What a Plano House Really Costs to Own

In most Texas cities the mortgage is the number that decides whether a house is affordable. In Plano it is the tax bill.

A Plano homeowner writes a property tax check most years that would cover a full mortgage payment somewhere else in the state. That is not a complaint about Plano, which gets a lot for the money. It is a warning about how people run the numbers when they buy here, and about two levers almost nobody pulls.

What a Plano house costs to buy right now

The median sale price in Plano was $490,000 as of March 2026, essentially flat year over year, with homes averaging about 43 days on market.

Flat is worth pausing on. After several years of hard appreciation across the Dallas metro, Plano has stopped climbing without falling over, and six weeks on market is a normal, functioning market rather than a frenzy or a stall. If you are waiting for a correction to make the carrying cost work, the market is not currently giving you one.

Four taxing entities sit on a Collin County bill

Your Plano tax bill is not one rate. It is a stack, and for 2025 the adopted rates published by Collin County were:

Plano ISD at $1.039550 per $100 of valuation. City of Plano at $0.437600. Collin County at $0.149343. Collin College at $0.081220.

Add them and the nominal rate lands just above $1.70 per $100. The school district is roughly 61% of that, which matters because the school portion is the part that exemptions reduce. The county itself is the smallest slice on the page, which surprises most people.

The effective rate, which is the number that actually bites

Nominal rates apply to taxable value, not market value, so the honest figure is the effective rate. Ownwell's Collin County data puts Plano at about 1.16% of home value, on a median home value of $480,896 and a median annual bill of $5,672.

That 1.16% is below the Texas median of roughly 1.48% and above the national median near 1.02%. So Plano's rate is not the problem. The base is. A moderate rate on a half-million-dollar house produces a bigger bill than a high rate on a modest one, and $5,672 a year is $473 a month before you have paid for anything else.

What the 2026 homestead exemption changed

Texas voters approved Proposition 13 in November 2025, lifting the general residence homestead exemption from $100,000 to $140,000 effective January 1, 2026. Appraisal districts apply it to qualifying homestead accounts from the 2026 tax year forward.

The extra $40,000 comes off the school district portion of your taxable value, which in Plano is the largest slice of the bill by a wide margin. Confirm the exemption is actually on your account at the Collin Central Appraisal District rather than assuming it carried across from a previous owner or a previous address. An unfiled homestead is the most expensive piece of missing paperwork in Texas residential ownership.

The protest is the lever almost nobody pulls

You cannot change the rate. You can challenge the value, and Texas gives every owner that right annually.

The Texas Comptroller sets the deadline plainly: you have until May 15, or 30 days from the date the appraisal district mails your notice, whichever is later. Note that the clock runs from the mailing date, not the day it lands on your kitchen table.

You can protest more than just the number. The grounds include disagreement with the appraised value, errors in the appraisal records, exemptions, special appraisal qualification, and circuit breaker limitations. Records errors are worth checking first because they are the easiest thing to win on. If the district has your square footage, bathroom count, lot size or condition wrong, that is a factual correction rather than an argument about opinion.

At a formal hearing the appraisal review board hears evidence from you and from the district. You can appear in person, by phone, by videoconference, or by written affidavit, which means missing a weekday hearing is not a reason to skip the protest. The board's decision binds only that tax year, so a win does not carry forward automatically and neither does a loss.

Insurance: better than the Texas average, still well above the national one

Insure.com put the average annual homeowners premium in Plano at $4,175, measured on $300,000 of dwelling coverage with $100,000 liability and a $1,000 deductible, using 2025 data for owners with good credit. That is about $1,600 more than the national average of $2,575.

North Texas is hail country, and roof age drives that premium harder than almost anything else on the quote. Get a real quote on the specific address before you are under contract. A twelve-year-old roof and a two-year-old roof on identical houses do not produce similar numbers.

Plano water is allocation-based, and the winter quarter sets it

This is the piece of Plano ownership that catches people, and it is worth understanding before your first summer.

Under the rates effective January 1, 2026, residential water is billed in tiers against an allocation: Tier I at $6.47 per 1,000 gallons up to 100% of that allocation, and Tier II at $12.04 per 1,000 gallons above it. Sewer is charged at $5.46 per 1,000 gallons and is calculated from your Winter Quarterly Average rather than your actual summer usage.

Read that twice. Your winter water consumption sets the sewer figure you pay all year, and it influences the allocation your summer irrigation is measured against. A household that runs heavy indoor water use in January is buying itself a higher bill in July. Plano is also absorbing an 8% wholesale water increase from the North Texas Municipal Water District, so the direction of travel is up.

On power, EnergySage reported an average residential rate near 13 cents per kilowatt-hour in Plano as of August 2026, with an average monthly bill around $207 on roughly 1,551 kWh. Treat that as an upper-middle estimate rather than a median, since the sample comes from people shopping for quotes.

What a $490,000 Plano house actually costs each month

Take the median price of $490,000, put 20% down, and finance the rest over 30 years at 6.71%, which is where Freddie Mac put the average 30-year fixed rate for the week ending 3 September 2026. Principal and interest come to about $2,532 a month. Add property tax at the 1.16% effective rate, roughly $474, and homeowners insurance at the Plano average, about $348. That is a PITI payment near $3,354 a month.

Utilities sit on top of that, not inside it: electricity near $207, plus water, sewer and drainage against your allocation. So the honest all-in figure for a median Plano house is comfortably north of $3,500 a month. Of those lines, principal and interest are fixed the day you sign. The two that keep moving without asking you are the tax, which follows the appraisal, and the insurance, which follows the carrier’s view of your roof.

When the carrying cost becomes the reason to sell

Most people who contact us about a Plano house are not unhappy with the house. The monthly number stopped working. A retirement on a fixed income against a rising appraisal. A rental that no longer covers its own taxes. An inherited property sitting empty and still billing. A relocation that left two housing payments running at once.

In a 43-day market with real equity, listing is usually the right answer and we will say so. A cash sale earns its discount by being fast and certain, and if you do not need speed or certainty you are paying for something you are not using.

Where it fits is narrower: a house that will not photograph well, a repair list you are not going to fund, or a deadline you cannot move. If that is your situation, start here for the Plano side, we buy houses plano, and the statewide version of the same question is covered here: sell my house fast texas. The same arithmetic done for a very different market is in this breakdown of what a house really costs to own in Amarillo, which is a useful contrast if you are weighing a move within Texas.

Three numbers to check before you decide anything

Pull your actual notice of appraised value from the Collin Central Appraisal District and confirm the homestead exemption is on the account. Put your protest deadline in the calendar the day that notice arrives, because it is either May 15 or 30 days from the mailing date and the later one is easy to miscount. And look at your last twelve months of water bills, not the average, so you can see what the winter quarter did to the summer.

Those three take an afternoon, they are free, and they are the ones people skip.

Figures cited here come from published sources: adopted 2025 tax rates published by Collin County; Ownwell's Collin County property tax data; median sale price and days on market as reported for March 2026; Insure.com's Plano homeowners insurance averages using 2025 data; the City of Plano water and sewer rate schedule effective January 1, 2026; EnergySage's Plano electricity figures as of August 2026; and protest deadlines and procedures as published by the Texas Comptroller. Rates and premiums change annually and vary by parcel and by policy. This is general information about how Texas property tax works, not tax or legal advice; for advice about your own account, consult a licensed Texas professional.