A family running comparison spreadsheets across four North Texas suburbs this summer would notice something strange. Frisco is down. McKinney is down more. Celina has fallen further still, in some measures by double digits. Plano barely moved. If you're the kind of buyer who trusts a spreadsheet more than a listing agent's pitch, the natural read is that Plano's demand is simply stronger, that buyers want it more, that it's somehow winning a race the other three are losing.
That read is wrong, and the actual explanation matters more for your decision than the headline number does. Plano's price is holding steadier for a reason that has almost nothing to do with how many people want to live there this year, and almost everything to do with what's getting built. Two weeks ago, crews imploded the old Electronic Data Systems campus off Legacy Drive to make room for AT&T's new corporate headquarters, and that single 54-acre site tells you more about why Plano behaves differently than any citywide median does.
The Same Slowdown, Four Different Landings
Every suburb in this comparison is cooling. None of the four is immune to the broader Texas correction. But the size of the drop varies by a wide enough margin that it changes what a buyer should actually compare.
| City | Typical Home Value (Zillow, late June to late July 2026) | Year-over-Year Change | Median Sale Price (Redfin, trailing 3 months) | Year-over-Year Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plano | $518,080 | down 2.4% | $530,000 | down 1.5% |
| Frisco | $673,986 | down 2.7% | $663,000 | down 5.2% |
| McKinney | $480,265 | down 6.1% | $505,000 | down 3.4% |
| Celina | $529,873 | down 9.9% | $489,000 | down 11.4% |
Celina's median price per square foot fell 12.1 percent over the same window. Plano's fell 0.9 percent. That's not a small gap in a market where everyone is supposedly experiencing the same slowdown. Something structural is different about how Plano's number gets built.
The Number Nobody Puts on the For Sale Sign
Here's the mechanism. According to a 2026 market forecast from JVM Lending, less than 1 percent of Plano's 2025 home sales were new construction. Frisco, McKinney, and Celina spent the last several years in active builder mode, and when demand softened, builders in those cities didn't hold the line on price. They cut it, and they leaned harder into their lower-priced product lines to keep closings moving.
That matters because of how a median works. Every closing counts the same in the calculation, whether it's a 1990s resale home with an owner who has no intention of taking a lower offer, or a builder's spec home marked down to clear inventory before year-end. When a growth suburb has hundreds of those discounted closings running through the same month's data, the citywide median drops even if most existing homeowners haven't lost a dollar of real value. Plano doesn't have enough new-construction volume for that mechanism to operate. Its median is overwhelmingly a resale number, and resale sellers don't discount the way a builder clearing a subdivision does.
That's the whole story in one sentence: a citywide median is only as stable as its newest inventory.
An Anchor Instead of a Bet
The AT&T relocation is the clearest illustration of why West Plano in particular isn't riding on hope the way some neighboring growth suburbs are. AT&T announced in January 2026 that it would consolidate its Dallas-area operations into a new $1.3 billion, 54-acre campus at 5400 Legacy Drive, the site of the former EDS headquarters. The city approved a $20 million incentive package, the largest Plano has ever given a private employer, and the company is targeting partial occupancy by the second half of 2028 with a workforce goal of 10,000 employees.
Demolition crews imploded the remaining EDS structures, including the building longtime employees nicknamed the "God Pod," on the morning of August 9. The site had been vacant for more than seven years before AT&T's decision, originally slated for a life sciences project called the Texas Research Quarter before the company stepped in.
Frisco, McKinney, and Celina have built ahead of demand, adding rooftops on the bet that jobs and buyers will eventually catch up. Plano's West side has the opposite setup. The employer commitment landed first, on a specific address, with a specific headcount target and a specific timeline. That's demand you can point to on a map, not demand you're projecting onto a subdivision plat.
The Same Gap, Just Inside City Limits
Here's the twist that should change how you compare cities in the first place. The price spread that separates Plano from Frisco is smaller than the spread that separates one side of Plano from the other.
According to JVM Lending's neighborhood breakdown, homes in West Plano's established communities, places like Willow Bend, Deerfield, and the corridor near Legacy and Granite Park, typically sell 30 to 60 percent above the citywide average. Willow Bend alone covers several distinct pockets, including Willow Bend West, Willow Bend Lakes, and Willow Bend Polo Estates. Deerfield's homes run 2,500 to 4,500 square feet, mostly built in the mid-1990s with brick and stone exteriors, feeding into strong Plano ISD assignments. Just east of Legacy Drive sits Whiffletree, with established homes from the late 1980s through early 1990s at a noticeably lower price point than its western neighbors despite similar commute times.
If a 30 to 60 percent premium applies to a citywide average sitting around $520,000, that puts West Plano's established neighborhoods somewhere in the $675,000 to $830,000 range, while communities on the city's east side sit well below the citywide number. That's a bigger gap than the one separating Plano's median from Frisco's. Comparing "Plano" to "Frisco" as if each city trades at a single price misses the more useful comparison: which side of the same city you're actually buying into.
What's Coming Won't Repeat What Already Happened Elsewhere
The obvious follow-up question is whether Plano's new construction pipeline will eventually do to its median what builder discounting did in Frisco, McKinney, and Celina. The two biggest projects in the pipeline argue against that outcome, at least on current pricing.
Centurion American's redevelopment of the former Collin Creek Mall site is bringing townhomes from two builders so far. Brightland Homes is pricing its two- and three-bedroom units, ranging from 1,522 to 2,222 square feet, starting at $479,990, which works out to roughly $315 per square foot at the entry floorplan. Mattamy Homes is building three-story units between 2,325 and 2,362 square feet starting at $594,950, or roughly $252 per square foot. Both figures sit above Plano's overall resale price per square foot, which Redfin put at $220 as of early summer 2026.
Haggard Farm, a separate $750 million mixed-use project from Dallas-based Stillwater Capital Investments, broke ground in December 2025 with plans for 187 single-family residential townhomes alongside 100,000 square feet of retail and a hike-and-bike trail system. Construction on the retail component is expected to run roughly 14 months before tenant buildouts begin.
Neither project looks like the discount product lines that pulled down medians in Frisco, McKinney, or Celina. They're pricing at or above the city's existing per-square-foot benchmark, which means they're more likely to sit alongside Plano's resale market than undercut it. That could change if absorption slows and builders start cutting prices to move inventory, the same pattern seen elsewhere, but that isn't what the current pricing shows.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare Cities
Does this mean Plano home values are guaranteed to outperform Frisco or McKinney going forward? No. The mechanism behind Plano's steadier number is structural, tied to how little new construction feeds into its median, not a guarantee about future demand. It's a reason to look past the headline figure, not a reason to stop comparing.
Should I compare Plano to Frisco, or compare neighborhoods within Plano to each other? Given the size of the East-West spread inside Plano itself, pull comps at the ZIP code or subdivision level before you draw conclusions from a citywide number in either direction.
If I want new construction in Plano, will I get a discount the way I might in a growth suburb? Current pricing at Collin Creek and Haggard Farm runs at or above Plano's existing per-square-foot median, so don't expect the kind of markdown that's shown up in neighboring cities' new-build inventory.
If you're weighing Plano against Frisco, McKinney, Prosper, or anywhere else in North Texas, the number that matters most is rarely the one on the headline. The DiBella Team works these comparisons daily across DFW and can walk you through what a specific ZIP code, subdivision, or new-construction community is actually pricing right now. Your path to buying or selling starts here.
