Every real estate article has a "Top 5 Cities" list. They're mostly useless. Someone looked at Zillow data and GreatSchools ratings and mashed them together into a ranking that tells you what already happened, not what's about to happen.
I wanted to try something different. I spent a weird amount of time reading capital improvement plans, bond documents, and city council minutes. (This is what I do for fun, apparently.) The question I was trying to answer: which cities have the clearest alignment between money, policy, and timing?
Three cities kept showing up. I don't think these are the "best" cities—that depends on what you want. But they're the ones where the setup looks most interesting for the next five years.
1. Frisco — But Not the Way You Think
Yes, Frisco is on the list. No, this isn't a cop-out.
Here's the thing about Frisco: the "Frisco is amazing" take is fully priced in. Everyone knows about the schools, The Star, the corporate relocations. You're not going to find alpha by discovering Frisco in 2025.
But Frisco isn't a monolith. It's a city of distinct nodes, and not all of them are equal anymore.
What the documents show:
- •The Fields development ($12.7B across 2,500 acres) is creating a second gravity center in western Frisco—Universal Kids Resort, PGA headquarters, Fields West retail
- •The Mix ($3B) and Firefly Park ($2.5B) are adding even more density along the tollway
- •Meanwhile, some older Frisco neighborhoods are entering their "established suburb" phase—maintenance mode, not growth mode
The Frisco play in 2025 isn't "buy anywhere in Frisco." It's "understand which Frisco you're buying into."
If you're near a development node with active investment—Fields, PGA corridor, the tollway crossings—you're still in the growth story. If you're in a neighborhood that peaked in 2018 and is now just... there... you're buying a mature suburb at growth suburb prices.
(I realize this is frustrating. People want to be told "buy Frisco" or "don't buy Frisco." The real answer is "it depends on which part and at what price," which is less satisfying but more true.)
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Take the quiz2. Celina — The "Build It First" Bet
Celina is doing something unusual for a fast-growing Texas suburb: building infrastructure before it desperately needs it.
Most cities in the 380 corridor are playing catch-up. They approve subdivisions, the houses get built, and then everyone complains about traffic and school capacity while the city scrambles to issue bonds. It's the Texas growth playbook, and it's not great.
Celina's approach looks different:
- •~$757M capital improvement plan — roads, utilities, public facilities
- •~$2.3B school bond — one of the largest in state history for a city this size
- •Infrastructure arriving before full saturation — not after
That sequence matters. Building capacity ahead of demand means less friction later. Fewer traffic nightmares during your commute. Fewer overcrowded classrooms when your kids start school. Fewer emergency bonds to patch what should have been built originally.
The tradeoff is patience. Celina in 2025 is not finished. Parts of it feel like a construction zone. The downtown is still figuring out what it wants to be. The restaurants and retail that make a place feel like a place are still arriving.
If you need everything to be polished right now, Celina isn't for you. But if you can handle "under construction" for a few years in exchange for lower entry prices and a well-funded growth plan, the math works.
My guess: Celina quietly re-prices over the next 5-10 years as the infrastructure catches up to the rooftops. The people who bought early and waited will look smart. The people who waited for it to feel finished will pay more.
3. Richardson — The Reinvention Story Nobody's Watching
I've written about Richardson elsewhere, but it keeps showing up in my analysis, so I'll summarize here:
Richardson is not a growth suburb. It's a mature suburb doing the hard, boring work of reinventing itself. And that work is funded, underway, and measurable.
What's happening:
- •Silver Line transit — Two stations operational, connecting the city to DFW Airport and the North Dallas corridor
- •School reinvestment — Bond money going into facility upgrades, teacher retention, magnet programs. Not building new schools (they don't need them), but improving existing ones
- •CityLine maturing — The State Farm/Raytheon corridor is becoming a genuine urban node, not just an office park
- •Housing stock re-rating — Older homes in good school zones are starting to trade higher as buyers realize Richardson ISD is competitive
Richardson doesn't get hype because it doesn't have a PR story. There's no "$2 billion development" headline to write. It's just a city methodically improving its bones while charging less than its neighbors.
The opportunity is the gap between what Richardson is becoming and what Richardson costs. That gap exists because market perception lags market reality. Eventually, it catches up.
The Pattern Across All Three
If I had to distill what these cities have in common:
They're not winging it. The capital plans exist. The bonds are funded. The timelines are public. You can read the documents yourself and see what's coming.
The investments match the growth phase. Frisco is investing in nodes (because the horizontal growth is done). Celina is investing in infrastructure (because the horizontal growth is just starting). Richardson is investing in reinvention (because the original build-out happened 30 years ago).
The market hasn't fully priced it in. Frisco's node-specific value is obscured by the overall "Frisco premium." Celina's infrastructure-first approach is obscured by "it's not done yet." Richardson's reinvention is obscured by "it's not Frisco."
That's the setup. Whether it works depends on execution—and on whether you're patient enough to let compounding do its thing.
What I'm Not Saying
I'm not saying these are the only cities worth buying in. McKinney has things going for it. Plano is solid. Allen is fine.
I'm saying these three have the clearest alignment between capital, policy, and timing that I can see in the documents. Other cities might have great futures too. I just can't point to the receipts as clearly.
Also: this is not a guarantee. Plans fail. Bonds underperform. Development timelines slip. What looks like alignment today might look like a mess in five years.
All I'm offering is a framework: look for cities where the money is already committed and the direction is already set. That's not a prediction. It's just a better starting point than "Zillow says this suburb is hot."
The Bottom Line
The three cities I'd watch for the next five years are Frisco (but only specific nodes), Celina (if you can handle "under construction"), and Richardson (if you can ignore the lack of hype).
That's not a ranking. They're different plays for different buyers:
- •Frisco nodes: Premium price, lower risk, betting on continued execution
- •Celina: Lower price, higher patience required, betting on infrastructure-first payoff
- •Richardson: Mid price, contrarian positioning, betting on reinvention story
None of these is objectively correct. All of them have documents you can actually read to verify the claims. That's more than most "Top Cities" lists can say.