If you pull up Light Farms' own homeowner page today, it tells you the municipal utility district charges $1.05 for every $100 of assessed value. That number has been sitting on the community website since at least last year. Meanwhile, the actual board that sets that rate met on September 22, 2025, reviewed the district's finances, and adopted $0.8946 per $100 for the year, down from $0.9284 the year before. Two different numbers, both technically true at different moments, and only one of them reflects what a buyer will actually owe.
That gap between marketing copy and the number a district board actually voted on is the whole story of buying in Celina right now. The city's median price gets you in the door. It tells you almost nothing about what you'll pay every year afterward, because that depends entirely on which financing structure sits underneath the specific community you're looking at, not on the city as a whole.
The Same List Price Can Hide Two Different Bills
Celina has grown from roughly 15,000 residents in 2020 to more than 40,000 in 2026, and almost all of that growth arrived through master-planned communities built faster than the city's general tax base could fund the roads, water lines, and amenities underneath them. Developers filled that gap with two different tools: Municipal Utility Districts and Public Improvement Districts. Both add a charge on top of standard property taxes. They work in almost opposite ways, and which one sits under a given community changes the math more than the sale price does.
Here's how three well-known Celina communities and the city's older, unassessed neighborhoods actually compare:
| Community | Financing structure | What it funds | How it's billed | What we know about the rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light Farms | Municipal Utility District (Collin County MUD No. 1) | Water, sewer, drainage, roads | Ad valorem tax, adjusts annually | $0.8946 per $100 for 2025, down from $0.9284 in 2024 |
| Mustang Lakes | Public Improvement District | Clubhouse, pools, 20-acre park, trails | Fixed annual assessment | HOA runs $150 to $190 a month depending on lot size |
| Mosaic | Public Improvement District | Community infrastructure and amenities | Fixed assessment over a 30-year term | Total tax rate of 1.98 percent, HOA at $148 a month |
| Older, established Celina | None | Standard city, county, and school services | Standard property tax only | Citywide median effective rate of 1.86 percent as of the 2025 tax year |
That last row is the baseline every other row gets compared against. A median-value Celina home outside a MUD or PID pays about $9,493 a year in property taxes, based on a median home value near $509,600. Everything above that row is layered on top of a comparable baseline.
Why MUD Rates Actually Go Down (And Why That Timing Matters)
A Municipal Utility District exists to let a developer build water and sewer infrastructure before the city's own tax base can support it, then repay that debt through an annual tax charged only to homes inside the district. That charge is not permanent in the sense people usually assume. As Light Farms fills in with more rooftops, the same bond debt gets divided across more homeowners, and the rate per $100 tends to fall over time. The drop from $0.9284 to $0.8946 in one year at Collin County MUD No. 1 is that mechanism working as designed.
What this means practically: the rate is not fixed for the life of your ownership, but it also isn't something you can lock in at closing. The district's board reset it in late September last year, and boards typically revisit rates on a similar annual cycle. If you're comparing a Light Farms listing today against one that closed eight months ago, don't assume the tax figure on either listing is still current. Ask for the district's most recently adopted rate directly, not the number printed in a builder's brochure or a community's own marketing page.
To put the current rate in real terms: on a $550,000 home, the MUD line item alone comes to roughly $4,920 a year, just for that one taxing entity. Compare that to the $9,493 an average Celina home outside a MUD pays across every taxing entity combined, county, school district, city, and everything else. In other words, the single utility district charge in a MUD community can run close to half of what an entire tax bill costs somewhere else in the same city.
PIDs Work In The Opposite Direction
A Public Improvement District doesn't fund water and sewer lines. It funds the things that make a community feel finished: a clubhouse, a resort pool, a private lake, landscaped entries, trails. Celina's own planning documents describe PIDs as tools that let a city support high-standard infrastructure and amenities without putting the full cost on the general tax base, with each district governed by a specific service and assessment plan that spells out the timeline and cost.
The practical difference for a buyer is that a PID assessment is fixed once the bonds are sold, so you can find out at closing exactly what you owe and for how long, rather than watching a rate move year to year. Mosaic, sitting in Celina but zoned to Prosper ISD, carries its assessment over a 30-year term alongside a 1.98 percent total tax rate and $148 monthly HOA dues. Mustang Lakes bundles its PID cost into a broader HOA structure that ranges from $150 to $190 a month depending on lot size, funding a clubhouse, tennis courts, and a 20-acre central park.
Unlike MUD taxes, a PID assessment can often be prepaid in a lump sum, which some buyers use to simplify their long-term budget or make a home more attractive to a future buyer who might be wary of an ongoing charge.
What This Actually Means When You're Comparing Two Houses
None of this means a MUD or PID community is a worse buy than an older, unassessed neighborhood. It means the sticker price two agents show you on a portal search is not the number to compare. A $550,000 home in Light Farms with an MUD charge and a $550,000 home in an older Celina subdivision without one are not the same purchase, even though they'll show up identically in a basic search filter.
The only reliable way to compare them is to convert every recurring charge, MUD or PID line item, HOA dues, into an annual figure and stack it against the home's full tax bill before you write an offer. Texas law requires sellers and builders to disclose MUD and PID status before you sign a contract, but the number on that disclosure can lag behind the district's most current adopted rate, exactly the gap we opened with. Pulling the specific parcel on the Collin Central Appraisal District or Denton Central Appraisal District site, and checking Celina's own public improvement district page for the service and assessment plan of the specific community, gets you the number that actually matters rather than the one that's easiest to find.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Tour
Does a home's online estimate already include MUD or PID costs? Generally no. Third-party valuation tools tend to reflect base property tax estimates, not district-specific assessments, so the real monthly cost of a home in a MUD or PID community typically runs higher than what shows up in a basic search.
Can I avoid this entirely by buying in an older part of Celina? Yes, homes outside the newer master-planned communities generally sit at the standard city, county, and school tax rate with no additional district charge. That inventory is simply a smaller slice of what's currently for sale, given how much of Celina's growth has happened through master-planned development in the last several years.
Do these charges ever go away? MUD taxes continue until the district's bonds are retired, at which point the district can dissolve and the area may be annexed into the city proper. PID assessments run for the fixed term set at the time the bonds were sold, and can sometimes be paid off early by the homeowner.
Comparing Celina communities on total cost, not just list price, is the kind of homework that's easy to skip and expensive to skip wrong. If you're weighing a specific address against another and want the real numbers pulled before you write an offer, the team at Mendez RE Group will walk through the district, the rate, and the math with you, in English or Spanish, before you fall in love with a floor plan.
