Plano's Planning and Zoning Commission gave final site plan approval to AT&T's $1.35 billion global headquarters on September 22. The same week, the city's home price data barely moved. That gap between corporate news and housing math is the whole story right now, and it's worth understanding before you read too much into either number.
If you're comparing Plano to Frisco, McKinney, or Celina, you've probably already seen the AT&T headline and wondered whether now is the moment to lock in before prices catch up. The honest answer is that the catch-up, if it happens, is scheduled for 2028 at the earliest. What's actually showing up in Plano's numbers today predates AT&T by years.
What Just Got Approved on Legacy Drive
The project itself is real and it is large. AT&T's new campus will sit on 54 acres at 5400 Legacy Drive, the former home of Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems, which opened in 1985 and sat vacant for more than seven years after EDS left. The new campus totals roughly 2.3 million square feet, with a 280-foot illuminated tower topped by AT&T's branded globe as its most visible feature. CEO John Stankey described it as "an iconic tower, a foundational part of the campus."
The city's incentive package, approved by Plano City Council back in February, includes $20 million split evenly between a campus redevelopment grant and a job-creation grant, plus a 65 percent property tax rebate on the AT&T campus itself running 25 years. In exchange, AT&T has committed to a minimum $1.35 billion construction investment, a 25-year stay on the site, and 10,000 jobs generated by the end of 2039. This week's Planning and Zoning vote was the last procedural hurdle before construction can move forward.
None of that is speculative anymore. What's still speculative is when it shows up in a house price.
Why the Timeline Matters More Than the Number
AT&T is targeting partial occupancy as early as the second half of 2028, with full consolidation of its Dallas, Plano, and Irving offices completed before its downtown Dallas lease expires in 2030. That's a two to four year runway between this week's approval and actual employees showing up to work in Plano in meaningful numbers.
Compare that to the announcement date. AT&T told employees it was leaving downtown Dallas back on January 5, 2026. Nine months passed between that announcement and this week's final site plan approval, and construction hasn't started yet. If a headquarters announcement alone were enough to move a housing market, Plano's 2026 price data should already show it. It doesn't, because home buyers don't typically bid up a ZIP code based on a company's occupancy date four years out. They react to jobs that exist now.
That matters for how you read every other number in this post.
Plano Already Won 2025 Without AT&T's Help
Here's the part that gets skipped in most coverage of the AT&T deal: Plano's home prices didn't need AT&T to hold up in 2025. While three of its closest Collin County neighbors saw median prices fall, Plano's ticked up.
| City | 2025 Median Price Change |
|---|---|
| Plano | +$2,000 |
| Frisco | -$6,000 |
| McKinney | -$35,000 |
| Celina | -$90,000 |
That divergence happened during a year when AT&T's headquarters was, at most, a rumor circulating through Legacy business park real estate circles. Plano's advantage came from something more structural: a resale-dominated market with little available land left for new subdivisions, sitting inside a metro where growth cities like Frisco and Celina were still absorbing a heavier pipeline of new construction. When new supply is constrained, existing homes hold their value differently than in cities still building outward.
That's the mechanism behind Plano's 2025 outlier status, and it was already in motion before AT&T picked a site. The AT&T approval doesn't create that structural advantage. It reinforces the version of it tied to jobs, specifically in West Plano, and only once those jobs actually exist.
West Plano's Premium Was Built Before This Vote
If you're cross-shopping Plano against Frisco or Prosper, the price gap you're seeing concentrates almost entirely in West Plano, and that premium predates this week's news by years. West Plano already sits inside the Legacy corridor alongside Toyota North America, Liberty Mutual, JPMorgan Chase, and FedEx Office, all of which built out the Shops at Legacy and the surrounding business park before AT&T ever looked at the old EDS site. Homes in the strongest Plano ISD feeder patterns already command a 10 to 20 percent premium over comparable homes in neighboring feeders, driven by school assignment and proximity to that employment base, not by anything AT&T has announced.
What AT&T's move does is add another anchor tenant to a corridor that was already doing the heavy lifting. The company's own materials frame the site as replacing "a project that helped transform northwest Plano into a national business hub" decades ago, which is a fair description of what the Legacy area has been since the EDS campus first opened. AT&T isn't introducing corporate density to West Plano. It's occupying a gap in density that's been sitting vacant since 2019.
For a buyer comparing West Plano to Frisco's newer luxury inventory or Prosper's higher median, the honest framing is that West Plano is already pricing in an established, already-proven employment base. AT&T adds a second one on a multi-year delay, not a discount you can capture today.
The Contrast Sitting Two Miles Away at Collin Creek
For a sense of what a catalyst looks like when it's already showing up in closed sales, look at the Collin Creek Mall site, a few miles from the AT&T campus. The former mall, which closed in 2019 after four decades as Plano's first major shopping destination, is now a billion dollar mixed-use redevelopment led by Centurion American Development Group. As of this spring, 130 homes were already occupied on the site, with 402 lots delivered to builders including Ashton Woods, DRB Homes, and Mattamy Homes, and more lots releasing through the third quarter of 2026. The project's multifamily phase is expected to break ground in late 2026 and take 22 months to complete.
Collin Creek is instructive precisely because it's the opposite kind of project from AT&T. It's residential first, which means its housing impact shows up in closed sale counts almost immediately as homes get built and occupied. AT&T is jobs first, which means its housing impact waits for employees to physically relocate, a process that won't meaningfully begin until 2028. Both are real growth catalysts inside the same city limits. They're just running on different clocks, and confusing one clock for the other is how a buyer ends up either overpaying now for a spike that isn't structurally possible yet, or waiting on the sidelines past the point where the underlying value was already there.
Quick Answers for Buyers Weighing the Timeline
When will AT&T employees actually start working from the Legacy Drive campus? AT&T is targeting partial occupancy as early as the second half of 2028, with full consolidation of its Dallas, Plano, and Irving offices completed before its current downtown Dallas lease expires in 2030.
Does AT&T's tax rebate affect other property owners' bills in Plano? The 65 percent rebate applies specifically to AT&T's own campus property tax bill over 25 years, part of the $20 million incentive package the city approved in February in exchange for AT&T's construction commitment and its requirement to generate 10,000 jobs by 2039.
Is the Collin Creek Mall redevelopment connected to the AT&T project? No. They're separate developments a few miles apart. Collin Creek is Centurion American's mixed-use project on the former mall site, already producing occupied homes. AT&T's campus is a corporate relocation on the old EDS site in the Legacy business park. The two are worth comparing only because they show what a housing catalyst looks like on two very different timelines within the same city.
If you're trying to figure out where your specific budget lands relative to West Plano's established premium or a growth suburb still absorbing new construction, that's a conversation worth having before you make an offer, not after. Mendez RE Group works both sides of this exact comparison for families relocating into North Texas, and we're happy to walk through what a given ZIP code's timeline actually means for your move.
