina was $495,000 in May according to Redfin. That's down 11% from a year ago. Zillow has the average value at $529,000, down 9.9% over the past year. Compare that to what I just told you, Frisco at $687,000, Prosper at $869,000. Celina is under $500,000 and it dropped harder than any of them.

I'm not going to sit here and predict the future because nobody can, but I'll tell you what that means practically. Builders in Celina right now are competing hard for buyers. And when builders compete, you get incentives, rate buydowns, closing cost help, appliance packages, blinds and fencing thrown in. I've walked buyers into brand new homes where the incentive package was more than $30,000.

With new construction, the sticker price is only half of the conversation. The incentive is the other half, and it changes month to month depending on what the builder needs to close out. This is why I run the monthly payment out loud on camera in most of my videos. Take a $520,000 home with a 4.99% intro rate and $20,000 in closing cost credit. That can cost you less per month than a $460,000 resale down the road. You will never figure that out from Zillow.

Celina is also where the tax district question matters the most because so much of it is brand new. Two communities a mile apart can have a very different tax rate. I check that before we walk into any model home.

One last thing I really want you to take from this: do not walk into a builder's model home by yourself. Do not sign in at the front desk before you've talked to an agent. Once you register on your own, it's very hard to bring representation afterwards. The builder sales rep works for the builder. That's their job. You want somebody on your side of the table running the numbers with you, and it costs you nothing to have that.

Anna, Melissa, and Van Alstyne: Space, Acreage, and No HOA

Some of the best conversations I have are with people who tell me they don't want any of it, no HOA, no amenity center, no neighbor 12 feet from their kitchen window. If that's you, I'd be looking north, Anna, Melissa, and Van Alstyne.

From McKinney, you get on Highway 75 and head north. Melissa is first, about 10 minutes up, then Anna , then Van Alstyne , which is actually just over the line into Grayson County. All three sit on the same highway, so you're on a straight road back down to McKinney, Allen, and Plano.

What you get there is space, real acreage, and properties where you're not sharing a fence line with anybody. Melissa has grown fast and it has its own school district and its own downtown area and a lot of newer construction going up around it. Van Alstyne is the smallest and most rural of the three. It feels like a small town in a way that McKinney did about 20 years ago.

The trade-off is straightforward. You're trading commute time for land and price. From Van Alstyne, realistically 45 minutes to an hour to the Plano job corridor depending on the time of day. And your dining and shopping options are thinner. You'll drive into McKinney for most of it. But if you're remote or your job is north, that math can work really well. Prices up this corridor are the lowest of anywhere I cover.

Which North Texas Suburb Fits Your Priorities

Here's how I'd break down the decision if you're relocating to North Texas and trying to figure out where to land.

Choose McKinney if you want an established suburb with an actual downtown, bigger trees, and a central location for commuting. You'll pay $504,000 median, and you'll need to check MUD and PID districts carefully because they can add hundreds to your monthly payment. West McKinney near Custer and Stonebridge is more established. East McKinney off Highway 75 is older and more affordable. North of 380 is where most of the new construction is going up.

Choose Frisco if you're single or in your 20s working in tech or corporate and you want nightlife and restaurants within 10 minutes. The median is $687,000, but you can make it work by buying an older, smaller home in East Frisco off Preston or Legacy, or by buying a townhome and accepting less square footage for location. Do not max out your budget and end up house poor.

Choose Prosper if you have a bigger family and you want the whole master-planned community experience, lagoons, pools, trails, fitness centers, food trucks, and neighborhood events year-round. The median is $869,000, the most expensive on this list. Windsong Ranch is down 10.4% year over year and homes are taking 118 days to sell, so you've got more room to negotiate than you did a year ago.

Choose Celina if you want the best value in North Texas right now. The median is $495,000, down 11% from a year ago. Builders are competing hard, and I've seen incentive packages over $30,000 with rate buydowns, closing cost help, appliances, blinds, and fencing. A $520,000 home with a strong incentive package can cost less per month than a $460,000 resale. Check tax districts before you fall in love with a floor plan.

Choose Anna, Melissa, or Van Alstyne if you don't want an HOA, you want space and acreage, and you're willing to trade commute time for land and lower prices. From Van Alstyne, you're looking at 45 minutes to an hour to Plano. Your dining and shopping options are thinner, and you'll drive into McKinney for most of it. But if you're remote or your job is north, this is the lowest-priced corridor I cover.

Conclusion

I live in McKinney. I love it. It's still down 3.4% from last year. But if I were writing my first offer in North Texas tomorrow, I'd be looking in Celina because that's where the builder incentives are the strongest right now.

That tax district question I mentioned earlier, MUD and PID districts, is exactly the kind of thing you can't figure out from a listing website, and it's different in every one of these towns. Get that wrong and it's a few hundred dollars a month, every month, for as long as you own the home on a 30-year note. That's real money you never planned for.

If you're serious about moving to North Texas, download my North Texas relocation guide. The link is in the description. Tell me what your budget is, your timeline, where you'd like to be commuting to, and I'll send you back a short list of communities that actually fit with real monthly payments and tax rates included.

I've made this exact move myself. I run the monthly payment before you fall in love with a floor plan. Call or text me directly at 214-326-2323 or book a 30-minute call using the Calendly link in the description and we'll map out your shortlist together.

New Construction Homes in Eastridge, McKinney TX: Prices & More

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:06:04 GMT

Explore new homes in Eastridge, McKinney TX, including prices, builders, incentives, amenities, HOA fees, and what buyers should know.

Ridgeline McKinney TX: New Homes, Builders & 1.3% Taxes

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 20:40:59 GMT

Explore new construction homes in Ridgeline, McKinney TX, including builders, prices, schools, townhomes and the community's low tax rate.

Ridgeline McKinney TX: New Homes Starting at $400k with 1.3% Tax Rate

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 21:00:00 GMT

I was standing in west McKinney on a quiet afternoon, watching bulldozers carve out what will become one of the most talked-about communities in North Texas. Ridgeline is still mostly dirt and stakes in the ground, but buyers are already lining up. The reason is simple: a 1.3% property tax rate with no MUD tax and no PID assessment. That number is almost unheard of in new construction around Dallas -Fort Worth, where most master-planned communities are pushing 2% or higher once you factor in those extra district fees.

McKinney sits just north of the Dallas sprawl, known more for its historic downtown square and established neighborhoods than for brand-new builds. Ridgeline flips that script. This 500-acre development on the west side of town is pulling in six builders, offering everything from townhomes in the low $400,000s to luxury single-family homes over $800,000. It is only a few miles from Highway 75, close enough to make a Dallas commute manageable, and zoned to some of the local schools in McKinney ISD. The trade-off right now is that there is not much to see yet, most homes are pre-sold, and model homes have not opened. But if you are relocating to North Texas or buying your first home and want to lock in that tax rate before prices climb, this is the community to watch.

Ridgeline: West McKinney's Newest Master-Planned Community
Builders and Price Ranges
Schools and Location
The 1.3% Tax Rate Advantage
What You Will Not Find Yet

Ridgeline: West McKinney's Newest Master-Planned Community

Ridgeline sits on the west side of McKinney, just a few miles from Highway 75. If you pull up a map, you will see it tucked between Lake Forest Drive to the south and McKinney North High School to the north. Erwin Park, a popular spot with bike trails, a dirt bike track, and camping, is right next door. Highway 380 is a short drive west, and you can cut over to 121 for a straight shot south into Dallas or east toward Frisco and Plano. The location is not remote, but it does not feel like you are sitting in the middle of a construction zone either, at least not yet.

The community spans about 500 acres. Phase 1 is building around 350 to 360 homes, split between townhomes near the 201 area and single-family homes in the main section. Right now, most of what you will see is grading and foundation work. The townhomes are the only properties you can walk through, and even those are limited. Everything else is being pre-sold before the framing goes up. That is how hot this market is. Buyers are committing to floor plans and lot premiums without seeing a finished product, banking on the tax rate and the McKinney address to hold value.

I drove through on a weekday afternoon, and the streets were quiet. A few construction trucks, some surveying equipment, but no rows of completed homes yet. If you are the type who needs to see a model home before you sign, Ridgeline is going to test your patience. But if you are comfortable working with a builder rep and trusting the process, you can get in early and potentially pick a better lot before the premium ones are gone.

Builders and Price Ranges

Ridgeline is bringing in six builders, each targeting a different price point and buyer profile. Drees is starting around $400,000 with townhomes, the most affordable entry into the community. Highland Homes and David Weekley are both starting around $500,000 for single-family homes. Perry Homes is in the $600,000 range. Grand Homes is starting at $700,000, and Shaddock Homes is at the top end, starting around $800,000 and climbing from there.

That range gives you options. If you are a first-time buyer or someone relocating to North Texas on a budget, the Drees townhomes are your way in. If you want more space and a yard, Highland and Weekley are solid mid-market builders with a reputation for decent standard features and reasonable upgrade costs. Perry and Grand cater to buyers who want a little more finish and are willing to pay for it. Shaddock is the luxury tier, larger lots, higher-end finishes, and a price tag to match.

I have worked with buyers in all of these price ranges, and here is the honest part: the builder you choose matters as much as the price. Some builders load up the base price and then nickel-and-dime you on upgrades. Others give you more flexibility. Some have better construction timelines. Some have better warranty service after you close. If you are serious about Ridgeline, do not just pick the cheapest option. Talk to the builder reps, ask about current incentives, and get a full breakdown of what is included versus what costs extra. The difference between a $500,000 home from one builder and a $500,000 home from another can be significant once you factor in lot premiums, structural options, and design center costs.

Schools and Location

Ridgeline is zoned to Naomi Press Elementary School , Scott Morgan Johnson Middle School , and McKinney North High School . McKinney North is just down the street, which is a big selling point for buyers with school-age children. These are some of the local schools in McKinney ISD, and the district overall has a strong reputation in North Texas. I am not going to call them excellent or award-winning, verify current ratings and programs with the district yourself, but McKinney ISD is one of the reasons people move to this city in the first place.

The location itself is convenient without being overbuilt yet. You are a few miles from Highway 75, which runs north-south through McKinney and connects you to Dallas in about 45 minutes depending on traffic. You can also cut over to 121 for access to Frisco, Plano, and the Dallas North Tollway. Lake Forest Drive to the south has shopping, restaurants, and services, nothing fancy, but enough that you are not driving 20 minutes for groceries. Highway 380 to the west is still developing, but it is becoming a major east-west corridor with more retail and dining opening every year.

Erwin Park is a huge amenity if you are into outdoor activities. It has miles of bike trails, a dirt bike track, and camping areas. It is one of the larger parks in McKinney, and it is close enough to Ridgeline that you could bike there. If you have young children, the playground and open space are a draw. If you are into mountain biking or trail running, the dirt bike track and trail system are worth checking out.

The 1.3% Tax Rate Advantage

Here is why Ridgeline is getting so much attention: the 1.3% property tax rate with no MUD tax and no PID assessment. That is the lowest tax rate I have seen in a new build community in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Most master-planned communities in Frisco, Prosper, Celina, and even parts of McKinney are sitting at 2% or higher once you add in MUD and PID districts. Those extra taxes can add thousands of dollars to your annual bill, and they do not go away. They are baked into the property for years, sometimes decades.

Let me break down what that means practically. Say you buy a $600,000 home in Ridgeline. At 1.3%, your annual property tax bill is around $7,800. Now take that same $600,000 home in a community with a 2.2% rate (which is common in new builds around here). Your annual bill jumps to $13,200. That is a $5,400 difference every year. Over ten years, you are talking about more than $50,000 in savings. That is real money, and it is one of the reasons buyers are willing to commit to Ridgeline before the homes are even framed.

The lack of MUD and PID taxes is just as important. MUD districts fund water, sewer, and drainage infrastructure in new developments, and PID districts fund roads, parks, and other public improvements. Both are common in master-planned communities, and both add a significant cost on top of your base tax rate. Ridgeline does not have either one. That is rare, and it is a huge advantage if you are trying to keep your monthly housing costs down.

If you are relocating to North Texas and comparing communities, this is the number to focus on. A lower tax rate can offset a higher purchase price, especially if you plan to stay in the home for more than a few years. It also makes Ridgeline more attractive for resale down the line, because future buyers will see that same tax advantage.

What You Will Not Find Yet

Ridgeline is still in the early stages. There are no model homes open yet, and most of the homes being sold are pre-construction. The only properties you can walk through right now are the townhomes near the 201 area, and even those are limited. If you are the type of buyer who needs to see a finished product before you commit, you are going to have to wait a few more months.

That also means you are buying based on floor plans, renderings, and lot maps. You will not know exactly what your view looks like, how the street feels, or how the builder finishes compare to the competition until homes start closing. Some buyers are comfortable with that. Others are not. If you fall into the second category, you might want to wait until phase 1 is further along and you can walk through a completed home.

The other trade-off is that west McKinney is still building out. The infrastructure is there, roads, utilities, schools, but the retail and dining options are thinner than what you will find in central McKinney or along Highway 75. You are not in the middle of nowhere, but you are also not walking to a coffee shop or a sit-down restaurant. If you want that kind of walkability, you will need to look at older neighborhoods closer to downtown McKinney.

Farmersville TX Homes Under $300k: New Construction With Massive Incentives

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:53:00 GMT

I just closed on a property in Farmersville that cost less than $300,000. Four bedrooms, three baths, around 2,000 square feet, and the builder threw in blinds, a refrigerator, washer, dryer, paid closing costs, and a rate buydown. My buyer brought less than $10,000 to the signing table.

That's not a typo. While McKinney and Frisco push deeper into the $400,000s for new construction, Farmersville is still building homes in the high $200,000s with incentives that make the math work for first-time buyers who got priced out everywhere else. You're 20 minutes from McKinney, close enough to Frisco for weekend errands, and surrounded by land that's still being developed. It's quiet. It's affordable. And if you're commuting to Dallas every day, it's going to feel like a stretch.

I'm going to walk you through what you actually get at this price point, what the blue tape walkthrough process looks like, and why Farmersville keeps showing up in my buyer conversations when affordability is the priority. This isn't the middle of nowhere, but it's not the middle of the action either. That's the trade.

Farmersville: Affordability and Space 20 Minutes From McKinney
What You Get in a Sub-$300k New Construction Home
The Blue Tape Walkthrough: How New Construction Buyers Protect Themselves
Which North Texas Area Is Right for You?
Conclusion

Farmersville: Affordability and Space 20 Minutes From McKinney

Farmersville sits about 20 minutes northeast of McKinney, and the drive to Frisco is manageable if you're running errands or meeting friends. Dallas is farther, probably 45 minutes to an hour depending on where you're headed and what time you leave. If you're commuting downtown five days a week, this might be a stretch. If you're working in McKinney, Allen, or Plano, or if you're remote a few days a week, the drive is not the issue.

The issue is whether you want to live in a place that's still building out. When I say there's opportunity here, I mean it literally: the land around this neighborhood is still being developed. You'll see new properties going up, streets being paved, and infrastructure catching up to the growth. It's not finished. It's not walkable. It's not the kind of place where you stroll to a coffee shop on Saturday morning. It's a quiet area where you get space, a new home, and a price that doesn't exist in the cities people associate with North Texas real estate.

What you're buying here is affordability. Four bedrooms, three baths, around 2,000 square feet, under $300,000. That's the headline. The builder is paying closing costs, buying down your interest rate, and including blinds, a refrigerator, washer, and dryer. My buyer brought less than $10,000 to closing. Compare that to what it takes to get into a new build in Frisco or McKinney right now, and you'll see why Farmersville keeps coming up in my buyer conversations.

The trade-off is location. You're not in the thick of North Texas suburbia. You're on the edge, in a town that's growing fast but hasn't filled in yet. If you want walkability, a downtown, or immediate access to shopping and dining, this isn't it. If you want a new home, low monthly payments, and room to breathe, Farmersville delivers.

What You Get in a Sub-$300k New Construction Home

Let me be specific about what this price point gets you. The home I just closed on is four bedrooms, three baths, around 2,000 square feet. It's new construction, so you're not inheriting someone else's deferred maintenance or outdated finishes. You're getting builder-grade everything: cabinets, countertops, flooring, fixtures. It's not luxury, but it's clean, functional, and move-in ready.

The builder included blinds on every window, a refrigerator, a washer, and a dryer. That's not standard everywhere, and it's not a small thing when you're a first-time buyer trying to furnish a house. Closing costs were paid for by the builder, and they bought down the interest rate to a level that made the monthly payment work. My buyer brought less than $10,000 to the signing table. That's the down payment, prepaid taxes, insurance, and whatever else the lender required at closing.

Compare that to what it takes to buy in McKinney or Frisco. You're looking at $400,000 to $500,000 for new construction in those cities, and the builder incentives aren't as aggressive because they don't have to be. Demand is higher, inventory is tighter, and buyers are still showing up. In Farmersville, the builders are competing for attention, so they're stacking incentives to get deals done. That's the opportunity.

The layout is standard for new construction at this price: open-concept living area, kitchen with an island, primary suite downstairs or upstairs depending on the floor plan, secondary bedrooms that are big enough for a bed and a dresser but not much else. You're not getting a study, a game room, and a media room unless you're spending more. You're getting the bones of a functional family home.

The lot sizes vary, but you're not on top of your neighbors the way you are in some of the denser McKinney and Frisco neighborhoods. You'll have a backyard. You'll have a driveway. You'll have space to park an extra car or a trailer if you need to. It's suburban, but it's not cramped.

The Blue Tape Walkthrough: How New Construction Buyers Protect Themselves

One thing I want to explain is the blue tape walkthrough process, because it's something every new construction buyer should do and a lot of people skip. This is the day after your inspection, before your final walkthrough, where you walk the property with blue and green tape and mark every single thing you want the builder to fix.

Green tape is for drywall work. If you see a seam that's not smooth, a corner that's not crisp, or a patch that's visible, you put green tape on it. Blue tape is for paint and caulking touch-ups. If you see a spot where the paint is thin, a baseboard that's not caulked, or a trim piece that's got a gap, you put blue tape on it.

We meet with the builder, go through the inspection report line by line, and then we walk the house and mark everything else. The builder takes care of those items before the final walkthrough. Then we come back, confirm the work is done, and move forward to closing. It's not adversarial. It's just making sure you're getting what you paid for.

A lot of buyers don't do this. They trust the builder to catch everything, or they assume the final walkthrough is when they'll address issues. That's too late. By the time you're at the final walkthrough, the builder is trying to close the deal and move on to the next one. If you haven't documented the issues earlier, you're negotiating from a weaker position.

The blue tape walkthrough is your chance to be thorough. Bring a flashlight. Bring a level if you want. Look at every corner, every seam, every transition. Mark it. The builder will fix it. That's how you protect yourself in a new construction deal.

Which North Texas Area Is Right for You?

If you're trying to decide between Farmersville and the more established North Texas suburbs, here's how I'd break it down.

Choose Farmersville if affordability is the priority and you're okay with a longer commute or a remote work schedule. You're getting a new home, low monthly payments, and space. You're not getting walkability, a downtown, or immediate access to shopping and dining. You're 20 minutes from McKinney, close enough to Frisco for errands, but far enough that you're not in the middle of the action. If you're commuting to Dallas daily, it's going to feel like a stretch.

Choose McKinney or Frisco if you want to be closer to employment centers, shopping, dining, and schools. You'll pay $100,000 to $200,000 more for new construction, and the builder incentives won't be as aggressive. You'll have walkability in some neighborhoods, better resale value, and a more established infrastructure. You'll also have higher property taxes and less space for your money.

The trade-off is always the same: affordability versus location. Farmersville gives you the former. McKinney and Frisco give you the latter. Neither is wrong. It depends on what you're optimizing for.

Conclusion

Farmersville is one of the last places in North Texas where you can buy a new construction home under $300,000 with builder incentives that actually move the needle. Four bedrooms, three baths, around 2,000 square feet, blinds, appliances, closing costs paid for, and a rate buydown that makes the monthly payment work. My buyer brought less than $10,000 to closing.

It's not McKinney. It's not Frisco. It's 20 minutes from McKinney, close enough to Frisco for weekend errands, and surrounded by land that's still being developed. If you're commuting to Dallas every day, it's going to feel far. If you're working in McKinney, Allen, or Plano, or if you're remote a few days a week, the drive is manageable.

If you want more information on properties in Farmersville or other builders offering similar incentives, let's get on a call. I walk new construction communities across North Texas every week, and I can show you what your budget actually gets you in today's market.

McKinney Texas Brand New Homes Starting at $200,000 | Eastridge Community Tour

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:01:00 GMT

When you think about affordable new construction in North Texas, McKinney probably comes to mind, but you might not expect to find brand-new homes starting in the $200,000s. That's exactly what I found when I toured Eastridge , one of McKinney's newest communities and one of the most affordable options not just in McKinney but across the entire Dallas -Fort Worth metro. I walked a 4-bedroom, 2-bath, 2-story home priced at $330,000 with builder incentives that actually move the needle: a washer, dryer, and refrigerator package, blinds throughout, a 3.99% introductory interest rate, and the builder covering closing costs.

McKinney has earned national recognition as one of the best places to live in the U.S. and for good reason. You get the small-town feel, local schools, and proximity to major employers without the price tag you'd see closer to Dallas. Eastridge takes that value proposition even further. If you're relocating to North Texas and trying to figure out where your budget stretches the most, this community is worth a serious look.

I'm going to walk you through what Eastridge offers, break down the real monthly payment on that $330,000 home, and show you what makes this one of the smartest entry points into the McKinney market right now.

Eastridge: McKinney's Most Affordable New Construction
What $330,000 Gets You in Eastridge
Monthly Payment Breakdown and Down Payment Requirements
Eastridge Amenities and HOA
Why Eastridge Is a Smart Buy in North Texas
Conclusion

Eastridge: McKinney's Most Affordable New Construction

Eastridge is one of the newest communities in McKinney, and it's positioned as the most affordable new construction option not only in McKinney but across all of DFW. Homes here start in the $200,000s and go into the low $300,000s, which is rare for a brand-new build in a city with McKinney's reputation and school district. The community offers multiple floor plan options, 1-story, 2-story, and various sizes, so whether you're a first-time buyer looking for something compact or a growing household that needs space, there's a layout that fits.

The home I toured for a client is a 4-bedroom, 2-bath, 2-story with just over 2,000 square feet, priced at $330,000. That's a legitimate single-family home with room to grow, and it's not a fixer-upper or a resale with deferred maintenance. It's brand new, energy-efficient, and move-in ready. For buyers relocating to North Texas, that combination of price, size, and condition is hard to beat.

What sets Eastridge apart from other affordable communities is the builder incentive package. You're not just getting a low base price, you're getting real value-adds that reduce your upfront costs and monthly payment. The builder includes a washer, dryer, and refrigerator package, which saves you a few thousand dollars you'd otherwise spend at move-in. Blinds are installed throughout, another expense that adds up quickly when you're furnishing a new home. And the builder is offering a 3.99% introductory interest rate, which is a significant discount compared to current market rates. On top of that, the builder pays your closing costs, which can easily run $8,000 to $12,000 depending on the loan amount.

Those incentives aren't just marketing fluff. They directly impact your ability to buy and your monthly budget. I run these numbers for clients all the time, and the difference between a 3.99% rate and a 7% rate on a $330,000 home is hundreds of dollars per month. That's the kind of savings that lets you qualify for a home you might not otherwise afford, or it frees up cash flow for other priorities once you move in.

What $330,000 Gets You in Eastridge

The home I walked is a 4-bedroom, 2-bath, 2-story layout with just over 2,000 square feet. That's a functional floor plan for a household that needs dedicated bedrooms, office space, or guest rooms. The two-story design gives you separation between living and sleeping areas, which is something buyers appreciate when they're working from home or managing kids' schedules.

The builder includes the washer, dryer, and refrigerator, so you're not scrambling to buy appliances before move-in. Blinds are installed on every window, which is a detail that sounds small but makes a big difference when you're budgeting for a new home. And because this is new construction, you're getting modern energy-efficient systems, a builder warranty, and no immediate maintenance concerns. You're not inheriting someone else's deferred repairs or outdated HVAC.

The $330,000 price point includes the 3.99% introductory interest rate and the builder covering closing costs. That's a package deal, not a base price with add-ons that inflate the final number. I've seen builders advertise low starting prices and then tack on thousands in required upgrades or fees, but this is a straightforward offer. What you see is what you get.

Monthly Payment Breakdown and Down Payment Requirements

I ran the numbers on the $330,000 home with a 3.5% down payment, which is a common scenario for buyers using an FHA or conventional loan with low down payment options. Here's the breakdown:

Purchase price: $330,000
Down payment (3.5%): $11,550
Principal and interest (3.99% rate): $1,737/month
Property taxes: $467/month
Homeowners insurance: $165/month
Mortgage insurance: $145/month
Total estimated monthly payment: $2,516/month

That $2,516 figure includes everything except the HOA, which I'll cover in the next section. The builder is paying closing costs, so your upfront cash requirement is the $11,550 down payment plus any prepaids or escrow reserves your lender requires. That's a manageable entry point for a brand-new 4-bedroom home in McKinney.

The 3.99% introductory rate is doing a lot of work here. At a 7% rate, that same loan would cost you closer to $2,200 in principal and interest alone, pushing your total monthly payment well over $3,000. The builder rate saves you real money every month, and if rates drop in the future, you can always refinance. But you're locking in a payment you can afford right now, which is what matters when you're making the decision to buy.

Eastridge Amenities and HOA

The HOA in Eastridge is $50 per month, which is one of the lowest I've seen for a community with this level of amenity access. That $50 gets you a community pool, basketball courts, parks, green belts throughout the neighborhood, and a private gym. There's also an amenity center you can rent out for parties and events, which is a nice option if you're hosting family gatherings or kids' birthdays.

For $50 a month, that's a solid value. You're getting maintained common areas, recreational facilities, and a neighborhood that feels cohesive without paying the $200 to $400 monthly fees you'd see in some of the newer master-planned communities. The amenities are functional and residential, pool for summer, gym for year-round fitness, courts and parks for kids, and the low fee means they're not eating into your monthly budget.

The green belts and parks give the community a more open feel, which is something buyers notice when they're comparing neighborhoods. You're not looking at a wall of rooftops with no breathing room. There's space to walk, bike, and let kids play outside, and the HOA maintains those areas so they stay usable.

Why Eastridge Is a Smart Buy in North Texas

Eastridge is one of the most affordable new construction communities not just in McKinney but across all of DFW. That's a big claim, but the numbers back it up. You're getting a brand-new home in a city that consistently ranks as one of the best places to live in the country, with local schools, low crime, and proximity to major employers in Plano , Frisco, and Dallas. And you're doing it at a price point that's accessible to first-time buyers, relocating families, and investors looking for long-term growth.

McKinney is a great community. It has the infrastructure, the schools, and the quality of life that people move to North Texas for, and Eastridge gives you a way to buy into that without stretching your budget to the breaking point. The builder incentives, washer, dryer, refrigerator, blinds, 3.99% rate, and paid closing costs, make the deal even better. You're not just saving money on the purchase price; you're reducing your upfront costs and your monthly payment, which gives you more flexibility as you settle into your new home.

If you're comparing McKinney to other North Texas cities like Prosper, Melissa, or Allen, Eastridge shows you how much further your budget can go. You're getting the McKinney address, the McKinney schools, and the McKinney lifestyle at a price that's competitive with communities farther out or in less desirable areas. For $300,000, it's a steal to be able to buy into McKinney, and Eastridge is proving that you don't have to sacrifice quality or location to find affordability.

I do this for clients all the time, walk new construction, run the numbers, and help them figure out where their budget makes the most sense. Eastridge is one of those communities where the value is obvious. If you're relocating to North Texas or looking for your first home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, this is a community worth seeing in person.

Conclusion

Eastridge is one of the most affordable new construction opportunities in McKinney and across DFW, with homes starting in the $200,000s and a 4-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,000+ square-foot home priced at $330,000. The builder incentives, washer, dryer, refrigerator, blinds, 3.99% introductory rate, and paid closing costs, make the deal even stronger, and the $50/month HOA gives you access to a pool, gym, parks, and green belts without breaking your budget. McKinney is a great community with local schools, low crime, and proximity to major employers, and Eastridge gives you a way to buy into that lifestyle at a price that works.

If you're relocating to North Texas or looking for an affordable entry point into the McKinney market, give me a call ! I'd love to help you explore Eastridge and other communities that fit your budget and timeline. Let's talk about your goals and find the right home for you. I look forward to welcoming you to Texas!

Where to Live in Allen TX: 3 Communities to Know

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 21:46:25 GMT

Explore the best communities for living in Allen TX, including Watters Crossing, StarCreek, and Twin Creeks, with prices and amenities.

Seven Slopes

Why People Are Leaving North Texas: The Housing Market Truth

Table of Contents

Property Taxes: The Number That Shocks Out-of-State Buyers

School Closures and Boundary Changes Across Collin County

McKinney: Established Neighborhoods with Mature Trees

Frisco: Fast Sales at $600K, Slow Absorption Above $1.2M

What This Means for Buyers

Prosper: Strong Absorption in the $700K, $900K Band

Celina: The Fastest Growing City with the Longest Commute

The Most Negotiable Market in Collin County

Plano: Completely Built Out and Pricing Buyers Farther North

Melissa: New Construction Communities for Priced-Out Buyers

Anna: The Next Stop on the Treadmill

Living in a Construction Zone for Four or More Years

The Treadmill Effect: Trading Commute Time for a Lower Price

Which North Texas City Is Right for You?

What Buyers Need to Know Right Now

What Sellers Need to Know Right Now

Your Competition Is the Builder

The First Two Weeks Matter Most

Conclusion

5 North Texas Areas Out-of-State Buyers Should Avoid (Without the Right Research)

Table of Contents

Melissa: The Lowest New Construction Price in Collin County

Celina: Master-Planned Lifestyle with a Long Market Sit

Prosper: The Premium Product with Premium Monthly Costs

Frisco: Everything Built Out, But You're Paying for It

McKinney: My Number One (With a Tax District Warning)

Which North Texas Suburb Fits Your Budget and Commute?

Conclusion

North Texas Housing Market 2026: What's Really Happening in McKinney, Melissa, Celina & Beyond

Table of Contents

McKinney: Mixed Market with Builder Competition

Melissa: Lower Entry Price, Longer Commute

Celina: West Side Growth with Lagoons and Trails

Anna: Lower Purchase Price, Higher Tax Districts

Prosper: Higher Pricing, Closer to Job Corridors

Van Alstyne: Significant Savings, Significant Commute

Frisco: Established Infrastructure, Higher Cost

Farmersville: Acreage Properties with No HOA

How to Choose Between These North Texas Cities

Conclusion

Moving to North Texas: 12 Facts About McKinney, Celina, Prosper & the Highway 75 Corridor

Table of Contents

McKinney: Middle Price Point with Historic Roots

Celina: Fastest Growth and a Construction Site for Years

Melissa: 14.5% Growth and Infrastructure Catching Up

Anna: Lower Price, Longer Commute

Van Alstyne: Still Small, Still Land Around It

Prosper: Top of the Price Range with Settled Rhythm

Frisco: Top Prices and Newer MUD Communities

Which North Texas Town Fits Your Commute and Budget?

Conclusion

Everything NEW & Coming SOON to North Texas in 2026: McKinney, Prosper, Celina & More

Table of Contents

McKinney: Downtown Demolition and What It Means for Buyers

Craig Ranch: 327 Apartments Coming to McKinney's Walkable Town Center

Aster Park: Luxury Homes in Northwest McKinney Starting at $600k

Melissa: Downtown Square Development and New Rental Communities

Anna: Following McKinney's Downtown Playbook

Van Alstyne: Early-Stage Downtown Investment

Celina: Building a Square from Scratch

Prosper: Why the ISD Matters More Than the City Name

Timing Your North Texas Scouting Trip: Oktoberfest and Holiday Events

Here's My Honest Take on North Texas Heading Into 2026

North Texas Suburbs Buyers Regret: Frisco, Prosper, Melissa, McKinney, Celina & Van Alstyne Compared

Table of Contents

Frisco: The Corporate Premium Suburb

Property Taxes and MUD/PID Assessments

Who Frisco Works For

Prosper: Master-Planned Living with a Tax Stack

The Tax Rate Nobody Budgets For

The Master-Planned Community Misconception

Melissa: Where the Math Finally Works

The Pace of Change

Resale and School Growth

McKinney: New Construction Value with a Real Downtown

Where the Growth Is Happening

The Price Range and the Square