Ask a Frisco or McKinney seller how their 2025 went and you'll likely hear about price cuts, longer days on market, and buyers who wanted concessions. Ask the same question of someone who closed in Plano last year and the story sounds almost sleepy: prices basically held. Closed-sale data for 2025 puts Plano's median at roughly $540,000, essentially flat year over year, even as several neighboring Collin County cities saw meaningfully larger pullbacks.
If you're comparing suburbs on a spreadsheet, that flatness reads as safety. It isn't. It's a symptom of a market that has almost nothing new to compare itself against, and that condition is ending in real time, on a timeline you can actually track.
A City With Almost No New Homes to Drag the Median Around
Here's the mechanic most out-of-town buyers miss. A median price only tells you something useful when the mix of homes selling stays roughly the same from year to year. In cities like Frisco, McKinney, and Celina, that mix keeps shifting because builders keep releasing new subdivisions, and when demand softens, builders cut prices on unsold inventory faster than resale sellers ever will. That pulls the citywide median down even if existing homes haven't lost much value at all.
Plano doesn't have that lever to pull, because it barely has new subdivisions left to build. As one mortgage lender's 2026 buyer's guide to the city put it, greenfield development inside Plano proper is limited, with most new construction activity having moved to adjacent cities like Frisco, McKinney, Prosper, and Celina. Plano's 2025 closed-sale count, more than 2,200 transactions, was overwhelmingly resale activity moving through a housing stock built mostly in the 1980s and 1990s. When almost every sale is the same type of home changing hands, the median stops swinging. It isn't calm. It's just measuring one thing over and over.
That's the part of the story that changes now.
Two Numbers, Same City, Different Stories
Before getting to what's changing, it's worth sitting with a smaller lesson buried in the data, because it will matter every time you compare a suburb using a portal instead of a local source. Look at three separate measurements of Plano home values, all describing overlapping windows in 2026.
| Source | Metric | Period | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zillow Home Value Index | Typical home value | June 2026 | $518,080, down 2.4% year over year |
| Zillow Home Value Index (via a February 2026 regional study) | Typical home value | February 2026 | $501,564, down 5.1% since February 2025 |
| Closed-sale median (MLS) | Median sale price | Full year 2025 | $540,000, essentially flat year over year |
Two of those numbers come from an automated valuation model tracking estimated value across the entire housing stock, including homes that never sold. The third comes from actual closed transactions. Neither is wrong. They're measuring different things, and a buyer who quotes one to justify an offer while the seller is looking at the other is going to have a confusing negotiation. If you're cross-shopping Plano against Frisco or McKinney using a single portal number, you're not comparing markets. You're comparing whichever index that portal happens to favor.
What's Actually Landing at Collin Creek
The clearest evidence that Plano's supply picture is about to shift sits on 100 acres at the old Collin Creek Mall site, where Farmers Branch-based Centurion American Development Group has been building out a $1 billion mixed-use district since 2021. As of a June 2026 update from the project's developer, roughly 200 homes were already occupied, with hundreds more residential lots moving through delivery to builder partners over the course of the year. The homebuilders are Ashton Woods, DRB Homes, and Mattamy Homes, and current listings show three- and four-bedroom homes starting around $470,000, with at least one quick move-in two-bedroom priced under $470,000.
That number matters because it sits just below Plano's citywide median. For the first time in years, buyers will be able to choose new construction inside city limits at a price point that competes directly with dated resale inventory instead of forcing them out to Frisco or Prosper to find it.
The full build-out plan calls for roughly 500 single-family homes, 2,300 apartment units, 300 independent-living residences, 340,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, and a 200-room hotel, spread across 8.9 acres of parks and 1.6 miles of trails. The multifamily phase is expected to break ground in late Q3 or early Q4 2026 and take about 22 months to complete, with the broader mixed-use buildout continuing through 2028. None of that changes Plano's median overnight. But every closing at Collin Creek between now and 2028 adds a new-construction data point to a median that has had almost none, which is exactly the ingredient that made Frisco and McKinney's numbers move in the first place.
The AT&T Variable
The second shock is bigger, slower, and harder to price in advance. On January 5, 2026, AT&T announced it would relocate its global headquarters from downtown Dallas to a new 54-acre campus at 5400 Legacy Drive, the former Electronic Data Systems site that had sat vacant since 2018. The investment is being reported at $1.3 billion, and Plano City Council approved a $20 million incentive agreement on February 23, 2026, bringing the total public incentive package past $36 million. Plano's mayor, John Muns, framed the move as continuity with the area's history rather than a new bet:
"AT&T's relocation represents a powerful reinvestment in the Legacy business district, building on an extraordinary foundation that has driven growth in Plano and our region for decades."
Occupancy is targeted for as early as the second half of 2028, which means the demand effect on housing near Legacy won't show up in a single quarter's numbers. It will show up gradually, as employees relocating from Dallas and elsewhere start house hunting within a reasonable commute of a corporate campus that, according to Plano's economic development leadership, could eventually put around 10,000 people on site. That's not a reason to buy near Legacy today expecting an immediate price jump. It's a reason to understand why the West Plano and Legacy-adjacent submarket is likely to behave differently from the rest of the city over the next two to three years, even while the citywide median stays quiet.
Reading Plano as Three Markets, Not One
Put the Collin Creek timeline next to the AT&T timeline and a citywide median stops being a useful comparison tool at all. What you're actually shopping in Plano right now is three distinct submarkets wearing one number:
- Dated resale stock, mostly 1980s and 1990s construction, concentrated in Central and East Plano, where inspection findings on roofing, HVAC, and plumbing systems should be budgeted for from the start rather than treated as a surprise during option period.
- Teardown and infill lots in established West Plano enclaves like Willow Bend and Deerfield, where custom builders are replacing older homes on the existing footprint and pricing well above the area median.
- New product at Collin Creek, priced in the high $400,000s to low $500,000s, competing on price with resale inventory for the first time in years.
A buyer comparing Plano's flat median to Frisco's declining one and concluding that Plano is simply "the stable choice" is missing which of these three markets they'd actually be buying into. A seller in a 1990s Central Plano home watching Collin Creek's pricing news should understand that a new competitor is entering their price band, not staying safely in a separate one.
Will Plano's median price start falling once Collin Creek homes are counted in the data? It's plausible. As more new-construction closings enter the mix, especially in the high $400,000s, the citywide median could start behaving more like Frisco's did as builders released comparable price points there. That wouldn't necessarily mean existing homes are losing value. It would mean the measurement finally has more than one type of home to average.
Should I wait for AT&T's campus to open before buying near Legacy? Occupancy isn't expected until at least the second half of 2028, roughly two years out, and demand effects on housing typically build gradually rather than arriving all at once. Waiting that long for a single employer's move to fully play out carries its own cost, particularly if rates or pricing shift in the meantime. It's a factor worth weighing with current comparables, not a reason to pause a decision on its own.
Does new construction at Collin Creek compete with resale homes in the same school boundaries? Project materials place the development within Plano ISD. Buyers should still verify exact attendance boundaries by address, since Plano ISD's long-range facility plan has included boundary changes in recent years.
Plano's flat number was never proof that nothing was happening here. It was proof that nothing new had entered the mix in a long time. That's changing on a schedule you can watch, home by home, permit by permit, over the next two years. If you're weighing a purchase against Frisco, McKinney, or anywhere else in Collin County and want help reading what a specific submarket, school boundary, or timeline actually means for your decision, Ritz Group can walk through the comparison with you. Contact us.
