On a Sunday morning in August 2026, a boom rattled windows across northwest Plano. Crews had just imploded the old Electronic Data Systems campus at 5400 Legacy Drive, the sprawling office complex Ross Perot built in the 1980s that later became known to generations of employees as the "God Pod." Former workers gathered to watch decades of local business history collapse into rubble. The site is being cleared for AT&T's new $1.3 billion, 54-acre global headquarters, a project the company announced in January 2026 and expects to bring roughly 10,000 employees to Plano's Legacy District.
It's the kind of story that makes headlines because it's visible. What's harder to see, and more useful if you're weighing a move to Plano against Frisco, McKinney, or Celina, is a pricing pattern that ran through 2025 while that implosion was still just a plan on paper. Three of Plano's fastest-growing neighbors saw their median home prices drop by real money last year. Plano's didn't. The gap looks like a demand story. It isn't.
The Puzzle: Same Region, Opposite Direction
Frisco, McKinney, and Celina spent 2025 doing what they've done for most of the past decade: building. And in a year when buyer demand softened under higher mortgage rates, that building caught up with them at the worst possible moment. Celina's median price fell by roughly $90,000 over the course of 2025. McKinney's dropped about $35,000. Frisco slipped a more modest amount, but still moved in the same direction. Plano, sitting in the same metro, breathing the same rate environment, held essentially flat and even edged up slightly.
If you're comparing these cities the way most people do, by pulling up a median price on a portal and treating it as a scoreboard, that split looks like it's telling you something about which market buyers want more. It isn't. It's telling you something about what each city had to sell.
What a Median Actually Measures
A median home price isn't a valuation of any specific house. It's the midpoint of whatever transactions closed that period. When a city's builders are actively releasing new phases, and demand for those new homes softens, builders don't usually hold their price and wait. They introduce a lower-priced product line, cut incentives into the price, or both. Those transactions get folded into the same citywide median as every resale next door. Enough of that activity, and the whole number drifts down, even if the resale homes in established neighborhoods a few miles away haven't lost a dollar.
That's the mechanism behind Frisco, McKinney, and Celina's 2025 numbers. All three are still in active build-out, with builders continuing to release inventory even as buyer urgency cooled from the peak years. When that new supply had to compete harder for buyers, it pulled the city medians down with it.
Plano is a different kind of market almost by geography. It's largely built out. Vacant land for new subdivisions is scarce, which is why the city's growth now comes from redeveloping old sites rather than platting new ones. New construction made up less than one percent of Plano's home sales in 2025. With almost no new-build product to discount, Plano's median stayed close to what it's been for two years: a reflection of resale transactions between established neighborhoods, not a scoreboard of who wants to live there most.
The New Supply Plano Does Have, and Why It's Different
Plano isn't standing still. The most visible project is the former Collin Creek Mall site, a $1 billion, roughly 100-acre redevelopment led by Centurion American Development Group. As of an April 2026 update, 130 homes were occupied on the site with 402 lots delivered to builder partners, and the full plan calls for about 500 attached single-family homes from builders including Ashton Woods, Mattamy Homes, and DRB Homes, alongside 2,300 multifamily units and 300 independent-living residences. Construction on the mixed-use retail and hotel components is expected to continue through 2028.
That's real new supply, but it isn't the kind that competes directly with a detached resale home in an established Plano neighborhood. It's mostly attached product and rental units, aimed at a buyer choosing lower-maintenance living over a traditional single-family footprint. It's a different decision than the one facing someone comparing a resale home in Plano against new construction in Celina or McKinney. That distinction is worth sitting with if you're cross-shopping cities on price alone. A $550,000 new townhome at Collin Creek and a $650,000 resale home in an older Plano neighborhood aren't two prices for the same thing. They're two different products that happen to share a ZIP code.
The AT&T campus adds a second layer, though its effect runs through employment and West Plano's corporate identity rather than through housing supply. The Legacy District, where AT&T is building, has been home to corporate campuses for decades, and the new headquarters reinforces that part of the city as a job center rather than adding meaningfully to the number of homes for sale.
What Money Actually Buys, By Zone
Plano's median price also hides real variation depending on where in the city you're looking, and that matters as much as the citywide number when you're comparing it to a neighbor like Frisco or Celina.
| Zone | Representative ZIP Codes | 2025 Price Pattern |
|---|---|---|
| East Plano | 75074 | Lowest median in the city, near $405,000 |
| Central Plano | 75023, 75025, 75075 | Mid-range, roughly $440,000 to $498,000 |
| West Plano | 75093, 75024 | Highest medians in the city, anchored by the Legacy corridor |
Prices in Plano climb steadily as you move east to west, tracking proximity to the Legacy business park where AT&T, JCPenney, and Frito-Lay have all built or maintained corporate campuses over the years. That gradient means "the Plano median" is really an average of three fairly different markets. A buyer comparing Frisco's citywide number to Plano's citywide number is often really comparing Frisco to West Plano, without realizing East Plano exists at a meaningfully lower price point.
What This Means If You're Actually Comparing Cities
If you're relocating and trying to decide between Plano and a faster-growing neighbor, the median price gap you're seeing on a portal is telling you more about each city's construction pipeline than about which one people want to live in more. A few practical takeaways follow from that.
First, if new construction with current finishes and warranty coverage matters to you, Frisco, McKinney, and Celina simply have far more of it right now, which is also why their medians moved the way they did in 2025. Plano's new-build inventory is concentrated almost entirely in one redevelopment site and skews toward attached product.
Second, if you're comparing a specific listing rather than a citywide statistic, ask which zone of Plano it sits in. A price that looks high next to Celina's median might be an ordinary Central Plano number. A price that looks like a bargain might be East Plano, not a citywide discount.
Third, a flat or rising median in one city and a falling one next door isn't proof of a stronger or weaker market on its own. It's proof of a different mix of what sold. Reading past that mix, to the actual product, the actual ZIP code, and the actual construction pipeline, is what turns a median price from a headline into something you can use to make a decision.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare Cities
Does Plano's flat median mean it's a stronger seller's market than Frisco or Celina right now? Not necessarily. It means fewer new, lower-priced homes entered the sales mix. Individual resale homes in Plano, Frisco, or Celina can behave very differently from their city's overall median depending on condition, location, and pricing strategy.
Will the Collin Creek homes affect resale values in nearby established neighborhoods? The current phase is limited enough, and different enough in product type, that it's unlikely to pull down resale prices for detached homes nearby the way ongoing new-home discounting did in the faster-growing suburbs. That could shift if the multifamily and retail phases scale up significantly by their 2028 target.
Does the AT&T campus mean home prices in West Plano will keep climbing? It reinforces a job center that's been part of West Plano's identity for decades rather than introducing something new. It's one more reason the Legacy corridor commands a premium, not a guarantee of future appreciation.
Comparing cities on a single price point will always miss what's actually happening underneath it. If you're weighing Plano against Frisco, McKinney, Celina, or anywhere else in North Texas and want someone to walk through what a specific address, ZIP code, or price point actually reflects, Everett Shell & Associate Realty is glad to look at it with you. Book a Consultation and we'll get into the specifics together.
