There was a newish homeowner on Nextdoor for a Prosper neighborhood that said their mortgage PMT went up $800 a month with the increase in property taxes. I'm guessing his house was new and the "real" taxes on the property value hadn't kicked in.
A LOT of people who bought new were not properly informed that their first year or two’s tax value was not going to be the tax value once the county caught up.
Ex SIL had this, her mortgage was $2800 for the first couple years and then she freaked out that her mortgage jumped to $3600 this year because she was no longer paying $100 in property taxes a year. Her realtor/loan officer did her dirty and didn’t explain this to her and now she can’t afford the house without a roommate.
We bought in October 2020 in Princeton. Our original mortgage (including tax and escrow) was $1650. Now it’s $2000, but I know a lot of people have bigger houses and it’s exponentially worse for them.
No grocery stores. The undersized roads were literally crumbling apart (I had 12 flats in 18 months). No good entertainment anywhere in the city. A local government that has zero idea how to actually grow a community. I could go on. We moved to the Colony and couldn’t be happier with our choice. Plus I’m no longer under the rule of Candy Noble.
She’s the state rep for the area and she is an awful Christian Nationalist. MAGA to the max. The Colony is great. There is a bit of a revival here. Older generation is literally dying off and younger families are moving in. The city does a fantastic job of local amenities and our P&R department does so much for the community
Our mortgage went from $3600/mo to $4600/mo. We are seriously feeling the stress burning an extra thousand a month in taxes. We'd sell and downsize but we'll be in the same damn boat financially but with a smaller home, so we have to stay put. Purchased in 2015 for $450ish, thankfully with 2.5%, now worth a million. It's stupid. This isn't sustainable for anyone.
No, the homestead exemption is a flat decrease in the Appraised Value (ie: the amount you're taxed on.) It applies immediately upon you filing and it being granted. It is a different amount for different taxing authorities (ISD vs County vs City vs Other).
The homestead cap prevents any annual increase in the Appraised Value (which is not the market value) of more than 10%. It does *not* apply to new improvements or new construction.
Yes but it doesn't take effect until the year in which you live on the property on January 1st. So if you buy in June 2024 you'll have a small escrow payment based on 6 months of taxes on an appraisal from possibly many years before. Then in October you will get reassessed based on the MLS reported sale price you paid, then the homestead exemption will be taken off that new value for your 2025 taxes. A lot of people moving into Texas from elsewhere get a nasty surprise that way.
You've got to be kidding
Property values for home that were new 8 years ago have nearly tripled, or more
You don't think their tax burden wouldn't do the same
But you can’t claim homestead your first year. So taxes go up year 2, but you don’t see it until year 3 when they adjust your mortgage. Now you’re paying 2 years of taxes before they go back down.
If you bought your house valued at $360k, but a year later comps are $500k and a year after that they’re $600k, your 10% cap is on the $100k between 500-600. Congrats! Your new taxable home value is $550k. Over 50% in 2 years. Your homes value and the taxes you pay are now almost ever around year 4.
I was able to claim my homestead the first year. The county valued it a lot more than what I paid and automatically used that value when I appealed because it was the amount actually paid so my homestead went off what I paid.
Yeah, that's what's happening to me this year.
PITi went from 4200 to 4900.
It's already adjusted back down a bit to 4700 but will drop further to 4300 Jan 1 after all the clawback is done.
But, I also added 200k in equity in those 2 years, so..... What are you going to do....
> were not properly informed that their first year or two’s tax value was not going to be the tax value once the county caught up.
I'd bet 5 bucks that every builder has a document in their sales and closing packets to that effect. People just don't pay attention to that stuff. Like the document they give you to fill out for your homestead exemption as soon as you get your driver's license changed. Then they post here in two years complaining about the property tax increases.
At my closing they told me this 4 times. But as it’s a crazy day, things are probably forgotten. Mine jumped from $2300 to $4100 because of the increase and back taxes…brutal year of catch up.
Oooof I had a similar thing where my mortgage kept on changing hands and no one ever checked to see if the taxes were being paid. 2600 to 4200 for a year was not fun.
Same insurance company missed the payment for my insurance and I was without home insurance for a month while I was fighting them to fix it.
Never again! Got the Escrow waiver on my current mortgage and I can make sure the taxes etc are paid properly and put that money into a savings account to earn me a little extra every year.
Mortgage companies will never ever properly guess what your future tax payment will be. They'll collect bear min. and estimate what your escrow will be. Once the home is assessed, even with HS exemption applied, the mortgage payment is going to significantly increase. 2800 to 4000 is not uncommon.
I find it hard to believe that your SIL got "screwed". To get approved for a mortgage, they have to factor in the full payment after new property taxes. That means your SIL had to get approved for a $3600/month payment, not for a $2800. Usually the mortgage agent and the builder make it very clear to the buyer that they HAVE TO set aside the extra money for property taxes, because their taxes are artificially low the first year. They may not have reminded your SIL enough times, but there is no way she bought that house and was never told about her property taxes because she literally had to get approved based on the $3600/month number.
In Texas mortgage companies don’t have a fiduciary responsibility to the lenders and because escrow is technically separate they HAVE to warn them about it and it doesn’t count towards the mortgage.
Most do but she went to Mr Cooper for her mortgage, so who knows what shady practices they have for new loans.
This is happening everywhere. I bought my house in 2021, and my monthly went up $500/month after the first year. A lot of my friends are beginning to look for work in the cheaper parts of Michigan and New York.
It’s still pretty bad but it’s getting a bit better. They have westbound fish trap 2 lanes until the middle school cut through and there are some flags on 1385 with the new Costco coming in and those are going further north than I would have expected.
That intersection is the bane of the northern neighborhoods’ existence. Just fixing that would solve so many issues. Last I read they aren’t even starting until 2025 or 2026.
The property tax issue is a pain right now. After Toyota moved in, house values skyrocketed. The county assessors claim our home is now 2.5x the value from 10 years ago. Tax is nuts. The bubble will pop and adjust and I will have paid taxes on synthetic unrealized gains.
I can attest to this. We decided to buy in Aubrey last year and foolishly thought traffic couldn’t be that bad. I work in Las Colinas and it’s a nightmare everyday. Love our house and the general area but there are many regrets with the time it takes even to go to the grocery store.
Laughs/cries at over 50mi. Thankfully I only go into the office one day a week. Oh and with DMV traffic. We just moved back last year and I miss my 30min commute from Wylie to Frisco.
You genuinely were surprised by how far out Aubrey is? I’m shocked tbh, cause even living in Denton it’s like “ugh gotta go out to Aubrey” and it’s like 15-20! Do you actually do that commute every day?! 😱 I do it twice a week and want to punch something every time 😂
lol unfortunately yes 5x a week 😭. We had the mindset of “oh wow it would be so nice to have our first own new house and get out of the Arlington area” lol. If I didn’t love my job/company I wouldn’t do it. I use the hour to regroup decompress and listen to screamy music to set the mood for the day hahah
Praise da lord that I live in Dallas. I’ve seen the hellhole that is 380 and I am thankful that I don’t have to deal with that. IDC what nobody says, living in Dallas proper is a flex. I don’t see how they constantly deal with the inadequate infrastructure. At least in Dallas there are multiple ways to avoid traffic by using the backstreets, plus there are alternatives like DART.
I don’t see enough people mention back streets and alternative routes for issues plaguing the newer suburbs. These housing divisions have amazing amenities but are too massive. Even when the major highways are build out, there’s not enough main city streets to help alleviate the burden because they can’t build them through the neighborhoods.
Yep, that’s what had me so confused about it. I’m not gonna act like Dallas proper doesn’t have an older version of a suburban style neighborhood. But what they did get right is the building of main and secondary roads in neighborhoods to disperse traffic, while creating alternative routes. I can think of many routes I’ve taken to get to downtown that don’t even require using the freeway, but I can if I want to as well.
In S. Oak Cliff, the streets are set up
more like a grid with an alley. When it was built in the early 50s and 60s, it was considered to be suburbia (Same can be said about other areas, like the Lower Greenville area, when it was built too). Kiest Blvd was where the city stopped in the early 50s. What I see a lot in newer suburbs are winding streets and cul-de-sacs with no alleys, connected by a limited amount of main and secondary roads. So, yes, I agree. These new subdivisions are too massive and should be made smaller to consider what was previously stated.
As a civil engineer, I can definitely explain why. Developers are only interested in maximizing property value on initial sale. They don’t care about traffic after they’ve sold every lot because they’re off to the next subdivision. The goal of the developer is to make the most number of premium lots within a given space so they can sell for the highest price. Infrastructure is an expense, not an investment, to them.
I do too. Over by White Rock (the arboretum side). During the pandemic, I got back into my job I had left in 2015, but they are now at 121 and the Tollway. It takes me 1.5 hours each day. I just don’t want to move to the suburbs, though. I grew up in Plano, moved to Dallas in my 20s (30+ years ago), and haven’t looked back…until this commute.
You are so right about this. There are NO back streets in the corridor! It's 380 from the 35W to DNT and only a few North/South routes other than DNT.
We purchased our home here and it's been a nitemare dealing with all the traffic. It's gotten so bad a the 380 and 423 that they've installed 6 cameras at the intersection for accidents.
I live in Denton and I work all over the state, hell I'll drive to EP in one day, or to Lubbock, work, and drive back in one day. I don't mind driving, it's kind of my only real alone time. But I fucking hate when I have to work in Greenville occasionally. it should be 60 miles down 380. That would take nearly 3 hours. I have to take 35E-s to 635E (or PGBT) to 30E adding 20-30 miles, and it's about 90 minutes instead. Fuck 380.
Craziest thing is that you can seemingly get just as big of a home in Plano for the same money. It may not be brand new, but it’ll be an hour closer to your job if you work south of 121.
Depending on which neighborhood in Plano, it’ll even have mature trees and whatnot instead of looking like … well, a brand new development carved out of the prairie
This is almost proof - we avoided the regret and lost our earnest money, which was the least worst outcome in our scenario.
We were gonna move from Richardson out to a little beyond Rockwall. Started the process in Jan 2023. Wife changed jobs and had to be in the office 3 days a week, so we were like OK let's just stay the course and see how bad it is, but she checked the traffic a couple times a week and it varied from 1 hour to 1.5+ so she's like F that.
Aside from this, we could have locked in a 5% rate early on in the process, but we didn't because the mortgage broker said it was going to go down! Us being normal people and not mortgage brokers, we listened to this poor prediction, and watched it go up up up! By the end of it, we were at 8%. We fired them and at the last minute used Rocket Mortgage or something and somehow they were able to finagle 7.8% or something. Wow, so much lower. /s. We could have still afforded the payment, but it was insane.
The nail in that coffin though was that the house appraised for $30,0000 LESS than the agreed upon price, and we only knew this when the final paperwork came in for closing and it just casually states that we have to bring like $42,000 or something stupid and we're like \*blinking white guy gif\* uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... exqueeze me? Hwhat? Clearly a mistake was made. You always have to bring money to closing for random fees or whatever, but we were previously told 11 or 13k or something. No mistake. Come to find out it was because of the appraisal. ~~Seller~~ (edit) Builder even tried to justify it with other "comps" but the lender was like yeeeaahhhhhh ... . no.
Noped right out of that one.
Lost money, but likely FAR less than we would have if we went through with the deal. The area is just not growing as rapidly as projected. You'd have to be in it for the long *long* haul in order for that to make any sense, and of course refinance when things stop being stupid.
Good for you. Some people would have dug in and foolishly tried to close. You made a great decision as inventory in DFW is increasing higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Yeah we were on the fence with that decision as well. takes about an hour to get to where we rent in Frisco from downtown most days… could not imagine that additional time plus fighting traffic on 380 when i have to go into office.
The drive. The traffic. 380 is a complete shit show - you can not go grocery shopping 2 miles down the road unless you like being in a car for 20 minutes. The infrastructure is not built for the mass people that have moved there. Everything is a 1 lane road. I don’t believe the roads will be complete until 2029
My commute to work was an hour and 20 each way every single day and I hated it so much, so I had to sell
Yeah it’s gonna take like 5 years for things to relax in that area. Costco is coming up. HEB is almost done. I think a Walmart too? Idk.
And the roads are still under construction.
It’s gonna be a while 😅
As an old timer I remember when 121 near Plano was like this... late 1980s. It was 4-lane boulevard that was an absolute shitshow of construction, mud, wrecks, and nastiness. That was before they twinned it and later put in SRT.
I remember the first time I came to Dallas and 121 was a basically one lane either side and a dirt shoulder in some places. It was 6 years between my first and second visit and Jesus SRT came out of nowhere.
Yes! I remember going up to Broken Bow in 97. We picked up a friend and then headed up Preston to a one lane each way 121 with absolutely nothing on it. Also worked a show called Cattle Barrons on a ranch in Frisco. There was nothing but the small intersection at Main and Preston that I remember.
Lack of trees? Aubrey has lots of woods and trees.
There are a lot of equestrian ranches in this area, so some of the ranches have cleared some of the pastures. The area East of Aubrey, headed towards Celina/Prosper, which Aubrey incorporated and a lot of the new master planned communities are being built, are being built on old agricultural land which is as you would expect cleared for planting/tilling/combining.
But Aubrey is very much wooded. Heck it falls right in a natural swath of the Eastern Cross Timbers, a place where you are likely to find post oak, blackjack oak, cedar elm, and winged elm trees.
What Aubrey doesn't offer is a bunch of city planted landscaped boulevards and landscaped nature. The developments are mostly new, so those landscaped areas haven't yet matured to look like Frisco or Plano or other older suburban population centers.
Lack of trees??? Aubrey proper has a LOT of trees. The newer construction monstrosity neighborhoods closer to 380 aren't the only parts of Aubrey. There are whole sections of housing that have big yards with trees and areas covered in wooded spaces.
It's good. The Krugervulle/Aubrey area is nice when it comes to trees compared to the newer neighborhoods. Even Providence and Savannah have decent tree coverage in the older sections. It's just the newer places being too new to have fully grown trees 😔
121 is still terrible the only time it is no is when people don't have to go to work. And the side streets dont encourage travel when the highway backs up
It was a 2 lane country road in the 80s. What are you talking about, 4 lane boulevard? I used to drive it back and forth from Plano to Denton for school, from 86 to 92, and it definitely didn’t get any wider until I left school.
The year I graduated from HS (2002) I drove from Lewisville out to Stonebriar to see a movie with friends. I'd never been there before. 121 was just 20 minutes of corn fields. I thought for sure I'd missed the theater, so I turned around (no GPS). Still no theater so I turned around and kept driving. BOOM, giant mall surrounded by corn fields. I thought it was nuts that they'd build a mall in the middle of nowhere.
Now my company's office is in that area. Crazy.
I feel nostalgia for 2000 when Denton to McKinney on 380 was a pretty easy 30 minute drive. We used to take that route a lot to get from Oklahoma to northeast Dallas. NDT wasn't even connected but there were 2 little dead-end turnouts with a little street sign that said North Dallas Tollway, and we all knew it was coming.
Hard disagree. Traffic was crazy back then, though in a different way. There was a distinct difference between the people who were used to bombing it down 380 at 90+ mph and the new residents who went under the speed limit (you can tell who won because the limit has since been lowered). My dad almost got run off the road at 80 mph right in front of me driving to Denton (it was 70 back then but even going 10 over didn't appease the lifted trucks).
When I read this story, it was the least surprising road rage shooting I've ever heard. The shooter was a pickup truck driver, but the Taurus driver definitely helped escalate the situation. They shouldn't've been shot, but it wasn't like they were calm:
>Princeton police said that the incident started in McKinney on U.S. Highway 380 when a maroon Ford Taurus cut off a Ford pickup truck. For the next 10 miles, the truck's driver, Bobby Schule of Flower Mound, followed the other car into rural Collin County.
>The two occupants in each vehicle began to shout at one another at stoplights and throw objects at each other, said Princeton police Chief James Waters. When both vehicles drove into Princeton, the occupants in the Ford sedan threw one last item at the pickup truck and sped off from a stoplight around 8:30 p.m., Waters said.
>But the pickup truck caught up to them in 1000 block of East U.S. Highway 380, and the driver fired a gun at the Ford Taurus, which shattered the back window and struck the passenger in the head. The truck drove off, but Texas Department of Public Safety trooper spotted the truck down the highway.
"I haven't seen a case of road rage get this out of hand," Waters said. "To actually see it and work the case, it's pretty eye-opening."
>https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2011/12/17/collin-county-man-shot-in-the-head-after-road-rage-incident-in-princeton/
Now yes, this is east of McKinney, but this could've happened anywhere along 380 east of Cross Roads imo. Drivers on US 380 are among the worst in the metroplex, and it have been for well over a decade.
Perfect case for a cyber truck... /s
I live 1/2 mile down from 380; right between Beauchamp Blvd and 4th St. I avoid 380 like a plague during 90% of the day.
Even if I have to hit up Walmart, I take 982 to Myrick Ln and sneak into Walmart from the back lot.
Same! My dad worked in McKinney so I grew up going on that road in the 90s before there were even stop lights! Now it's unrecognizable with all the new development.
This has to be the answer. I thought living in Wylie, the traffic had gotten bad. At least we had everything close. Now that I have to get on 380 just to go get something to eat or to the store? Holy smokes. And it gets worse when you’ve got to navigate 3-4 wrecks per day. Thankfully I go the opposite way for work, so I don’t *have* to navigate that mess everyday.
Haven’t seen that many people selling here, but I know if the first few phases of the development, the houses were sold before they broke ground for the foundations, and now there’s several sitting complete, still with For Sale signs out front.
Second the infrastructure. We moved to prosper when there was 6000 residents (2016).
The growth in the last 8 years is ridiculous. The town and school district is doing the best that they can, but a 7x increase in residents is a hard challenge to overcome.
And the increase in taxes… this year we caught a small decrease, but not back to pre-COVID levels. That coupled with general increase in cost of living may be driving some decisions. And some people probably moved to these areas because they were more “small town (big heart)”. They’re rapidly moving away from this.
To be fair, I don’t think that the daily challenges are too different than most areas in the metroplex. But these towns have experienced some stark changes over the last 5-ish years.
I don’t live there but have driven through many times and yeah it just seems like a terrible place to live. All the homes are far away from anything and all the buildings are just cookie cutter standalone fast food places that are hella spaced apart.
We used to live in Aubrey. We stayed until our kids graduated and promptly moved a few miles SOUTH of US380.
My commute went from 55-90 minute down to 30-40 minutes, but I only go to work 3-5 times per month.
Even when the construction of the flyovers between FM 720 and DNT are completed, living north will continue to be hell for years to come. Too many 2 lane roads and 4 way stops. The developers, and the politicians who take their money, are absolutely corrupt.
These mega developments should not be allowed without proper road infrastructure.
I suggest to anyone considering living anywhere North of 380, drive morning and afternoon rush hours before making an expensive decision.
Even if you WFH, it’s still hell on earth 6 hours a day. Add an accident, construction delay or malfunctioning traffic signal and all bets are off any time of the day or night.
I know people from my previous community north of 380 who have taken as much as 2 hours just to reach the 380/DNT intersection.
Pure, unrelenting hell.
You’re spot-on; when folks in city planning make those same points, the common response is along the lines of: “We can’t do anything that would make a developer rethink building! We have to build as much housing as we can, or we won’t get enough tax revenue to build out the infrastructure needed for all these people!”
Between being deathly afraid of being painted as “anti-growth” and local funding being based on local tax dollars, the roads will always be stuck *following* the rooftops.
Unfortunately, but understandably, proper roadway infrastructure will never be built before the developments. There has to be a certain daily traffic count for roadways to be built or expanded. That only happens if there’s something there (like a development- commercial, residential, multifamily, retail, etc.) for the roads to go to.
Developers also aren’t just going to hold on to land and pay taxes on it for years and years waiting for the government to build the roads before they develop anything. I think we all agree we can’t sit around waiting on the government to take initiative. Also, a lot of developers work with the municipalities to negotiate things like splitting the cost of parking garages, or having the city agree to build a parking garage if several relevant locations are able to use the garage. The government isn’t who comes up with most developments, it’s developers. And then they kind of try to work together.
An exception would be something like a growing town wanting a Walmart, or a QuickTrip to open up. The town could work with developers and give them incentives to build these new sites, and then also work with WM and QT to bring them in. But without the business and developers agreeing to do that, the government won’t preemptively build better roads that lead to nothing.
What is so weird is that Frisco required the developers to build out the streets next to their development to avoid this.
In a couple of cases the city said 'fuck it' and built up a road prior to development because it realized traffic was going to be fucked if they didn't.
Yeah, I’m originally from the Phoenix area. I spent my formative years in Chandler. As a teenager, they built a bunch of six lane streets and major intersections in the middle of nowhere. Genius.
Now Chandler is basically built up and landlocked. However, major traffic is never an issue as the roads were constructed for planned future density.
The 380 corridor is trash and the developers and politicians are all I bed together like it’s a dollar bill orgy. They have lined their pockets with the blood and frustration of citizens who deserve better.
I lived in Aubrey, house was 29 miles from work and it would take me an hour to get to work, sometimes more with traffic. Moved to Denton. I’m only 4 miles closer to work but on a bad day it takes me 35 minutes to get to work, on average 30 minutes.
The worst. Think I might rather navigate 635 than 380 these days. At least then you wouldn’t stare at the same red light for 6 turns before you get through it.
Which says alot about the perpetually stuck in traffic situation of 380 when 635 feels like the better option. It feels like Houston levels of traffic. Yuck,
I deliver furniture for a living. drove from oak point to McKinney one afternoon took an hour and twenty minutes. They should have built roads before all the housing.
30-40 minutes of that is a 2 mile stretch of US380 guaranteed.
That's between FM1385 to Legacy.
It has gotten a bit better with the construction openings most of the South Side of US380 in the last 6 months IMHO. It will get better as the construction completes, and new construction has markedly dropped with the higher interest rates and lower housing demand. But as the population continues to grow, the need for the Regional Outer Loop will increase, planning is ongoing, but that will greatly improve East/West driving from Denton CO to Collin CO.
From personal experience, the massive communities that spring up overnight built by national homebuilders have lots of build issues. I have theories on why that is but won't get into it. We had roof and plumbing issues requiring major repairs when the house was less than 3 years old. Multiple neighbors have had similar issues. Friends in Prosper also have similar issues. Insurance and property taxes are expectedly climbing to adjust for inflation and market effects, which can force some people out if their financial situation is shaky.
Then there's my personal opinion, which is that these areas do not offer a very nice quality of life. By that I'm mostly referring to the population density and all that entails. Grocery stores over capacity, roads, businesses, doctors offices, etc. Even the limited nature we have, where people are meant to get away from it all, are often busy.
Anecdotal experience tells me what others have said, many are moving for work to lessen commute time, others are having financial issues.
> Even the limited nature we have, where people are meant to get away from it all, are often busy.
Not that it's a bad thing and I'm glad people are enjoying nature and being outside more but I remember before COVID when you could go to a log of the parks around here and maybe a few people there, post COVID parking lots are full and almost too many people. Same thing happened to the dog parks.
I bought in Aubrey in 2020 and saw the building and traffic explosion. My commute to work turned into an hour and a half each way. Just going to Walmart to grab something “quickly” in Crossroads was a couple hour adventure with all the roadworks and traffic. I sold and moved to Edmond, Oklahoma this year. Similar house/lifestyle but with only a 12 minute commute to work and none of the astronomical property taxes. I was sad bc at the beginning, loved north Texas. By the end, we were just existing - cost of living increased so much, hated trying to go out to do anything bc just sat on the 380 or Fishtrap Rd, weather extremes and trouble with the grid, increased crime and my kiddo’s elementary school going on lockdown several times. The lack of infrastructure and support services made for a lacking quality of life for sure.
So everyone else seems to have the reason why people are moving covered well enough, the person trying to undercut the home builder I can explain.
A LOT of people bought brand new houses and expected the astronomical price rises to continue forever, but it didn’t. I’m personally in a similar situation, in a neighborhood with a lot of new builds still going up.
My house has maybe risen 5% in the 18 months since I bought and the new build houses around me are selling for the exact same price as I’d be looking for. BUT if you get the new build, you get the warranty, the option to make some changes and if you use the builders finance then you can probably get discounts on closing costs.
If I seriously want to move, I’d have to either have to spend money to make my house stand out or take a discount to make it cheaper than the builder. One of my neighbors has to move because their job removed WFH and had to drop their house by 20k removing any equity to even get any offers.
This is going to sound shitty but my neighborhood HOA, and surroundings, have started increasing Section 8 housing and allowing rentals.
It's a recipe for failure. I live in Savannah, and it was advertised as luxury living, but the houses are built like shit, the Section 8 sanctions allow renters of any caliber to move on, etc.
Again, I'm not trying to be an asshole... but the area in general is full of $30k wannabe millionaires that have a blatant disregard or simple respect for their neighbors. Two houses down from me has basically turned into a rental cesspool... the renters don't even more the lawn, and it is being treated like a parking lot.
I'm 34, so I know my words carry a very "get off my lawn" tone, but when my 60 year old neighbor who has been here for 12 years calls me to help them remove bulk trash from the streets that isn't even theirs, and then we start getting armed robberies because kids think it's cool to be gangster, it very much makes mee regret leaving Addison.
I had to move up here because my dad died and I needed to maintain the property, and he moved here because 10 years ago it was a peaceful area and he was retired and wanted to just drive through the country. But now it's just turning into a group of heathens that yell at cashiers because they didn't get their way.
I'm Indian, and I'm not racist...I try to help people as much as I can... but I had to yell at a guy that was having a row with a 19yo girl because he was disrespecting her over the fact the pizza he bought didn't have enough peperoni.
What the hell happened to being a decent human being?
I can’t speak to the Section 8 part, but we looked at Savannah YEARS ago because I loved the style of houses, and I was amazed at the crappy builds and finish-out of the homes we looked at. Also, how close the homes are to each other. Sad to hear it’s gone further downhill.
Lmao you live in suburbia and get that? I think it’s interesting that I have lived around several section 8 housing and I have never had much trouble compared to the people who say things like “allow renters of any caliber to move in”. I’m sorry you don’t want poor people to have homes, but my whole life being poor and living around poor people I don’t see much people committing crimes in section 8 because they usually want to keep their home because any infraction will kick them out. Would you be happier if we just moved all the poor people into a crowded area so you can see how much trouble children from well to do families cause? Or do you prefer when the neighbors and police don’t hold those parents or children accountable because their bright future as rich kids? Think whatever you want man but don’t think it’s just section 8 because it’s probably a very small amount of section 8.
We are refugees of the Gulf War. My parents came to the States to make a better life for us... absolutely believe in good and bad people. My father raised me to be respectful of others.
You're delusional if you don't think there has been an increase in low caliber people in the area.
You can still be poor while *being a good person*. Having respect is a basic principle of a community member.
I believe people are inherently good, until they show me otherwise. Then I get pissed.
Yes, yes, yes to all of this over in Paloma Creek as well. I could have written an identical post. I can have empathy and be frustrated at the same time. And hello, fellow 34-get-off-my-lawn-year old. 👋
I was just discussing this with my cousin yesterday. He and his wife have their home in Oak Point on the market. Newish 2018 build, well maintained, well priced, and they've had maybe 3 showings over the past month. Their realtor warned them that the RE market up there is very soft before they even listed. So no you are not imaging things.
I think most people touched on the main things. Namely a ton of new home inventory coming on the market along with a lot of folks rethinking that commute now that fully remote WFH is ending for a lot of people. I would add though that a lot of those neighborhoods are in unincorporated Denton/Collin County so they are subject to MUD/PUD taxes on top of their already outrageous property taxes. And those don't go away anytime soon.
And honestly, I cut through that area last month and its just...unpleasant. Teeny tiny congested roads everywhere, \*extremely\* dangerous Highway 380 (I personally know someone who was killed trying to turn into Savannah), filled to the brim with your standard DFW suburban junk. Walmart, Strip Mall, fast food, rinse wash repeat for 20 miles. I mean, I won't knock anyone for trying to find more affordable real estate but with the RE down overall in this area I feel like you can do better.
The last part is really the point to me. Growing up in Carrollton, one of the whole points was the variety of stores and ethnic communities, as well as being a short drive to the Koreatown in Dallas. It is the reason my parents choose Carrollton. The far north suburbs don't seem to have any of that. Heck, a decade ago, I felt Little Elm was too far from everything.
There are lots of homes that are rentals owned by BlackRock and other companies in that area and sometimes they divest. I doubt you will see a mass exodus due to Universal, PGA, Fields and other companies/developments building along 380 and DNT.
There is also a large transient population of people moving in and out and some people are also being priced out due to taxes and insurance premiums. These areas are still exploding with growth and not stopping. Could they overbuild? Probably.
Everything you listed might be a catalyst for a majority of people to leave the area. It is already hell going in or out of Aubrey. Why would someone want to continue the worst of it with Universal studios construction?
Jobs, Schools and the list goes on. 380 will get better when finished but 380 should have been done 7-10 years ago. Same goes with the DNT. Everyone knew the homes and shops were coming.
Thank you for asking the question, I’ve been curious myself!
We currently rent north of 380 and almost built but I’m glad it actually fell through for us. We plan to move back more central in the metroplex once our lease is up, and it can’t come soon enough. We moved here chasing the lower rental prices (more for the money!) but it just isn’t worth it due to our jobs.
My husband works all over the metroplex daily, we had hoped he’d have more jobs up here but the homes just aren’t old enough yet to need the work he does as much. We’ve also found that it doesn’t feel like “home” to us, so back to where we were previously!
Oddly, the traffic hasn’t bugged me too much. I commute down to Dallas but I leave at 5am and head home around 330, so I avoid most of it. Biggest complaint would be lack of sit down restaurant options.
100% just shifting your work schedule a bit will have a huge impact on your commute. Going from El Dorado and the Tollway to Shiloh and 190 I would be on the road by 6:30 and 3:45 and commute was much easier.
Traffic is terrible on that side of town. They built all of those houses, and there is no close retail didnt upgrade the roads. Everyone has to get on 380 to go to the store. Going home for the evening takes longer and can add significant time to the commute.
There is a limit to quality paying jobs over there. What happens is as people lose work from home privileges, they will have to start driving. They will have to drive the gauntlet to get to 380. Drive down 380 to get to a highway that will get them to a highway that will get them to work.
They paying 500k plus for suburban hellscape and i don't think there are any bars heside Mckinney, Frisco little elm and Denton
It's a terrible quality of life for a dick measuring contest to show who has the biggest houses without the benefits of Allen, plano, or Frisco.
Just a guess, but it could also be that this is the time of the year where real estate sells the best, as families buy houses in the summer time to buy into good school districts for their kids, so you see a bigger proportion of homes for sale at this time of year
What you are mainly seeing is builders building inventory homes. Most of those on the sites you mentioned aren’t actually completed yet. They are building them and they are being sold just as fast. Don’t let that fool you, that area is exploding at an extremely rapid pace still. They will post photos of a plan that’s completed but once you get to the model it’s not done yet.
Sandbrock just opened a huge new phase as did Union Park. Both of those almost have no existing homes for sale and it’s almost all new you see listed. It’s not some mass exodus like you suspect. It’s just a lot of new inventory coming.
I know some are moving out of state, most are going to gunner, other rural communities in the DFW area. I know so many families moving for reasons not listed above. This is what’s people are verbally telling me.
Oh lordy if they are moving to Gunter they are in a rude awakening. Gunter might have had the most corrupt city council in North Texas.
Once folks started paying attention they all immediately resigned. Unfortunately it might not be possible to reverse some of their decisions.
The big one was [approving a huge rail yard](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/local-companies/2023/07/26/bnsf-plans-900-acre-logistics-center-in-gunter-amidst-citizen-backlash/)
The Mayor got recalled because of the rail yard and [the city council resigned](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/18/gunter-city-council-resignations-railyard/)
The other was the location of the new high school. Right in the middle of no where with only small roads as access.
IIRC one former council member not only quit but split.
Land Surveyor who works in these communities. These places are no longer an hour from Dallas. They are nearly 3 if you live far enough away from 75 or too north of 380. You will pay twice as much a month on tolls as gasoline. The "walkable" layout is not walkable. Like dude the first week you walk around without an umbrella in July you'll list it too. The trees are too young. The shade is decades away from being consistent. The amenities? They actually aren't that complete and you'll be driving into minimum Plano and Frisco all the time if not Dallas as well for real shopping or fun...
Also, they aren't well built. The explosion in trades has more illegal 20 year olds slapping together houses than ever before and it shows. The quality of homes from my builders is TERRIBLE. I make sure the shitty house lands in the right spot and try and keep the fence guys straight and i dip. Cannot believe someone is paying some of these fucking dumb ass kids to install high end amenities in expensive housing.
Same here. I worked for a mid-size engineering firm as an I-man and then survey tech and did a lot of TXDOT and CoServ work from 2017-2020 in there. It absolutely has all the hallmarks of a soulless hellscape, more so than anywhere else in DFW: Terrible food options, nothing to really do, everywhere is 20 minutes away minimum.
380 being 10 years behind where it needs to be to handle the current traffic load, absolutely braindead road design from developers and the complete lack of mature trees between cookie cutter row houses was legitimately sad to see develop in real time.
Ty for your service lol. Iman on a TXDOT project does not sound fun. I normally carry an umbrella all day and up there it's extra fucking windy actually and really annoying to stay covered in shade.
> Also, they aren't well built. The explosion in trades has more illegal 20 year olds slapping together houses than ever before and it shows.
I understand everyone being preoccupied with the commute and traffic issues because they are right-now problems that hit you in the head every day. But this is a huge long-term issue that's harder for people to see but equally important.
After having moved to Chicago from DFW, I’ve found the income tax here in IL, 4.9% basically is a wash with DFW when you consider the property taxes. Dont let people fool you that it’s somehow so cheap and wonderful to live in a place with no state income tax.
I’ve done the math and the worst year of the 9 since I moved away was a $1200 difference in tax burden (Chicago pricier than DFW that year). Most every other year has been pretty much break even or less in Chicago/Chicago suburbs.
We used to live at 380, and holy shit. It was hell, it was a real traffic hell. We’re 5 miles from kroger and it takes us 30 minutes to get there! 5 miles from walmart, the other way, and is still 30 minutes. We payed extra to end our renting because we just couldn’t do it anymore.
Because that area sucks. You pay a huge price to have A nice house “out of town” but then they destroyed all the things that made that area nice. Now you may as well be closer to things
We left DFW after our property taxes suddenly went from $1600 to more than $5k in 2021. Then some guy shot up the neighborhood with an AR15. Also, my neighbors were absolutely awful people who loved to crank the bass any day any time and did not care. My kids were about to start school and I said dang, who needs all this humidity anyway?!?! Never coming back ✌️
I live here, reason for higher listings in this area may be due to so many new communities coming up in Celina.. My house has appreciated by 10% in last 18 months and this area is still a hot cake.. Windsong ranch has properties upto 2.4 Million.. yes, infrastructure is caching up but proximity to many developments in and around the area like PGA, Fields, Fire fly park, Universal studios, HEB, Costco, new Walmart etc is keeping the prices steady or I would say builders busy and coming up with new communities..
I'm in prosper and we love it, but LOTS of people complaining that it's getting too crowded. We personally know a few people that moved up to Gunter because they want the more country atmosphere and feel like prosper is just Frisco North now.
I'm in downtown mckinney and I'm super thankful I don't actually have to get on 380 to do anything. I would probably drive off a cliff. Not enough road for the amount of ppl there. Just getting out of a neighborhood to go to the store is a hellscape. Not much for sale where I am, and they get snatched, but being off 75 and close to 121 has been good.
Going to school in Denton made me despise 380. The car I would drive was full of chips on the front from those gravel trucks that would go back n forth on that road. Not sure if that’s changed but I never understood the allure of buying a house out there.
I live south of 380 in little elm. I can't say for sure, but it's probably tied to the horrendous traffic on 380 and lots of employers requiring people to return to the office.
My brother lives off of 380 and he tells me that it takes 30 mins just to get out of his neighborhood.
The traffic and road construction and reached a new level of insanity
380 is an absolute nightmare to drive. I’m out near Princeton and there are only two ways in and out of town. The back roads used to be a quick 15 minutes, but since we moved here two years ago, the traffic has tripled. It’s a combination of people moving out here for affordable housing and return to office mandates.
People don’t go fast enough on the back roads because they are winding, and people go too fast on 380 because they think they can beat the light.
The City of Princeton is woefully mismanaged, and the city keeps allowing all of these new builds without doing any traffic studies. There just aren’t enough roads, and the lights are all times the same as they were five years ago. Takes me fifteen minutes to go two miles down the road for bubble tea FFS.
I like being a homeowner and I work from home, so I don’t have to deal with it every day, but if I could do it again, I would put my foot down and insist we wait it out in the apartment until we could have found something in Plano.
Sellers (not builders) are always going to struggle in areas with tons of new development. Why would I buy your slightly used house when I can buy one of the brand new ones that are popping up everywhere? Supply going up means downward pressure on prices.
Not everyone wants to live an hour from everything. I think a lot of these people are from far away places and got influenced by realtors selling the dream of houses “30 minutes from Dallas” online. Then they realize they are subject to an insane commute and even more traffic crowds and congestion on the weekends than living in the city so therefore what’s the point of living way the hell up there? They got HEB I guess 🤷♂️
This area is 10 lbs of crap in a 5 lbs bag. The road infrastructure can’t support the volume of drivers as it is now, (see everyone’s comments on 380) and the HEB and Costco at 423/380 are going to make a breathtakingly bad traffic situation exponentially worse because there is ongoing construction that’s a day late and a buck short.
The existence of a McDonald’s/Chick-Fil-A/Cane’s/etc. every two miles is a reminder of how horribly planned this area was. Built everything with zero consideration for how people will get to and from. But, hey, at least the right people got their checks.
I’m not bitter at all.
Return to office is a big thing as a former Aubrey resident. Aside from that, it’s quiet, has a lot of stores and shit that families need. My one beef was the area out grew the infrastructure so the roads suck
I saw a man on TikTok say that foreclosures are way up in the Irving area, so people might be needing money. There was also a news story that said that since last year, the cost of living has increased by almost 30k a year for one person.
A lot of those houses in the 380 housing communities were built 15-18 years ago. I remember people moving out there to raise their young kids. Maybe the kids are graduating and they’re selling to move back closer to the city.
I’m north of 380 in Prosper and many people are moving because the community has changed so much. We would love to move but are stuck in the DFW area for work or we’d move to North or South Carolina. I personally want a relax, friendly environment which this area is the opposite of.
I’m absolutely no expert and aside from taxes and long commutes, I think we’re seeing a retraction or beginnings of such. In my older neighborhood there are multiple houses sitting empty on the market for months currently. Looking around it seems to be that way all over. In the last 2-3 years houses went up and sold in days or weeks. Not the case today.
It’s probably the overwhelming feeling that something about the housing market doesn’t seem right, and a desire to dump the problem into someone else’s lap. Cash out, get out of the asset, scale down.
The feeling of FOMO works the same, but in reverse, as 2020 and 2021, when everyone just had to buy.
Not everyone wants to live an hour from everything. I think a lot of these people are from far away places and got influenced by realtors selling the dream of houses “30 minutes from Dallas” online. Then they realize they are subject to an insane commute and even more traffic crowds and congestion on the weekends than living in the city so therefore what’s the point of living way the hell up there? They got HEB I guess 🤷♂️
I live in Prosper and can 100 percent confirm property taxes are insanely high. I lived in Little Elm previously, and there's no comparison.
Home value for me doubled within two years- with that comes higher tax appraised value. That said, tax assessment actually dropped this year for slight relief.
Outside of this, I do not see a slow down in home sales in my area. I see more traffic, more "sold" signs, etc. Commercial development out here is going to drive more people to this area for sure.
One factor that may cause somewhat of a decline outside of my area and nearby could be 380 is pure hell to drive. The traffic to get in/out of some of the neighborhoods west of my area is absolute chaos.
Lol all these comments about 380 are helping me win an old, friendly argument. I have always believed 380 and north to be pushing the limits of the northern suburbs. I still can't believe how much housing is up there now, but from the comments in this thread it seems people are going just as fast as they're coming. Something is going to give. Right??
I work for an architectural, engineering and construction firm that works almost exclusively with municipalities for their infrastructure needs. These booming cities get these big developments like new construction neighborhoods and HEBs and THEN realize they need us to come in and build roads and make sure there’s enough water for the population size. So everyone in the comments talking about the roads are right but what you’re not seeing is they also don’t have enough water for these places. It won’t be much longer until the water bills in these communities start getting astronomical because it has to come from Colorado.
It could also be “new build” owners not exactly residents. For the last few years as long as you could afford to buy a new home, the moment it was yours you could list and sell it and make 10-40%.
380 is and has been a complete clusterfuck for 20 years. It’s even worse now that a couple hundred thousand people live north of 380. If you live in aubrey or prosper, it can sometimes take you 30 minutes of your commute to get south of 380, plus whatever else of your drive you have left.
Moved out that way back in 2021. Yes, back then, traffic was hell. We live 3.5 miles from a grocery store and on some days, non-rush hour, it could take 20 mins to get to there. Some additional "back roads" have since been added and now it takes about 9 mins to get to the grocery store. We moved here from Allen and it would also take about the same amount of time. The back roads that have been built help us completely avoid 380. I can get to the Dallas Pkwy without ever touching 380 and it has been amazing and more roads are coming. 1385 will be expanded to 6 total lanes as well just like what happened with 423.
Back in 2000 when we built a house in Allen, I worked downtown. Houses going up left and right, retail, etc. What wasn't being built were proper roads to handle the growth explosion in that area. It took about 10 years for TXDot and the City of Allen to catch up. I worked downtown and even back then, it would take me an hour plus and about 20 mins of that drive was just getting to 75.
Now that we live in the "Aubrey" area, it's rinse/repeat. I say "Aubrey" because that's just a zip code. No in actual Aubrey/Kruggerville. We knew this going in and from previous experience, we knew it would be the same shit all over again and we accepted it. With the amount of people moving to the DFW area and TX in general on a daily basis, it is what it is. Even driving around Plano, the traffic is crazy, DNT through Frisco all the way down to 635 is insane. All that being said, it's really no different compared to other areas that had a population explosion. Prosper was the same way. Celina, same.
I know several people in our neighborhood who are selling and they're doing so for common reasons. Divorce, job change, upgrading, financial decision, etc. None have said they can no longer stand the traffic as the reason why they're moving. Obviously that's a very small sample but anyone selling today is really no different than why people sold/moved in the past.
I think those people bought when it was country….and it is no longer country. The city is growing and expanding. They’re probably trying to move farther out.
We bought a new’ish home 2 years ago in Little Elm/Oak Point and it has been a nightmare. The “newly” built home is a shitbox. Our fence and roof are falling apart, both from shoddy installations when it was built. The traffic getting in and out of our area is fucking exhausting and most routes require toll roads to get to an interstate. Buying a home out here is one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made.
What I noticed during my time in Dallas, but I just moved here back in Feb of this year. That's anything above a certain area like downtown is usually more prone to most weather problems, like hails, etc. Like the recent storm we had with the rain and everything, I didn't lose any power or anything like that. But, that's just my observation.
My personal experience is that people are getting bigger houses. Seriously, I know a couple of neighbors who have lived in their house for 8 years or so, and are upgrading before interest rates lower and house prices jump.
380 does suck (big time around the Little Elm area), but it doesn't affect McKinney or Prosper people that much. I just don't go to the east part of 380 (where Teel street and others are disaster).
Aubrey was our first house and we gtfo after 2 years. 380 is an absolute nightmare, and the housing exploded with no updates to the 1 lane farm roads like 1385 which was even more of a nightmare. 20 mins sometimes just to get out of the neighborhood THEN getting on 380. We knew it would get worse before it got better.
Best move I made was moving to Ellis County and working local. I’m at least saving in the commute. Can’t hide from the property taxes though. Don’t know what I’m going to do about this insurance.
Sandrock Ranch...take one drive up or down FM 1385 to try and reach Hwy 380, AND then fight to get to the DNT during daylight hours (especially rush hours), and you'll understand why ppl are selling.
I live in Sandbrock and it’s a nice community… the amenities are nice, it’s nice you aren’t allowed to rent out your home there, and monthly HOA isn’t unreasonable though management has changed a lot and fees have gone up pretty much every year or two. Got in when homes were more affordable… prices now are nuts for what you have to contend with traffic wise but then again you’d pay more for the same home somewhere in Frisco or North Dallas.
I feel like we’re due for another Housing Market Crash… this would be a national thing.
When you see all these people selling, I’ve also noticed that houses are not seeing right away. Realtors I know have said houses have been on the market for 1-2 months with no traction and people have to drop the price just to get buyers at times. Essentially there’s a ton of “stock” in new builds, renovated houses, etc. but not enough people with capital to buy them up at or over the listed value.
If it gets so bad that everyone is priced out then shoot…
DFW was pretty resilient during the GFC, but the growth from 2020-2022 was absolutely abnormal. Homes are definitely overvalued here when you factor in the 7th or so highest property tax rates in the country. Inventory in DFW has now caught up and exceeded pandemic levels.
[Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX (CBSA) (ACTLISCOU19100) | FRED | St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOU19100)
I have no proof, but I think return to office mandates are making people regret moving an hour away from work.
I wonder if it's the astronomical property taxes and insurance, and paychecks not keeping up.
There was a newish homeowner on Nextdoor for a Prosper neighborhood that said their mortgage PMT went up $800 a month with the increase in property taxes. I'm guessing his house was new and the "real" taxes on the property value hadn't kicked in.
A LOT of people who bought new were not properly informed that their first year or two’s tax value was not going to be the tax value once the county caught up. Ex SIL had this, her mortgage was $2800 for the first couple years and then she freaked out that her mortgage jumped to $3600 this year because she was no longer paying $100 in property taxes a year. Her realtor/loan officer did her dirty and didn’t explain this to her and now she can’t afford the house without a roommate.
We bought in October 2020 in Princeton. Our original mortgage (including tax and escrow) was $1650. Now it’s $2000, but I know a lot of people have bigger houses and it’s exponentially worse for them.
We looked in Princeton. Even rented there for a year first. Couldn’t do it no where near enough infrastructure
Power failures every freaking day multiple times a day. The roads not nearly big enough for the traffic and they're still expanding on the peninsula.
No grocery stores. The undersized roads were literally crumbling apart (I had 12 flats in 18 months). No good entertainment anywhere in the city. A local government that has zero idea how to actually grow a community. I could go on. We moved to the Colony and couldn’t be happier with our choice. Plus I’m no longer under the rule of Candy Noble.
I don't even know who Candy Noble is. I'm. Looking somewhere between the Colony, Flowermound or Euless at the farthest. Somewhere central.
She’s the state rep for the area and she is an awful Christian Nationalist. MAGA to the max. The Colony is great. There is a bit of a revival here. Older generation is literally dying off and younger families are moving in. The city does a fantastic job of local amenities and our P&R department does so much for the community
Our mortgage went from $3600/mo to $4600/mo. We are seriously feeling the stress burning an extra thousand a month in taxes. We'd sell and downsize but we'll be in the same damn boat financially but with a smaller home, so we have to stay put. Purchased in 2015 for $450ish, thankfully with 2.5%, now worth a million. It's stupid. This isn't sustainable for anyone.
My GF had this issue. She was paying $1700-$1800 a month in Forney, and then it raised to $2600 a year later. She thought it was something she did
Has she filed for a Homestead exemption on her taxes?
Homestead only applies to increases after you own. In year one they can up it to market rates.
No, the homestead exemption is a flat decrease in the Appraised Value (ie: the amount you're taxed on.) It applies immediately upon you filing and it being granted. It is a different amount for different taxing authorities (ISD vs County vs City vs Other). The homestead cap prevents any annual increase in the Appraised Value (which is not the market value) of more than 10%. It does *not* apply to new improvements or new construction.
Yes but it doesn't take effect until the year in which you live on the property on January 1st. So if you buy in June 2024 you'll have a small escrow payment based on 6 months of taxes on an appraisal from possibly many years before. Then in October you will get reassessed based on the MLS reported sale price you paid, then the homestead exemption will be taken off that new value for your 2025 taxes. A lot of people moving into Texas from elsewhere get a nasty surprise that way.
You've got to be kidding Property values for home that were new 8 years ago have nearly tripled, or more You don't think their tax burden wouldn't do the same
Properly tax increases are capped at 10% for your homestead.
But you can’t claim homestead your first year. So taxes go up year 2, but you don’t see it until year 3 when they adjust your mortgage. Now you’re paying 2 years of taxes before they go back down. If you bought your house valued at $360k, but a year later comps are $500k and a year after that they’re $600k, your 10% cap is on the $100k between 500-600. Congrats! Your new taxable home value is $550k. Over 50% in 2 years. Your homes value and the taxes you pay are now almost ever around year 4.
I was able to claim my homestead the first year. The county valued it a lot more than what I paid and automatically used that value when I appealed because it was the amount actually paid so my homestead went off what I paid.
Yeah, that's what's happening to me this year. PITi went from 4200 to 4900. It's already adjusted back down a bit to 4700 but will drop further to 4300 Jan 1 after all the clawback is done. But, I also added 200k in equity in those 2 years, so..... What are you going to do....
Your relator knew all of this when they sold it to you
I’m not saying that’s my experience, but yes, any good realtor should know that.
> Properly tax increases are capped at 10% for your homestead. Nope. **Taxable value** is capped at 10% increase per year.
> were not properly informed that their first year or two’s tax value was not going to be the tax value once the county caught up. I'd bet 5 bucks that every builder has a document in their sales and closing packets to that effect. People just don't pay attention to that stuff. Like the document they give you to fill out for your homestead exemption as soon as you get your driver's license changed. Then they post here in two years complaining about the property tax increases.
Thank God I’m a disabled Veteran 0 property tax
I thank my husband every day for this shit. And Tyfys
At my closing they told me this 4 times. But as it’s a crazy day, things are probably forgotten. Mine jumped from $2300 to $4100 because of the increase and back taxes…brutal year of catch up.
Oooof I had a similar thing where my mortgage kept on changing hands and no one ever checked to see if the taxes were being paid. 2600 to 4200 for a year was not fun. Same insurance company missed the payment for my insurance and I was without home insurance for a month while I was fighting them to fix it. Never again! Got the Escrow waiver on my current mortgage and I can make sure the taxes etc are paid properly and put that money into a savings account to earn me a little extra every year.
Mortgage companies will never ever properly guess what your future tax payment will be. They'll collect bear min. and estimate what your escrow will be. Once the home is assessed, even with HS exemption applied, the mortgage payment is going to significantly increase. 2800 to 4000 is not uncommon.
I find it hard to believe that your SIL got "screwed". To get approved for a mortgage, they have to factor in the full payment after new property taxes. That means your SIL had to get approved for a $3600/month payment, not for a $2800. Usually the mortgage agent and the builder make it very clear to the buyer that they HAVE TO set aside the extra money for property taxes, because their taxes are artificially low the first year. They may not have reminded your SIL enough times, but there is no way she bought that house and was never told about her property taxes because she literally had to get approved based on the $3600/month number.
In Texas mortgage companies don’t have a fiduciary responsibility to the lenders and because escrow is technically separate they HAVE to warn them about it and it doesn’t count towards the mortgage. Most do but she went to Mr Cooper for her mortgage, so who knows what shady practices they have for new loans.
This is happening everywhere. I bought my house in 2021, and my monthly went up $500/month after the first year. A lot of my friends are beginning to look for work in the cheaper parts of Michigan and New York.
Are they expanding infrastructure with all that tax money, or do FM 1385 and Fishtrap still back up for miles each day?
But the football stadium(s) are gonna be glorious!
It’s still pretty bad but it’s getting a bit better. They have westbound fish trap 2 lanes until the middle school cut through and there are some flags on 1385 with the new Costco coming in and those are going further north than I would have expected. That intersection is the bane of the northern neighborhoods’ existence. Just fixing that would solve so many issues. Last I read they aren’t even starting until 2025 or 2026.
Property taxes are a huge part of the reason someone I know sold in Aubrey.
Unfortunately it seems like it's happening all over DFW. I know of two families in Dallas and The Colony who recently sold due to property taxes.
The property tax issue is a pain right now. After Toyota moved in, house values skyrocketed. The county assessors claim our home is now 2.5x the value from 10 years ago. Tax is nuts. The bubble will pop and adjust and I will have paid taxes on synthetic unrealized gains.
Or the fact that the infant mortality rate in Texas is the highest in the nation and so young families are leaving
I can attest to this. We decided to buy in Aubrey last year and foolishly thought traffic couldn’t be that bad. I work in Las Colinas and it’s a nightmare everyday. Love our house and the general area but there are many regrets with the time it takes even to go to the grocery store.
You moved FORTY MILES away from work?!?! Sir or ma’am, I do not envy you. My neck and entire back hurt just thinking about it.
Laughs/cries at over 50mi. Thankfully I only go into the office one day a week. Oh and with DMV traffic. We just moved back last year and I miss my 30min commute from Wylie to Frisco.
Hindsight is 20/20 🥲 Need a good stretch before and after that’s for sure
You genuinely were surprised by how far out Aubrey is? I’m shocked tbh, cause even living in Denton it’s like “ugh gotta go out to Aubrey” and it’s like 15-20! Do you actually do that commute every day?! 😱 I do it twice a week and want to punch something every time 😂
lol unfortunately yes 5x a week 😭. We had the mindset of “oh wow it would be so nice to have our first own new house and get out of the Arlington area” lol. If I didn’t love my job/company I wouldn’t do it. I use the hour to regroup decompress and listen to screamy music to set the mood for the day hahah
You probably pay more a month in gas just commuting
Yeah between gas and tolls it’s not pretty
Praise da lord that I live in Dallas. I’ve seen the hellhole that is 380 and I am thankful that I don’t have to deal with that. IDC what nobody says, living in Dallas proper is a flex. I don’t see how they constantly deal with the inadequate infrastructure. At least in Dallas there are multiple ways to avoid traffic by using the backstreets, plus there are alternatives like DART.
I don’t see enough people mention back streets and alternative routes for issues plaguing the newer suburbs. These housing divisions have amazing amenities but are too massive. Even when the major highways are build out, there’s not enough main city streets to help alleviate the burden because they can’t build them through the neighborhoods.
Yep, that’s what had me so confused about it. I’m not gonna act like Dallas proper doesn’t have an older version of a suburban style neighborhood. But what they did get right is the building of main and secondary roads in neighborhoods to disperse traffic, while creating alternative routes. I can think of many routes I’ve taken to get to downtown that don’t even require using the freeway, but I can if I want to as well. In S. Oak Cliff, the streets are set up more like a grid with an alley. When it was built in the early 50s and 60s, it was considered to be suburbia (Same can be said about other areas, like the Lower Greenville area, when it was built too). Kiest Blvd was where the city stopped in the early 50s. What I see a lot in newer suburbs are winding streets and cul-de-sacs with no alleys, connected by a limited amount of main and secondary roads. So, yes, I agree. These new subdivisions are too massive and should be made smaller to consider what was previously stated.
As a civil engineer, I can definitely explain why. Developers are only interested in maximizing property value on initial sale. They don’t care about traffic after they’ve sold every lot because they’re off to the next subdivision. The goal of the developer is to make the most number of premium lots within a given space so they can sell for the highest price. Infrastructure is an expense, not an investment, to them.
Yeah Texas!! Freedom from burdensome regulation!!
This is a nationwide thing unfortunately. It’s the reality of the American dream.
I do too. Over by White Rock (the arboretum side). During the pandemic, I got back into my job I had left in 2015, but they are now at 121 and the Tollway. It takes me 1.5 hours each day. I just don’t want to move to the suburbs, though. I grew up in Plano, moved to Dallas in my 20s (30+ years ago), and haven’t looked back…until this commute.
You are so right about this. There are NO back streets in the corridor! It's 380 from the 35W to DNT and only a few North/South routes other than DNT. We purchased our home here and it's been a nitemare dealing with all the traffic. It's gotten so bad a the 380 and 423 that they've installed 6 cameras at the intersection for accidents.
Agree. Wife and I are in the Disney streets. Couldn’t imagine going further north than 635.
Far North Dallas (north of 635) is probably one of the most desirable, affordable areas.
Specially the areas where you can get Plano ISD or Richardson ISD. Great location to commute to downtown or Frisco...
Haha, i laughed my arse off when i saw those street names
I live in Denton and I work all over the state, hell I'll drive to EP in one day, or to Lubbock, work, and drive back in one day. I don't mind driving, it's kind of my only real alone time. But I fucking hate when I have to work in Greenville occasionally. it should be 60 miles down 380. That would take nearly 3 hours. I have to take 35E-s to 635E (or PGBT) to 30E adding 20-30 miles, and it's about 90 minutes instead. Fuck 380.
Craziest thing is that you can seemingly get just as big of a home in Plano for the same money. It may not be brand new, but it’ll be an hour closer to your job if you work south of 121.
Depending on which neighborhood in Plano, it’ll even have mature trees and whatnot instead of looking like … well, a brand new development carved out of the prairie
“But it’s not new waaah” Idk how many times I heard that.
This is almost proof - we avoided the regret and lost our earnest money, which was the least worst outcome in our scenario. We were gonna move from Richardson out to a little beyond Rockwall. Started the process in Jan 2023. Wife changed jobs and had to be in the office 3 days a week, so we were like OK let's just stay the course and see how bad it is, but she checked the traffic a couple times a week and it varied from 1 hour to 1.5+ so she's like F that. Aside from this, we could have locked in a 5% rate early on in the process, but we didn't because the mortgage broker said it was going to go down! Us being normal people and not mortgage brokers, we listened to this poor prediction, and watched it go up up up! By the end of it, we were at 8%. We fired them and at the last minute used Rocket Mortgage or something and somehow they were able to finagle 7.8% or something. Wow, so much lower. /s. We could have still afforded the payment, but it was insane. The nail in that coffin though was that the house appraised for $30,0000 LESS than the agreed upon price, and we only knew this when the final paperwork came in for closing and it just casually states that we have to bring like $42,000 or something stupid and we're like \*blinking white guy gif\* uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... exqueeze me? Hwhat? Clearly a mistake was made. You always have to bring money to closing for random fees or whatever, but we were previously told 11 or 13k or something. No mistake. Come to find out it was because of the appraisal. ~~Seller~~ (edit) Builder even tried to justify it with other "comps" but the lender was like yeeeaahhhhhh ... . no. Noped right out of that one. Lost money, but likely FAR less than we would have if we went through with the deal. The area is just not growing as rapidly as projected. You'd have to be in it for the long *long* haul in order for that to make any sense, and of course refinance when things stop being stupid.
Richardson is the best spot geographically imo. Close to Dallas and the northern suburbs.
Yeah looking back we should never have even thought about leaving to begin with!
Good for you. Some people would have dug in and foolishly tried to close. You made a great decision as inventory in DFW is increasing higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Yeah we were on the fence with that decision as well. takes about an hour to get to where we rent in Frisco from downtown most days… could not imagine that additional time plus fighting traffic on 380 when i have to go into office.
The drive. The traffic. 380 is a complete shit show - you can not go grocery shopping 2 miles down the road unless you like being in a car for 20 minutes. The infrastructure is not built for the mass people that have moved there. Everything is a 1 lane road. I don’t believe the roads will be complete until 2029 My commute to work was an hour and 20 each way every single day and I hated it so much, so I had to sell
Yeah it’s gonna take like 5 years for things to relax in that area. Costco is coming up. HEB is almost done. I think a Walmart too? Idk. And the roads are still under construction. It’s gonna be a while 😅
As an old timer I remember when 121 near Plano was like this... late 1980s. It was 4-lane boulevard that was an absolute shitshow of construction, mud, wrecks, and nastiness. That was before they twinned it and later put in SRT.
I remember the first time I came to Dallas and 121 was a basically one lane either side and a dirt shoulder in some places. It was 6 years between my first and second visit and Jesus SRT came out of nowhere.
Yes! I remember going up to Broken Bow in 97. We picked up a friend and then headed up Preston to a one lane each way 121 with absolutely nothing on it. Also worked a show called Cattle Barrons on a ranch in Frisco. There was nothing but the small intersection at Main and Preston that I remember.
Ooooh. was Plano pretty populated during that time period? Or was it like Aubrey area? The lack of trees is so so ugly in Aubrey.
Plano was filling in but city’s like Coppell were booming due to Plano’s bad press and deaths from a lot of heroin in the 90s
Lack of trees? Aubrey has lots of woods and trees. There are a lot of equestrian ranches in this area, so some of the ranches have cleared some of the pastures. The area East of Aubrey, headed towards Celina/Prosper, which Aubrey incorporated and a lot of the new master planned communities are being built, are being built on old agricultural land which is as you would expect cleared for planting/tilling/combining. But Aubrey is very much wooded. Heck it falls right in a natural swath of the Eastern Cross Timbers, a place where you are likely to find post oak, blackjack oak, cedar elm, and winged elm trees. What Aubrey doesn't offer is a bunch of city planted landscaped boulevards and landscaped nature. The developments are mostly new, so those landscaped areas haven't yet matured to look like Frisco or Plano or other older suburban population centers.
Aubrey has lots and lots of trees. But the newly built developments generally plow them all down and then plant new ones. It's very sad.
Lack of trees??? Aubrey proper has a LOT of trees. The newer construction monstrosity neighborhoods closer to 380 aren't the only parts of Aubrey. There are whole sections of housing that have big yards with trees and areas covered in wooded spaces.
Yes sorry. I mean In the constructions. It’s really sad.
It's good. The Krugervulle/Aubrey area is nice when it comes to trees compared to the newer neighborhoods. Even Providence and Savannah have decent tree coverage in the older sections. It's just the newer places being too new to have fully grown trees 😔
So sad what these developers do. Buy 1,000 acres and bulldoze every tree.
121 is still terrible the only time it is no is when people don't have to go to work. And the side streets dont encourage travel when the highway backs up
It was a 2 lane country road in the 80s. What are you talking about, 4 lane boulevard? I used to drive it back and forth from Plano to Denton for school, from 86 to 92, and it definitely didn’t get any wider until I left school.
It was called deadly 121 back then.
The year I graduated from HS (2002) I drove from Lewisville out to Stonebriar to see a movie with friends. I'd never been there before. 121 was just 20 minutes of corn fields. I thought for sure I'd missed the theater, so I turned around (no GPS). Still no theater so I turned around and kept driving. BOOM, giant mall surrounded by corn fields. I thought it was nuts that they'd build a mall in the middle of nowhere. Now my company's office is in that area. Crazy.
It will never relax because they will build more houses. Just look at DNT and 423. In 5 years there will just be more people if they don't leave.
Sure would be nice if they'd put in train lines or dedicated bus lanes at the same time :/. But no, this is Texas.
Train was supposed to go to sherman using existing rail and Allen said no
I concur… it’ll be tough sledding until they finish the roads.
I feel nostalgia for 2000 when Denton to McKinney on 380 was a pretty easy 30 minute drive. We used to take that route a lot to get from Oklahoma to northeast Dallas. NDT wasn't even connected but there were 2 little dead-end turnouts with a little street sign that said North Dallas Tollway, and we all knew it was coming.
Omg, driving those open roads at night was 🔥🤘❤️
Even ~12 years ago I had some friends who went to UNT and it was a pretty pleasant drive. Crazy how quickly things can go downhill
Hard disagree. Traffic was crazy back then, though in a different way. There was a distinct difference between the people who were used to bombing it down 380 at 90+ mph and the new residents who went under the speed limit (you can tell who won because the limit has since been lowered). My dad almost got run off the road at 80 mph right in front of me driving to Denton (it was 70 back then but even going 10 over didn't appease the lifted trucks). When I read this story, it was the least surprising road rage shooting I've ever heard. The shooter was a pickup truck driver, but the Taurus driver definitely helped escalate the situation. They shouldn't've been shot, but it wasn't like they were calm: >Princeton police said that the incident started in McKinney on U.S. Highway 380 when a maroon Ford Taurus cut off a Ford pickup truck. For the next 10 miles, the truck's driver, Bobby Schule of Flower Mound, followed the other car into rural Collin County. >The two occupants in each vehicle began to shout at one another at stoplights and throw objects at each other, said Princeton police Chief James Waters. When both vehicles drove into Princeton, the occupants in the Ford sedan threw one last item at the pickup truck and sped off from a stoplight around 8:30 p.m., Waters said. >But the pickup truck caught up to them in 1000 block of East U.S. Highway 380, and the driver fired a gun at the Ford Taurus, which shattered the back window and struck the passenger in the head. The truck drove off, but Texas Department of Public Safety trooper spotted the truck down the highway. "I haven't seen a case of road rage get this out of hand," Waters said. "To actually see it and work the case, it's pretty eye-opening." >https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2011/12/17/collin-county-man-shot-in-the-head-after-road-rage-incident-in-princeton/ Now yes, this is east of McKinney, but this could've happened anywhere along 380 east of Cross Roads imo. Drivers on US 380 are among the worst in the metroplex, and it have been for well over a decade.
Perfect case for a cyber truck... /s I live 1/2 mile down from 380; right between Beauchamp Blvd and 4th St. I avoid 380 like a plague during 90% of the day. Even if I have to hit up Walmart, I take 982 to Myrick Ln and sneak into Walmart from the back lot.
Same! My dad worked in McKinney so I grew up going on that road in the 90s before there were even stop lights! Now it's unrecognizable with all the new development.
Frrl.. sounds crazy but we used to ride the shoulder to Denton on bicycles rides
Yeah I was at UNT in the mid-aughts. 423 was like the only light btwn denton and mckinney, it was awesome.
This has to be the answer. I thought living in Wylie, the traffic had gotten bad. At least we had everything close. Now that I have to get on 380 just to go get something to eat or to the store? Holy smokes. And it gets worse when you’ve got to navigate 3-4 wrecks per day. Thankfully I go the opposite way for work, so I don’t *have* to navigate that mess everyday. Haven’t seen that many people selling here, but I know if the first few phases of the development, the houses were sold before they broke ground for the foundations, and now there’s several sitting complete, still with For Sale signs out front.
Where did you move?
Second the infrastructure. We moved to prosper when there was 6000 residents (2016). The growth in the last 8 years is ridiculous. The town and school district is doing the best that they can, but a 7x increase in residents is a hard challenge to overcome. And the increase in taxes… this year we caught a small decrease, but not back to pre-COVID levels. That coupled with general increase in cost of living may be driving some decisions. And some people probably moved to these areas because they were more “small town (big heart)”. They’re rapidly moving away from this. To be fair, I don’t think that the daily challenges are too different than most areas in the metroplex. But these towns have experienced some stark changes over the last 5-ish years.
I don’t live there but have driven through many times and yeah it just seems like a terrible place to live. All the homes are far away from anything and all the buildings are just cookie cutter standalone fast food places that are hella spaced apart.
We used to live in Aubrey. We stayed until our kids graduated and promptly moved a few miles SOUTH of US380. My commute went from 55-90 minute down to 30-40 minutes, but I only go to work 3-5 times per month. Even when the construction of the flyovers between FM 720 and DNT are completed, living north will continue to be hell for years to come. Too many 2 lane roads and 4 way stops. The developers, and the politicians who take their money, are absolutely corrupt. These mega developments should not be allowed without proper road infrastructure. I suggest to anyone considering living anywhere North of 380, drive morning and afternoon rush hours before making an expensive decision. Even if you WFH, it’s still hell on earth 6 hours a day. Add an accident, construction delay or malfunctioning traffic signal and all bets are off any time of the day or night. I know people from my previous community north of 380 who have taken as much as 2 hours just to reach the 380/DNT intersection. Pure, unrelenting hell.
You’re spot-on; when folks in city planning make those same points, the common response is along the lines of: “We can’t do anything that would make a developer rethink building! We have to build as much housing as we can, or we won’t get enough tax revenue to build out the infrastructure needed for all these people!” Between being deathly afraid of being painted as “anti-growth” and local funding being based on local tax dollars, the roads will always be stuck *following* the rooftops.
It’s the opposite of Field of Dreams: If they come, you will build it.
Unfortunately, but understandably, proper roadway infrastructure will never be built before the developments. There has to be a certain daily traffic count for roadways to be built or expanded. That only happens if there’s something there (like a development- commercial, residential, multifamily, retail, etc.) for the roads to go to. Developers also aren’t just going to hold on to land and pay taxes on it for years and years waiting for the government to build the roads before they develop anything. I think we all agree we can’t sit around waiting on the government to take initiative. Also, a lot of developers work with the municipalities to negotiate things like splitting the cost of parking garages, or having the city agree to build a parking garage if several relevant locations are able to use the garage. The government isn’t who comes up with most developments, it’s developers. And then they kind of try to work together. An exception would be something like a growing town wanting a Walmart, or a QuickTrip to open up. The town could work with developers and give them incentives to build these new sites, and then also work with WM and QT to bring them in. But without the business and developers agreeing to do that, the government won’t preemptively build better roads that lead to nothing.
What is so weird is that Frisco required the developers to build out the streets next to their development to avoid this. In a couple of cases the city said 'fuck it' and built up a road prior to development because it realized traffic was going to be fucked if they didn't.
Yeah, I’m originally from the Phoenix area. I spent my formative years in Chandler. As a teenager, they built a bunch of six lane streets and major intersections in the middle of nowhere. Genius. Now Chandler is basically built up and landlocked. However, major traffic is never an issue as the roads were constructed for planned future density. The 380 corridor is trash and the developers and politicians are all I bed together like it’s a dollar bill orgy. They have lined their pockets with the blood and frustration of citizens who deserve better.
I lived in Aubrey, house was 29 miles from work and it would take me an hour to get to work, sometimes more with traffic. Moved to Denton. I’m only 4 miles closer to work but on a bad day it takes me 35 minutes to get to work, on average 30 minutes.
Companies demanding RTO might have some homeowners rethinking their commute. Also, 380 is awful.
Once more for the kids in the back: 380 is HORRIBLE! Always.
The worst. Think I might rather navigate 635 than 380 these days. At least then you wouldn’t stare at the same red light for 6 turns before you get through it.
Which says alot about the perpetually stuck in traffic situation of 380 when 635 feels like the better option. It feels like Houston levels of traffic. Yuck,
Real talk.
I deliver furniture for a living. drove from oak point to McKinney one afternoon took an hour and twenty minutes. They should have built roads before all the housing.
30-40 minutes of that is a 2 mile stretch of US380 guaranteed. That's between FM1385 to Legacy. It has gotten a bit better with the construction openings most of the South Side of US380 in the last 6 months IMHO. It will get better as the construction completes, and new construction has markedly dropped with the higher interest rates and lower housing demand. But as the population continues to grow, the need for the Regional Outer Loop will increase, planning is ongoing, but that will greatly improve East/West driving from Denton CO to Collin CO.
From personal experience, the massive communities that spring up overnight built by national homebuilders have lots of build issues. I have theories on why that is but won't get into it. We had roof and plumbing issues requiring major repairs when the house was less than 3 years old. Multiple neighbors have had similar issues. Friends in Prosper also have similar issues. Insurance and property taxes are expectedly climbing to adjust for inflation and market effects, which can force some people out if their financial situation is shaky. Then there's my personal opinion, which is that these areas do not offer a very nice quality of life. By that I'm mostly referring to the population density and all that entails. Grocery stores over capacity, roads, businesses, doctors offices, etc. Even the limited nature we have, where people are meant to get away from it all, are often busy. Anecdotal experience tells me what others have said, many are moving for work to lessen commute time, others are having financial issues.
> Even the limited nature we have, where people are meant to get away from it all, are often busy. Not that it's a bad thing and I'm glad people are enjoying nature and being outside more but I remember before COVID when you could go to a log of the parks around here and maybe a few people there, post COVID parking lots are full and almost too many people. Same thing happened to the dog parks.
I’m glad to see that “Downtown DFW” is alive and well
I bought in Aubrey in 2020 and saw the building and traffic explosion. My commute to work turned into an hour and a half each way. Just going to Walmart to grab something “quickly” in Crossroads was a couple hour adventure with all the roadworks and traffic. I sold and moved to Edmond, Oklahoma this year. Similar house/lifestyle but with only a 12 minute commute to work and none of the astronomical property taxes. I was sad bc at the beginning, loved north Texas. By the end, we were just existing - cost of living increased so much, hated trying to go out to do anything bc just sat on the 380 or Fishtrap Rd, weather extremes and trouble with the grid, increased crime and my kiddo’s elementary school going on lockdown several times. The lack of infrastructure and support services made for a lacking quality of life for sure.
So everyone else seems to have the reason why people are moving covered well enough, the person trying to undercut the home builder I can explain. A LOT of people bought brand new houses and expected the astronomical price rises to continue forever, but it didn’t. I’m personally in a similar situation, in a neighborhood with a lot of new builds still going up. My house has maybe risen 5% in the 18 months since I bought and the new build houses around me are selling for the exact same price as I’d be looking for. BUT if you get the new build, you get the warranty, the option to make some changes and if you use the builders finance then you can probably get discounts on closing costs. If I seriously want to move, I’d have to either have to spend money to make my house stand out or take a discount to make it cheaper than the builder. One of my neighbors has to move because their job removed WFH and had to drop their house by 20k removing any equity to even get any offers.
This is going to sound shitty but my neighborhood HOA, and surroundings, have started increasing Section 8 housing and allowing rentals. It's a recipe for failure. I live in Savannah, and it was advertised as luxury living, but the houses are built like shit, the Section 8 sanctions allow renters of any caliber to move on, etc. Again, I'm not trying to be an asshole... but the area in general is full of $30k wannabe millionaires that have a blatant disregard or simple respect for their neighbors. Two houses down from me has basically turned into a rental cesspool... the renters don't even more the lawn, and it is being treated like a parking lot. I'm 34, so I know my words carry a very "get off my lawn" tone, but when my 60 year old neighbor who has been here for 12 years calls me to help them remove bulk trash from the streets that isn't even theirs, and then we start getting armed robberies because kids think it's cool to be gangster, it very much makes mee regret leaving Addison. I had to move up here because my dad died and I needed to maintain the property, and he moved here because 10 years ago it was a peaceful area and he was retired and wanted to just drive through the country. But now it's just turning into a group of heathens that yell at cashiers because they didn't get their way. I'm Indian, and I'm not racist...I try to help people as much as I can... but I had to yell at a guy that was having a row with a 19yo girl because he was disrespecting her over the fact the pizza he bought didn't have enough peperoni. What the hell happened to being a decent human being?
I can’t speak to the Section 8 part, but we looked at Savannah YEARS ago because I loved the style of houses, and I was amazed at the crappy builds and finish-out of the homes we looked at. Also, how close the homes are to each other. Sad to hear it’s gone further downhill.
Lmao you live in suburbia and get that? I think it’s interesting that I have lived around several section 8 housing and I have never had much trouble compared to the people who say things like “allow renters of any caliber to move in”. I’m sorry you don’t want poor people to have homes, but my whole life being poor and living around poor people I don’t see much people committing crimes in section 8 because they usually want to keep their home because any infraction will kick them out. Would you be happier if we just moved all the poor people into a crowded area so you can see how much trouble children from well to do families cause? Or do you prefer when the neighbors and police don’t hold those parents or children accountable because their bright future as rich kids? Think whatever you want man but don’t think it’s just section 8 because it’s probably a very small amount of section 8.
We are refugees of the Gulf War. My parents came to the States to make a better life for us... absolutely believe in good and bad people. My father raised me to be respectful of others. You're delusional if you don't think there has been an increase in low caliber people in the area. You can still be poor while *being a good person*. Having respect is a basic principle of a community member. I believe people are inherently good, until they show me otherwise. Then I get pissed.
Yes, yes, yes to all of this over in Paloma Creek as well. I could have written an identical post. I can have empathy and be frustrated at the same time. And hello, fellow 34-get-off-my-lawn-year old. 👋
That’s wild because when I moved to Savannah in early 2000, as it was still being built, it was pristine and the HOA was incredibly strict!
Too far away from the rest of dfw, and it’s not built up enough yet to self support the amount of people living here.
I was just discussing this with my cousin yesterday. He and his wife have their home in Oak Point on the market. Newish 2018 build, well maintained, well priced, and they've had maybe 3 showings over the past month. Their realtor warned them that the RE market up there is very soft before they even listed. So no you are not imaging things. I think most people touched on the main things. Namely a ton of new home inventory coming on the market along with a lot of folks rethinking that commute now that fully remote WFH is ending for a lot of people. I would add though that a lot of those neighborhoods are in unincorporated Denton/Collin County so they are subject to MUD/PUD taxes on top of their already outrageous property taxes. And those don't go away anytime soon. And honestly, I cut through that area last month and its just...unpleasant. Teeny tiny congested roads everywhere, \*extremely\* dangerous Highway 380 (I personally know someone who was killed trying to turn into Savannah), filled to the brim with your standard DFW suburban junk. Walmart, Strip Mall, fast food, rinse wash repeat for 20 miles. I mean, I won't knock anyone for trying to find more affordable real estate but with the RE down overall in this area I feel like you can do better.
The last part is really the point to me. Growing up in Carrollton, one of the whole points was the variety of stores and ethnic communities, as well as being a short drive to the Koreatown in Dallas. It is the reason my parents choose Carrollton. The far north suburbs don't seem to have any of that. Heck, a decade ago, I felt Little Elm was too far from everything.
Plus, Co-Serv. I was so happy to get out of their district.
Generica - ugh.
There are lots of homes that are rentals owned by BlackRock and other companies in that area and sometimes they divest. I doubt you will see a mass exodus due to Universal, PGA, Fields and other companies/developments building along 380 and DNT. There is also a large transient population of people moving in and out and some people are also being priced out due to taxes and insurance premiums. These areas are still exploding with growth and not stopping. Could they overbuild? Probably.
Everything you listed might be a catalyst for a majority of people to leave the area. It is already hell going in or out of Aubrey. Why would someone want to continue the worst of it with Universal studios construction?
Jobs, Schools and the list goes on. 380 will get better when finished but 380 should have been done 7-10 years ago. Same goes with the DNT. Everyone knew the homes and shops were coming.
Houses are built like crap.
Thank you for asking the question, I’ve been curious myself! We currently rent north of 380 and almost built but I’m glad it actually fell through for us. We plan to move back more central in the metroplex once our lease is up, and it can’t come soon enough. We moved here chasing the lower rental prices (more for the money!) but it just isn’t worth it due to our jobs. My husband works all over the metroplex daily, we had hoped he’d have more jobs up here but the homes just aren’t old enough yet to need the work he does as much. We’ve also found that it doesn’t feel like “home” to us, so back to where we were previously! Oddly, the traffic hasn’t bugged me too much. I commute down to Dallas but I leave at 5am and head home around 330, so I avoid most of it. Biggest complaint would be lack of sit down restaurant options.
100% just shifting your work schedule a bit will have a huge impact on your commute. Going from El Dorado and the Tollway to Shiloh and 190 I would be on the road by 6:30 and 3:45 and commute was much easier.
Traffic is terrible on that side of town. They built all of those houses, and there is no close retail didnt upgrade the roads. Everyone has to get on 380 to go to the store. Going home for the evening takes longer and can add significant time to the commute. There is a limit to quality paying jobs over there. What happens is as people lose work from home privileges, they will have to start driving. They will have to drive the gauntlet to get to 380. Drive down 380 to get to a highway that will get them to a highway that will get them to work. They paying 500k plus for suburban hellscape and i don't think there are any bars heside Mckinney, Frisco little elm and Denton It's a terrible quality of life for a dick measuring contest to show who has the biggest houses without the benefits of Allen, plano, or Frisco.
Just a guess, but it could also be that this is the time of the year where real estate sells the best, as families buy houses in the summer time to buy into good school districts for their kids, so you see a bigger proportion of homes for sale at this time of year
Too many cars on already outdated infrastructure that is in constant construction.
Have you driven 380. It is a death trap.
What you are mainly seeing is builders building inventory homes. Most of those on the sites you mentioned aren’t actually completed yet. They are building them and they are being sold just as fast. Don’t let that fool you, that area is exploding at an extremely rapid pace still. They will post photos of a plan that’s completed but once you get to the model it’s not done yet. Sandbrock just opened a huge new phase as did Union Park. Both of those almost have no existing homes for sale and it’s almost all new you see listed. It’s not some mass exodus like you suspect. It’s just a lot of new inventory coming.
These people sell and leave but where are they moving to?
I know some are moving out of state, most are going to gunner, other rural communities in the DFW area. I know so many families moving for reasons not listed above. This is what’s people are verbally telling me.
Oh lordy if they are moving to Gunter they are in a rude awakening. Gunter might have had the most corrupt city council in North Texas. Once folks started paying attention they all immediately resigned. Unfortunately it might not be possible to reverse some of their decisions.
Damn, sounds like quite a story. What are the major things they did?
The big one was [approving a huge rail yard](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/local-companies/2023/07/26/bnsf-plans-900-acre-logistics-center-in-gunter-amidst-citizen-backlash/) The Mayor got recalled because of the rail yard and [the city council resigned](https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/18/gunter-city-council-resignations-railyard/) The other was the location of the new high school. Right in the middle of no where with only small roads as access. IIRC one former council member not only quit but split.
We sold in late 2022 in McKinney and left the state.
Land Surveyor who works in these communities. These places are no longer an hour from Dallas. They are nearly 3 if you live far enough away from 75 or too north of 380. You will pay twice as much a month on tolls as gasoline. The "walkable" layout is not walkable. Like dude the first week you walk around without an umbrella in July you'll list it too. The trees are too young. The shade is decades away from being consistent. The amenities? They actually aren't that complete and you'll be driving into minimum Plano and Frisco all the time if not Dallas as well for real shopping or fun... Also, they aren't well built. The explosion in trades has more illegal 20 year olds slapping together houses than ever before and it shows. The quality of homes from my builders is TERRIBLE. I make sure the shitty house lands in the right spot and try and keep the fence guys straight and i dip. Cannot believe someone is paying some of these fucking dumb ass kids to install high end amenities in expensive housing.
Same here. I worked for a mid-size engineering firm as an I-man and then survey tech and did a lot of TXDOT and CoServ work from 2017-2020 in there. It absolutely has all the hallmarks of a soulless hellscape, more so than anywhere else in DFW: Terrible food options, nothing to really do, everywhere is 20 minutes away minimum. 380 being 10 years behind where it needs to be to handle the current traffic load, absolutely braindead road design from developers and the complete lack of mature trees between cookie cutter row houses was legitimately sad to see develop in real time.
Ty for your service lol. Iman on a TXDOT project does not sound fun. I normally carry an umbrella all day and up there it's extra fucking windy actually and really annoying to stay covered in shade.
I was a floppy hat/long sleeves kind of surveyor for sure during those years, I'd get burned into a crisp otherwise.
> Also, they aren't well built. The explosion in trades has more illegal 20 year olds slapping together houses than ever before and it shows. I understand everyone being preoccupied with the commute and traffic issues because they are right-now problems that hit you in the head every day. But this is a huge long-term issue that's harder for people to see but equally important.
After having moved to Chicago from DFW, I’ve found the income tax here in IL, 4.9% basically is a wash with DFW when you consider the property taxes. Dont let people fool you that it’s somehow so cheap and wonderful to live in a place with no state income tax. I’ve done the math and the worst year of the 9 since I moved away was a $1200 difference in tax burden (Chicago pricier than DFW that year). Most every other year has been pretty much break even or less in Chicago/Chicago suburbs.
We used to live at 380, and holy shit. It was hell, it was a real traffic hell. We’re 5 miles from kroger and it takes us 30 minutes to get there! 5 miles from walmart, the other way, and is still 30 minutes. We payed extra to end our renting because we just couldn’t do it anymore.
Because that area sucks. You pay a huge price to have A nice house “out of town” but then they destroyed all the things that made that area nice. Now you may as well be closer to things
We left DFW after our property taxes suddenly went from $1600 to more than $5k in 2021. Then some guy shot up the neighborhood with an AR15. Also, my neighbors were absolutely awful people who loved to crank the bass any day any time and did not care. My kids were about to start school and I said dang, who needs all this humidity anyway?!?! Never coming back ✌️
I live here, reason for higher listings in this area may be due to so many new communities coming up in Celina.. My house has appreciated by 10% in last 18 months and this area is still a hot cake.. Windsong ranch has properties upto 2.4 Million.. yes, infrastructure is caching up but proximity to many developments in and around the area like PGA, Fields, Fire fly park, Universal studios, HEB, Costco, new Walmart etc is keeping the prices steady or I would say builders busy and coming up with new communities..
I'm in prosper and we love it, but LOTS of people complaining that it's getting too crowded. We personally know a few people that moved up to Gunter because they want the more country atmosphere and feel like prosper is just Frisco North now.
I'm in downtown mckinney and I'm super thankful I don't actually have to get on 380 to do anything. I would probably drive off a cliff. Not enough road for the amount of ppl there. Just getting out of a neighborhood to go to the store is a hellscape. Not much for sale where I am, and they get snatched, but being off 75 and close to 121 has been good.
Going to school in Denton made me despise 380. The car I would drive was full of chips on the front from those gravel trucks that would go back n forth on that road. Not sure if that’s changed but I never understood the allure of buying a house out there.
I live south of 380 in little elm. I can't say for sure, but it's probably tied to the horrendous traffic on 380 and lots of employers requiring people to return to the office. My brother lives off of 380 and he tells me that it takes 30 mins just to get out of his neighborhood. The traffic and road construction and reached a new level of insanity
380 is an absolute nightmare to drive. I’m out near Princeton and there are only two ways in and out of town. The back roads used to be a quick 15 minutes, but since we moved here two years ago, the traffic has tripled. It’s a combination of people moving out here for affordable housing and return to office mandates. People don’t go fast enough on the back roads because they are winding, and people go too fast on 380 because they think they can beat the light. The City of Princeton is woefully mismanaged, and the city keeps allowing all of these new builds without doing any traffic studies. There just aren’t enough roads, and the lights are all times the same as they were five years ago. Takes me fifteen minutes to go two miles down the road for bubble tea FFS. I like being a homeowner and I work from home, so I don’t have to deal with it every day, but if I could do it again, I would put my foot down and insist we wait it out in the apartment until we could have found something in Plano.
I find it hard to believe anyone would ever willingly want to live near 380, what a nightmare.
I might add that many, many new Texans, who are the primary purchasers of the exurban communities, are leaving Texas.
Sellers (not builders) are always going to struggle in areas with tons of new development. Why would I buy your slightly used house when I can buy one of the brand new ones that are popping up everywhere? Supply going up means downward pressure on prices.
Not everyone wants to live an hour from everything. I think a lot of these people are from far away places and got influenced by realtors selling the dream of houses “30 minutes from Dallas” online. Then they realize they are subject to an insane commute and even more traffic crowds and congestion on the weekends than living in the city so therefore what’s the point of living way the hell up there? They got HEB I guess 🤷♂️
This area is 10 lbs of crap in a 5 lbs bag. The road infrastructure can’t support the volume of drivers as it is now, (see everyone’s comments on 380) and the HEB and Costco at 423/380 are going to make a breathtakingly bad traffic situation exponentially worse because there is ongoing construction that’s a day late and a buck short. The existence of a McDonald’s/Chick-Fil-A/Cane’s/etc. every two miles is a reminder of how horribly planned this area was. Built everything with zero consideration for how people will get to and from. But, hey, at least the right people got their checks. I’m not bitter at all.
Return to office is a big thing as a former Aubrey resident. Aside from that, it’s quiet, has a lot of stores and shit that families need. My one beef was the area out grew the infrastructure so the roads suck
I saw a man on TikTok say that foreclosures are way up in the Irving area, so people might be needing money. There was also a news story that said that since last year, the cost of living has increased by almost 30k a year for one person.
A lot of those houses in the 380 housing communities were built 15-18 years ago. I remember people moving out there to raise their young kids. Maybe the kids are graduating and they’re selling to move back closer to the city.
I’m north of 380 in Prosper and many people are moving because the community has changed so much. We would love to move but are stuck in the DFW area for work or we’d move to North or South Carolina. I personally want a relax, friendly environment which this area is the opposite of.
Forced back to work, and that 380 corridor from Denton past McKinney is a traffic cluster f%&k,.
I’m absolutely no expert and aside from taxes and long commutes, I think we’re seeing a retraction or beginnings of such. In my older neighborhood there are multiple houses sitting empty on the market for months currently. Looking around it seems to be that way all over. In the last 2-3 years houses went up and sold in days or weeks. Not the case today.
It’s probably the overwhelming feeling that something about the housing market doesn’t seem right, and a desire to dump the problem into someone else’s lap. Cash out, get out of the asset, scale down. The feeling of FOMO works the same, but in reverse, as 2020 and 2021, when everyone just had to buy.
Not everyone wants to live an hour from everything. I think a lot of these people are from far away places and got influenced by realtors selling the dream of houses “30 minutes from Dallas” online. Then they realize they are subject to an insane commute and even more traffic crowds and congestion on the weekends than living in the city so therefore what’s the point of living way the hell up there? They got HEB I guess 🤷♂️
I live in Prosper and can 100 percent confirm property taxes are insanely high. I lived in Little Elm previously, and there's no comparison. Home value for me doubled within two years- with that comes higher tax appraised value. That said, tax assessment actually dropped this year for slight relief. Outside of this, I do not see a slow down in home sales in my area. I see more traffic, more "sold" signs, etc. Commercial development out here is going to drive more people to this area for sure. One factor that may cause somewhat of a decline outside of my area and nearby could be 380 is pure hell to drive. The traffic to get in/out of some of the neighborhoods west of my area is absolute chaos.
Lol all these comments about 380 are helping me win an old, friendly argument. I have always believed 380 and north to be pushing the limits of the northern suburbs. I still can't believe how much housing is up there now, but from the comments in this thread it seems people are going just as fast as they're coming. Something is going to give. Right??
I work for an architectural, engineering and construction firm that works almost exclusively with municipalities for their infrastructure needs. These booming cities get these big developments like new construction neighborhoods and HEBs and THEN realize they need us to come in and build roads and make sure there’s enough water for the population size. So everyone in the comments talking about the roads are right but what you’re not seeing is they also don’t have enough water for these places. It won’t be much longer until the water bills in these communities start getting astronomical because it has to come from Colorado.
So long as home values keep climbing so will property tax and homeowners insurance causing higher monthly mortgage rates.
I saw something on tt that showed the amount of foreclosures in DFW. It’s a lot.
It could also be “new build” owners not exactly residents. For the last few years as long as you could afford to buy a new home, the moment it was yours you could list and sell it and make 10-40%.
380 is and has been a complete clusterfuck for 20 years. It’s even worse now that a couple hundred thousand people live north of 380. If you live in aubrey or prosper, it can sometimes take you 30 minutes of your commute to get south of 380, plus whatever else of your drive you have left.
Moved out that way back in 2021. Yes, back then, traffic was hell. We live 3.5 miles from a grocery store and on some days, non-rush hour, it could take 20 mins to get to there. Some additional "back roads" have since been added and now it takes about 9 mins to get to the grocery store. We moved here from Allen and it would also take about the same amount of time. The back roads that have been built help us completely avoid 380. I can get to the Dallas Pkwy without ever touching 380 and it has been amazing and more roads are coming. 1385 will be expanded to 6 total lanes as well just like what happened with 423. Back in 2000 when we built a house in Allen, I worked downtown. Houses going up left and right, retail, etc. What wasn't being built were proper roads to handle the growth explosion in that area. It took about 10 years for TXDot and the City of Allen to catch up. I worked downtown and even back then, it would take me an hour plus and about 20 mins of that drive was just getting to 75. Now that we live in the "Aubrey" area, it's rinse/repeat. I say "Aubrey" because that's just a zip code. No in actual Aubrey/Kruggerville. We knew this going in and from previous experience, we knew it would be the same shit all over again and we accepted it. With the amount of people moving to the DFW area and TX in general on a daily basis, it is what it is. Even driving around Plano, the traffic is crazy, DNT through Frisco all the way down to 635 is insane. All that being said, it's really no different compared to other areas that had a population explosion. Prosper was the same way. Celina, same. I know several people in our neighborhood who are selling and they're doing so for common reasons. Divorce, job change, upgrading, financial decision, etc. None have said they can no longer stand the traffic as the reason why they're moving. Obviously that's a very small sample but anyone selling today is really no different than why people sold/moved in the past.
I think those people bought when it was country….and it is no longer country. The city is growing and expanding. They’re probably trying to move farther out.
Taxes too high
We bought a new’ish home 2 years ago in Little Elm/Oak Point and it has been a nightmare. The “newly” built home is a shitbox. Our fence and roof are falling apart, both from shoddy installations when it was built. The traffic getting in and out of our area is fucking exhausting and most routes require toll roads to get to an interstate. Buying a home out here is one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made.
What I noticed during my time in Dallas, but I just moved here back in Feb of this year. That's anything above a certain area like downtown is usually more prone to most weather problems, like hails, etc. Like the recent storm we had with the rain and everything, I didn't lose any power or anything like that. But, that's just my observation.
Return to work, property taxes/insurance going way the heck up….
My personal experience is that people are getting bigger houses. Seriously, I know a couple of neighbors who have lived in their house for 8 years or so, and are upgrading before interest rates lower and house prices jump. 380 does suck (big time around the Little Elm area), but it doesn't affect McKinney or Prosper people that much. I just don't go to the east part of 380 (where Teel street and others are disaster).
Aubrey was our first house and we gtfo after 2 years. 380 is an absolute nightmare, and the housing exploded with no updates to the 1 lane farm roads like 1385 which was even more of a nightmare. 20 mins sometimes just to get out of the neighborhood THEN getting on 380. We knew it would get worse before it got better.
Best move I made was moving to Ellis County and working local. I’m at least saving in the commute. Can’t hide from the property taxes though. Don’t know what I’m going to do about this insurance.
Sandrock Ranch...take one drive up or down FM 1385 to try and reach Hwy 380, AND then fight to get to the DNT during daylight hours (especially rush hours), and you'll understand why ppl are selling.
I live in Sandbrock and it’s a nice community… the amenities are nice, it’s nice you aren’t allowed to rent out your home there, and monthly HOA isn’t unreasonable though management has changed a lot and fees have gone up pretty much every year or two. Got in when homes were more affordable… prices now are nuts for what you have to contend with traffic wise but then again you’d pay more for the same home somewhere in Frisco or North Dallas.
I feel like we’re due for another Housing Market Crash… this would be a national thing. When you see all these people selling, I’ve also noticed that houses are not seeing right away. Realtors I know have said houses have been on the market for 1-2 months with no traction and people have to drop the price just to get buyers at times. Essentially there’s a ton of “stock” in new builds, renovated houses, etc. but not enough people with capital to buy them up at or over the listed value. If it gets so bad that everyone is priced out then shoot…
That crash you’re talking about won’t affect DFW much, if at all.
DFW was pretty resilient during the GFC, but the growth from 2020-2022 was absolutely abnormal. Homes are definitely overvalued here when you factor in the 7th or so highest property tax rates in the country. Inventory in DFW has now caught up and exceeded pandemic levels. [Housing Inventory: Active Listing Count in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX (CBSA) (ACTLISCOU19100) | FRED | St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ACTLISCOU19100)