Two buyers can walk out of two different sales offices inside Fields this month holding what looks like the same deal. Same square footage, same $10,000 to $30,000 in "flex cash," same 2-1 rate buydown dropping the first-year payment into a number that finally feels manageable. What neither buyer sees on the price sheet is what happens on January 1 of next year, or what happens the moment that buydown expires. Those two dates, not the number on the contract, decide what the house actually costs.
Fields is the 2,545-acre, roughly $10 billion master-planned community anchored by the PGA of America headquarters and the Omni PGA Frisco Resort, built out by Karahan Cos., Hunt Realty Investments, Chief Partners and Cross Tie Capital. It's also a useful place to see how new-construction pricing in Frisco actually works, because it contains enough different builders, villages and financing packages that the gaps between a "deal" and a real deal show up clearly. The mechanics below apply anywhere new construction is being sold with incentives across North Texas, but Fields is where the comparison is easiest to make side by side.
The Buydown Math That Doesn't Show Up On The Sign
A temporary 2-1 buydown lowers your rate by two percentage points in year one and one point in year two, then reverts to the full note rate in year three. It sounds like the builder is handing you free money, and in a narrow sense they are. But that money has to come from somewhere, and lenders and builders in the DFW market have been open about where: base prices on incentivized homes typically run 2 to 4 percent higher than they would without the promotion, which is how the builder funds the discount points without touching their margin.
Run the numbers on a $332,500 loan and a standard 2-1 structure produces roughly $7,500 in real payment relief over those first two years. That's a genuine number. It's also smaller than what most marketing implies, and it comes with a catch: if you sell or refinance before the buydown period ends, you forfeit whatever relief you haven't collected yet. A family planning to stay five-plus years in a Brookside or East Village home gets real value from this. A buyer who might relocate for a job in eighteen months is paying for a discount they'll never fully use.
There's a second-order effect worth naming. Because the buydown inflates the base price rather than the county's opinion of value, it also raises the comp that the next seller in that same subdivision points to. If you're comparing a builder's incentive package against a resale home nearby, you're not just comparing two prices. You're comparing a price that includes a hidden financing cost against a price that doesn't.
| Temporary buydown (2-1) | Permanent buydown | |
|---|---|---|
| How it works | Rate cut 2 points year one, 1 point year two, reverts year three | Builder pays discount points to lower the rate for the full loan term |
| Best for | Buyers confident their income grows or they'll refinance before year three | Buyers planning to stay long term |
| The catch | Underwriting is usually done at the full note rate, not the discounted one, so it may not increase what you qualify for | Smaller monthly savings than a temporary buydown's first year, but the discount never disappears |
Within Fields, this matters because the villages aren't interchangeable. East Village is built exclusively by Landon Homes, which means there's only one builder's incentive structure to evaluate there. The Preserve has ten builders on its roster, including Alford Homes, Coats Homes, Starside Builders and others building lots from roughly $500,000 to $3 million, each free to structure incentives differently. Shopping within a single community doesn't guarantee you're comparing apples to apples.
January 1 Is The Date That Actually Sets Your Tax Bill
Texas values property as of January 1 each year. For a home still under construction on that date, the county typically assesses it at a partial, incomplete-improvement value rather than what it will be worth finished. That's good news the first year and a trap the second: once the home is complete and occupied, the following January 1 reassessment catches it up to full market value, and the tax bill jumps in a way that has nothing to do with whether local tax rates went up or down.
A homestead exemption softens that jump, but only if you file it. Texas law generally requires filing by April 30 of the year after you close, and it's not automatic. Skip it, and the gap is real money. On a $350,000 new build, missing the homestead filing can add roughly $115 a month to your effective payment, which cancels out close to half of what a typical first-year rate buydown was supposed to save you. The buydown and the exemption are solving different problems, but if you only manage one of them, the other one eats the savings.
Frisco has already made this exemption slightly more generous. The city council raised the homestead exemption from 15 percent to 20 percent, the maximum allowed under state law, a change that took effect for the 2026 tax year and saves the average homeowner about $120 annually on the city's portion of the bill. It's a real, if modest, offset. It doesn't touch the reassessment jump on a newly completed home, which is a different mechanism entirely and typically a much larger number.
Same City, Different Tax Structure Under The House
Here's where two Frisco new builds priced identically on paper can land in very different places monthly, and it has nothing to do with the builder. Fields carries an effective tax rate of roughly 1.64 percent, and the community was built without additional Municipal Utility District or Public Improvement District assessments layered on top. That's notable because a large share of newer Collin County subdivisions do carry MUD or PID charges to fund the roads, water lines and parks the developer built, and those charges sit on top of the base property tax rate rather than being included in it.
Frisco's citywide effective tax rate, across all home ages and price points, runs closer to 1.75 percent. That's not a contradiction. It reflects a mix of older, already-established neighborhoods and newer PID-backed subdivisions averaged together, while Fields represents one specific development that happened to be structured without that extra layer. The practical takeaway is simple: before comparing a builder's price in one Frisco subdivision against another, ask what taxing entities sit under each one. A slightly higher builder price with no MUD or PID can beat a slightly lower price that carries one, and the builder's sales team is rarely the one who volunteers that comparison.
What This Costs In Context
None of this happens in a vacuum. Frisco's resale market has been giving buyers more room to negotiate lately. The median sale price over the three months ending in June 2026 was $675,000, down 2.1 percent from the same period a year earlier, with homes typically taking 42 days to sell. New construction in premium, amenity-heavy communities still commands a real premium over that resale baseline, often landing 10 to 20 percent above comparable existing homes, which is part of why builders lean so heavily on financing incentives rather than price cuts to move inventory.
Those incentives make more sense against the current rate backdrop. The 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.65 percent for the week ending August 20, 2026, essentially flat with where it's sat through most of the year. A builder that can offer a first-year rate in the low 3s through a temporary buydown is offering something an outside lender generally can't match without you paying for it directly, which is exactly why it's worth running the total cost, not just the monthly payment, before deciding whether the builder's package or an independent lender gets you further.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign
- Ask for the base price with no incentives attached, in writing, so you can see what the buydown is actually costing you.
- Get an outside lender quote with no incentive attached and compare total cost over your expected time in the home, not just the first-year payment.
- Ask the builder or the subdivision's HOA whether there's an active MUD or PID assessment, and get the current rate in writing rather than relying on a verbal estimate.
- Ask what the projected taxable value will be once the home is complete and reassessed, not the current under-construction estimate.
- Mark your calendar for the homestead exemption filing deadline the spring after you close. It's the one piece of paperwork in this whole process that's entirely within your control.
The number that determines what a Fields home, or any new Frisco build, actually costs isn't the one on the sales office whiteboard. It's the one that shows up on your second tax bill and the one that appears the month your rate reverts. Both are knowable before you sign. Most buyers just don't ask.
If you're weighing a new build against resale anywhere in Frisco, or trying to compare incentive packages across builders in Fields, Mendez RE Group can walk through the real math with you, in English or Spanish, before you're locked into a contract. Get Your Free Home Valuation and let's talk through what the numbers actually mean for your timeline.
