Allen Texas: Is It Even the Same City Anymore? (What Buyers & Sellers Need to Know)

Is Allen, Texas, even the same city it was two years ago in reality? Yes, but in lifestyle, not at all. So much has changed in Allen that, uh, we're here to talk about it for the whole show today. What's happening for homeowners. What's happening for potential buyers and sellers, uh, students, athletes in the area, and why does that matter for you as a DFW area home buyer, home seller, home owner, someone who's interested in the market for any of those reasons, including potentially investing or just enjoying where you live now for so long. Alan was sort of a small suburb North of things, but Alan has grown up. Alan has matured and Alan has had its struggles. So Alan has become something much more significant, obviously size wise, population wise, pretty darn well known for their school because of football, because of football stadiums, because of foundation damage. So we're going to get into it today and talk a little bit more about what's new, what's different about the current identity of Alan, Texas. And then of course, we'll get into the real estate aspects because this is DFW real estate weekly. And we do talk about all things, Dallas, Fort Worth, residential real estate. And when I say we, that's because it is not just me. We've got full price, Courtney in the house, yelling from the back, right into the fountain, yelling at all. We also have the Yanni Donnie, the English wonder team leader at the high. That was the least yelling that I've ever heard. Call me. Were you proud or sad? Sad. Okay. I am always muted. And so it just, I, I get anxious. Yeah, exactly. All right, folks. This is DFW real estate weekly, and we are talking to Alan, Texas today. And the reason we're speaking about Alan is because a lot is changing, has changed in what's not changing. You know what I mean? But Alan's gone through a significant, uh, phase of growing up, maturing, building out, and certainly some unique school related changes. So we're going to get into what is true about Alan, Texas, what's changed, uh, and how that would impact real estate decisions as we make our way through this episode, but, um, big picture. Alan is in fact, a community North of Dallas that a lot of people think very, very highly of the people love to live in. And that has a lot more to offer today, even than it did when it was a really popular community just a couple of years ago. So you've got, you know, massive expansion of retail, uh, apartments, condos, townhomes, some new neighborhood developments. Uh, you've got significant changes with Alan independent school district, and then you have a little bit of movement in residential inventory, pricing, access to properties. And there's a couple of nuggets. You just can't get anywhere other than DFW real estate weekly with Todd for money, because we're out there beating the streets every day. Our agents are team members. Several of our team members live in or right near Alan. And of course we're helping people buy and sell a bunch of houses. So Ian, if I was just going to say to you, like, if you think about the different areas of Alan, what comes to mind, how would you label them? What are you thinking of? What's what is an hour? Yeah. So I think the West side of Alan is where you're going to find, um, newer, more expensive homes on that side of town compared to the East side of Alan, where it's going to be a little bit older, more quote fields residentially, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I like a Lee at the end of that word. Um, you've got, uh, more, so you've got some multi-use kind of spread throughout Alan. You've got Waters Creek, which is more on the South side of Alan, right off 75. But you've got areas like Chicken and Pickle on just South of 121, almost into McKinney, so that 121 is the border, right? So, um, so you've got areas around there for places, there's different bars and restaurants. There's newer developments on that West side of Alan compared to the East side and the South side, but tons of different places, you know, the Cottonwood Creek area, you've got the Woodlands, uh, you've got, like I said, Waters Creek. So it's just a big mix of different areas. So North, South, East, and West. Alan has a lot to offer and really overall is a newer community relative to most of surrounding DFW, but to your point, the East side, although still really attractive, it has some slightly older development and is much more exclusively residential, although it's not exclusive, um, to the West, which has more mixed use and some commercial development. Courtney, when you think Alan and you're thinking different parts, what stands out, you don't have to go through the whole, whole four areas, but what, what jumps out at you? What do you like? What do you think of? What's exciting? What's new? What do you hear? It's okay. If it's nothing. I mean, I've just heard about this farm place. Do you want me to talk about that? Talk about it. What have you heard? Well, just that it is this like Alan is wanting to circle up kind of around this big development that used to be this family farm and it's just, it's supposed to be this giant hub for the city to eat, work, play, but I, you know, I don't know, maybe like, like a response to legacy West. Yeah. So for example, uh, I say for example, let's go back cities do this, right? So cities want to, to develop, to plan and it doesn't always work out so far. And Alan, right. So, um, the community, um, and developers have developed about 130, 140 ish acre area, um, with everything you could imagine, right? So you've got your residential retail townhome, um, condo type stuff. Um, and it's the city of Allen saying, you know, we would like to have this draw this multi-use development. It's easily accessible from highways. You're talking one 21 and Alma, right? So you can get North, South, East, and West very simply. You can get up out to McKinney over to Frisco and Plano down to Richardson and Dallas over to Fairview and beyond. So, you know, that, that's, that's the recipe, the formula for a big mixed use development, that's going to work. Alan typically or lately has the demand, has the money, you know, the people are there that are willing to pay for nice homes, nice retail, nice restaurants, all these things. Um, and so there's a lot of optimism around the farm and this, you know, large development, um, these things always have their challenges. Not everybody wants this stuff to happen. Some people really mourn the fact that that was a farm and there's less farms around, some people move to Allen because they like being surrounded by fun. This is just a path of progress. This is just how things go. And Alan is experiencing that in a lot of ways. And probably 10 or 12 years ago on the show, we were talking about Plano was experiencing some of this where he didn't been on every single list as one of the hot, uh, you know, suburbs, and it was starting to mature a little bit and there were areas that weren't brand new anymore. Well, Alan is even newer Matt significantly, but it's beginning to experience some of that. And so cities do things like this and say, Hey, we'd like to answer that to partner with developers or support developers in these big draw type developments. And so the farm is that, you know, you've got great location. Uh, you've got this hub, which should bring in other development, other residential, other commercial, other office, other restaurants and all that kind of stuff. Um, and it, it, it should help Alan mature into a full spectrum community where you don't just have new affordable housing, you've got some newer stuff, some older stuff, small, medium, large, different prices. You have a variety of experiences, access location. So all that's happening with this farm development, it's fairly early stage, but it is cool, I will say. My opinion is that it's pretty darn cool. That entertainment core has all sorts of cool restaurants, little microbrewery setups, live music, entertainment, bars, family oriented things, um, not so kid friendly things. Not, not that it's inappropriate in any way, but like, you know, bars and restaurants and things. So lots of, lots of options there. I mean, like you said, kind of an alternative to the legacy West, but they're not trying to do the same thing. It's not a necessarily a comp to that, but it's an alternative to that. Or like Ian already referenced waters Creek to the South. And then that, at that Stacy exit and Alan, you basically got outlet malls and endless box stores and. You know, all the restaurants you could ever want. So Alan's trying to fill in those gaps of what do we not have? What can we offer? And this is filling in just about every sounds like it's got like a lake and some walking trails. There's a lot of similarities between Alan and play to that's what I was. Yeah. But I think one of the big differences is Alan is small, like it doesn't stretch as far and North kind of be anywhere you want within Alan and you're not that far from any of the main highways or any of the other, you know, populated, like popular areas of other cities. Like you kind of just, it's just kind of ideal location. I agree. And I, again, I think we're agreeing that Alan is today. What Plano probably was 15 or 20 years ago and has the potential to maybe be that big, it's not as much land mass, but all that's to say it's very much in demand. And this is, seems to be a, a filling in of almost anything that Alan at this point didn't have yet. Uh, it's a duplication of some things. Uh, it's a keep people local and not have to commute and go elsewhere. Kind of deal. You've got the office, commercial, residential, retail restaurants. And then like Courtney was saying, you have some kind of outdoor balancing of parks and lakes and hiking trails and green space. So you're not just like, you know, locked in by development. Now, one of the other major, major factors for Alan. And again, that has changed a lot recently, um, is the school district. And we're going to get to that in just a minute. But before we do that, Ian, I did want to talk a little bit, just hardcore residential real estate, meaning like just brass tacks. What are the numbers? What's the math? How does this work? An entry-level home. And Alan has changed a lot. When I got into the business and, and DFW 20 something years ago, most of the entry-level homes in Allen were East side. They were smaller and they were relative to the surrounding areas. Very affordable. You know, your people were buying in the low two hundreds. Within the last two years, it changed a lot until then, but in the last two years, we've had even more change. So talk to me really quickly. If I want an entry-level home in Allen, what am I looking at? So you're looking at somewhere around $300,000. You are going to be mostly on the East side of 75. Like we said, those are the old, older homes, uh, smaller neighborhoods, but you are going to be more than likely on the East side of 75, 1700 ish square feet of right around 300,000. Yeah. Just a lot of three bed, two baths, smaller lot, not bad, but no tight neighborhood lot. Uh, similar homes, one or two developers, one or two builders, building out big communities, grid, you know, North, South, East, West grid pattern with the roads. Easy to get around less commercial development, just tons of neighborhoods, very, very, very family. Right. Okay. So let's say I've got a little more budget and I'm not entry level, but I'm not like crazy luxury. What are my options in that one? Yeah. So we look at kind of a median price point. We're going to be in the $525,000 range. Okay. That's gone up quite a bit since, you know, 10 years ago. It's going to get you quite a bit more too. It's going to get you around 2,600 ish square feet. And you're going to find that kind of all throughout Allen in different pockets. It's not isolated to one specific area. You're going to find it in the North and the South and the East and the West. So you're going to find it a little bit of everything. And you're going to find three beds, four beds, even a good bit of five bedroom homes in that 2,600 square foot range. And that 500,000 range, this is no longer as much about what can I get, but where can I get what I want? And so, yes, you're, you can buy a home for 500 ish, almost anywhere. Uh, you can buy some larger lot properties, all that kind of stuff. Um, there's certainly quite a bit of options in the townhome, uh, even some zero lot lines stuff in that mid range as well. Um, and then the top range is basically limitless, but tell me a little bit more, if I'm looking, say a million dollars or more, where, where, what, how, if you're in that million dollars and upwards price point, you're looking at at least 4,500 square feet, more than likely, and like we had said earlier, that's going to be primarily on that West side of how, especially the Northwest side, if you get to one 21 and over on that direction, that's where you're going to find the majority of those million dollar plus properties. Yeah. I'd say far West, Northwest don't sleep on some of the pockets on the East side or there there's no, there's no like ugly, bad parts of how there's just some. Larger lots, newer space access to some golf courses and stuff like that. So you're, you're seeing prices go up lot size, house size go up West and North. Okay. So big picture though, five hundreds about the mid point, a little, a little more than 500 is kind of the mid point on what houses are going to call a single family detached residential property. Um, it was on this like crazy, just the chart was going straight up. Prop values were going up, up, up, up, up competition was up. Then we kind of had, you know, a global pandemic demand went down a bit and Alan, I would say has stabilized really nicely, not in a bad way. It's not like, Ooh, Alan home values dip. It's like, no, no. We came back down to reality after kind of an unmanageable rise. And now Alan makes sense. There's give and take buyers can buy there. If they have budget sellers can all almost always sell there. It's got a reasonable, healthy pace in the market. Things go up, they come down. Nothing. It doesn't, every single house doesn't sell instantly, but some homes struggle, but most homes are going to go up and go down with some back and forth between buyers and sellers. It's a very reasonable, approachable, healthy market. I'm just going to ask a question a little off script here. Um, did y'all get your property taxes recently? Yes. Mine only went up by 2000. Yeah, I think we'll do a whole show on that soon, but I think just to use Alan as an example, you just got me thinking about it with like stabilizing home value. It was like, Oh, like I'm not in Allen. I'm in Plano, but I'm like, Oh, they've, they've decided like we're going to stabilize them. The data is forcing them to do that. So to use Alan as an example, they're looking around and they're like, okay, cool. Homes in Allen are selling fairly similar to what they were selling for last year. Certainly the good ones are going up. The bad ones aren't in the ones in the middle. If they're going up, they're going up little by little, which is how things historically go. Um, so Alan represents most of DFW in that way. And then I bet a lot of people getting their property valuations for tax purposes, saw a slight increase. Some probably saw no change. And then a few that are really nice that did sell. And that sale was reported, probably went up a bunch because it went up commensurate with the increase in sale value. So all that to say, uh, the, the median, which is an unreliable number days on market is like 50 to 60. Um, so, uh, homes are taking a little bit longer to sell an element that stabilizing we've talked about, but you're talking about, you know, six to eight weeks, seven ish weeks on average. Um, average is a little bit lower. Um, and that there's nothing wrong with that. That sounds like a lot compared to people that got used to like one week, but that's a pretty healthy market. Nothing scary about those numbers at all. Um, and then Alan just has good demand, good supply. Homes are still being built a little bit. It's a market you can come into and go out of without a lot of like dangerous, scary obstacles, uh, tons of jobs in the region. And the reason I say region is a lot of people live in Allen. They go work in Frisco. They work in McKinney. They might be working in Plano. They might even be driving into Dallas and that's still not that bad of a drive for me. So the region around Allen is great for employment, um, healthcare, travel, recreation, because of its access to major highways, you can get just about anywhere you need to get without, without any real difficulty, including, you know, parks, lakes, recreation, all that good stuff. So we always want to take a quick peek. Anytime we're talking about a specific location and check on homes on land, because that's one of the two major things we specialize in great neighborhoods and big backyard property. So, um, Ian, let's go back to the data. Normally when we say homes on land, we mean one to 10 acres or half an acre to 10 acres or whatever, not farm and ranch, but not your typical neighborhood. There's a decent bit of that in Allen, but not a lot of it changes hands. So we're talking about in the last couple of years, Allen looks different. I would say it's different because less of those homes are changing hands. What do you see in the data? Yeah. In fact, in the last one year, uh, anything that was a home on land between one and 10 acres, uh, there was actually only four of them that sold in the entire year. Now, if you go down to about a half acre, that number goes up almost triple to 11 to 11. So it's just not that many. To your point, when people have a home that's on that type of property like this one, yeah, especially in a place like Allen, right? So you're Allen. I would say is, you know, part of the Metroplex. You're not outer ring. You're not out of the bubble yet. You're very much in it. We just talked about all the different places that are super easy to get to from Allen. So this is one of those places where you're like, man, I'm in town, but I also have a huge yard. And so people grab those and don't want to go. That also has a lot to say about sort of the age and maturity of Allen, which is still very much a family school focused community. And so we'll get into that here a bit in a second as well. Um, one of the things that's interesting is if you do step outside of Allen and you begin to look at Parker to the South and the West and Lucas to the West and Fairview to the North, you're going to find that there's more properties that have that one to 10 acres. In fact, right now there's 62 homes that's on the market in those particular areas in that wants to make it. And over the last year, 150 of them. Right. So Alan sits at least to the East, especially surrounded by more large lot communities. It is more of a traditional quarter acre, fifth acre lot type community into the West. You do see some larger homes, but they're neighbor to them. So maybe a third of an acre to half of an acre potentially, but not your acreage home type deals, big neighborhood. Um, so that's what that's, those are the details. That's the map. Now, what is one of the main, if not the main driver of Allen, Texas is the schools. So you may be from New York and if you have only ever heard of Allen, Texas once, it is likely because you heard about the football, football stadium at Allen high school, which for quite a while was the single largest high school football stadium in America, probably in the world or else they would be bigger than America. I think now it may be the second largest tomball or somebody else might have built a slightly bigger one. I saw something about that, but in some ways that speaks to sort of the philosophy of Allen ISD, which is like tons of kids at one high school. We've talked about Frisco. They went a very different route, a lot less kids at lots of different high schools. So what has come with that over the last couple of years? And we opened this episode by saying, is Allen even the same community? It was two years ago. We talked about a lot of change. Nowhere has there been more change in Allen than in the school. So we have to bring in, uh, the mom of our show, who's at least as attentive to schools as the dads. Although I think in the spectrum of dads, we're pretty attentive to our kids schools, but all right, let's go to the, to the, to our resident mom. When you just, when you see broadly all the change in an hour, like what, what rises to the surface where if somebody asked you, like, what's going on over there, what would you tell them? Like, these are the big things that have changed in Allen schools. Well, that they're like redrawing, redrawing the what? Just pictures. They love their, uh, a lot of doodling. So what Courtney is referring to is the, who goes to what school, those boundary lines, those districting lines, those, um, which, what school is your campus for where you live that's changed for a lot of people, and that's not something that happens a whole lot. So, you know, maybe you buy a house cause you want your child to go to the elementary school that is really stressful. And then you stay in that house and somehow the school your kid goes to changes, some of that has happened in over the last couple of years, the populations of the different campuses, the different schools and Allen have changed. So some schools have been overpopulated and some schools were actually under populated and from a financial perspective, the district has to make some changes to say, well, we can't keep funding that school if it's only half full and we can't sustain this school if it's over capacity. So there've been some campuses that have been sort of consolidated or closed. There've been some other campuses that have had to reroute who goes there to try to right size the attendance per campus. Um, suffice it to say, not everybody agrees with that. Not everybody appreciates that. Some people are excited. Oh, we used to go to this school, but we actually liked that school better. And now that's our home school. Some people felt the opposite. We really liked the school we went to and now our children are having to go to that other campus that we don't like as much. Now, regardless of why people like or don't like it, what their criteria for a good school or school they like more or like less, that's, that's not for us to deal with, but suffice it to say, in the last couple of years, there have been a lot of people really happy about the situation, probably more people not so happy about the situation. And I can't imagine being the administrators that have to sort all this out. Obviously funding is a big piece of that. So in that way, Allen is a very different place than it was two years ago. People go to different schools. Some schools are no longer open. Other schools have larger or smaller capacity. Obviously there's some right fitting of staff that's going on here. So Allen schools have been through quite a bit of. Let's just say change in the last couple of years. So two campuses were either closed or repurposed the right term here. It's not the district lines because people are still in the same district, but it's like the zoning for which elementary school you go. That's probably not the right word, but we're going to use it. Um, the lines have been redrawn for which, which school campus your, your children would attend. Um, and then hundreds and hundreds of students are at different campuses. Um, so that's a big change from a real estate perspective. The thing that seems to come up, and this happened in Frisco years ago, too. It's happened in Richardson when you own a home and you bought that home either for the reason of where would my kids go to school or you bought it and where your children would go to school was a factor, but let me present something to you that might, you might not be thinking about, you may not have children at all or care, but the school that that house is zoned to does affect its value. And so some people care about ratings. Some people care about walkability. Some people care about the programs that school offers. Some people literally care about what it looks like. It doesn't matter what people care about. It's a free country, but when you own a home and you had one school situation, and now it changes and you have a different one that can change the value or the desirability or the tax value of that home. So we are obviously keeping an eye on these things for the real estate purposes. And if you were considering buying, selling, making a move, refinancing, that's something you would want to know about. So hopefully that information has been valuable to you. Allen, Texas was two years ago, a great place to live and is still right now today, a phenomenal place to live, but lots has changed. We wanted to get this information to you. If you have questions, you can always find us online at Todd from money team.com. If you're catching the audio of this, reach out, leave us a review, our information is somewhere near that. Shoot us, shoot us a call or a text or whatever you like. If you're catching the video somewhere, someplace, you can just comment below. The best thing to do is just to find us online at Todd from money team.com. Then you can call, text, chat, message, whatever you want. We'd be happy to help you buy, sell, invest, enjoy your home in Allen, Texas, or anywhere in North Texas or anywhere in the country. We can refer you to great agents that we coach and consult with all over the country as well. We love Allen. Allen's a great place. Been through a lot of change, but let's be honest, what is changing in America these days? So if we can help you with anything related to your real estate, holler at us. We'd love to earn your trust, but we're also open to adding value in your life, even if you're not buying and selling right now, catch us online at Todd from money team.com or we'll get you on the next episode.