A buyer under contract on a home in The Highlands at Trophy Club typically sees two numbers before closing: the price on the listing, and a separate line on the closing disclosure that doesn't appear on any portal search. That second number is a special assessment, and it exists because The Highlands isn't governed by the same tax structure as the rest of town. It was built as the state's first municipally bonded Public Improvement District, created in 2007, and it still runs on that framework today.
Most home shoppers comparing Trophy Club against Southlake, Westlake, or Roanoke are working from a single advertised tax rate and a single median price. Neither number tells you which Trophy Club you're actually buying into. The town's adopted property tax rate for the current fiscal year runs $0.415469 per $100 of value, split between an operations component of $0.316042 and a debt service component of $0.099427. That rate applies everywhere in town. What doesn't apply everywhere is the PID overlay sitting on top of it in The Highlands, and that overlay just went through the biggest restructuring it has seen since 2015.
One Town, Two Cost Stacks
The Highlands PID charges two distinct assessments, and they work differently from each other. The first is a fixed assessment tied to lot size, originally levied to fund the subdivision's infrastructure build-out. It amortizes over a long horizon, generally 20 to 40 years, and a buyer can pay off the remaining balance in full at any point rather than carrying it across ownership. The second is an annual emergency services assessment, calculated against the home's appraised value the same way a property tax is, and it funds the PID's share of fire protection delivered through Trophy Club Municipal Utility District No. 1.
Outside the PID boundary, homeowners never see a separate emergency services charge because fire service costs are already folded into their regular MUD tax bill. Inside the PID, that cost has historically been carved out and billed separately, which is precisely the kind of line item that doesn't show up when a portal estimates your monthly payment from the town's headline rate alone.
What Changed on January 1, 2025
Effective that date, the Town and Trophy Club MUD No. 1 expanded the district's boundaries to include all of Trophy Club, folding the PID area into the MUD for the first time. The town's own account of the change lays out two practical effects for Highlands homeowners, and both touch money rather than governance alone.
| Before January 1, 2025 | Starting tax year 2025 (bills due January 31, 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Voting rights on District matters | PID residents could not vote or serve on the MUD board | PID residents can vote and run for board seats |
| Federal deductibility of fire-service charge | Classified as an assessment, not deductible | Reclassified as a District property tax, deductible under the same rules as other ad valorem taxes |
| Where the fire-service cost appears | Separate PID Emergency Services Assessment | Folded into the Trophy Club MUD 1 property tax bill |
| Monthly utility bill surcharge | PID Surcharge added to water and sewer bills since October 2015 | Removed starting with the billing period beginning October 1, 2025 |
The fixed, lot-based infrastructure assessment is not part of this change. It continues on its own separate schedule regardless of which side of the MUD boundary a lot happened to sit on before 2025.
The practical upshot for a buyer closing this fall or winter is that the fire-service cost you'll pay didn't disappear. It moved from a line that showed up on your water bill and your PID statement to a line that shows up on your property tax bill instead, where it behaves like the rest of your ad valorem taxes: escrowed with your mortgage, adjustable with your homestead exemption, and now deductible in a way it wasn't before.
Why This Isn't Unique to Trophy Club, and Why That Still Matters
Special assessment financing of this kind is common across this stretch of the Metroplex. Westlake's Entrada development runs on its own PID, levying assessments by property size and land use to fund landscaping, entryway features, trails, and roadway infrastructure over a 30 year payoff period. The mechanism is the same idea: a subdivision built out ahead of the surrounding tax base, financed by the specific lots that benefit from the improvement rather than by the town at large.
That's a normal, well-precedented way to fund a master-planned neighborhood. What it means for a buyer is narrower and more specific: the label "Trophy Club" or "Westlake" on a listing doesn't tell you whether the address sits inside one of these overlays. You have to check the subdivision, not just the city.
The Number on the Portal Depends on the Portal
Ask three different sources for Trophy Club's current home price and you'll get three different answers, and the gap between them is informative rather than a data error. As of August 2026, one widely used marketplace listed the town's average home price at $893,870, or $274 per square foot. A separate tracker reported a median sold price of $809,949 in July 2026, on 72 closed sales that month, down from 98 sales in July of the prior year. A third measure, which estimates typical value across the entire existing housing stock rather than only homes that recently changed hands, showed year-over-year growth of 25.1 percent but landed at a noticeably lower dollar figure than either sales-based number.
The difference isn't a mistake. A stock-wide typical value measure includes every home in town, including long-held properties that haven't traded in years. A recent-sales median only reflects what's actually closing right now, and if the homes changing hands this year skew toward larger, newer, or more amenity-heavy inventory, that median will run ahead of the town's broader value trend. The Highlands, priced well above the townwide figures in the neighborhood-level data available for early 2026, is exactly the kind of inventory that would pull a recent-sales median upward relative to a stock-wide estimate.
The lesson for a buyer comparing towns on price alone: know which number you're looking at, and know that a single town-level figure can be quietly weighted by whichever subdivision happens to be selling the most right now.
What to Confirm Before You Write an Offer in The Highlands
A few questions belong in your due diligence conversation before you get to the option period, not after.
- Ask for the current outstanding balance on the lot's fixed PID assessment, since lot type determines the size of that assessment and a seller can choose to pay it off at closing rather than transfer it.
- Ask whether the annual emergency services charge is now appearing on the property tax bill or still billed separately, since the timing of the transition varies by when your specific tax statement is issued.
- Confirm with the title company how the outstanding PID balance, if any, will be prorated or paid at closing, since this is a cost that behaves differently from ordinary property tax proration.
- Verify which MUD and PID your specific section falls under, since Trophy Club now sits entirely inside MUD 1's expanded boundary, but the PID overlay itself is still limited to The Highlands.
None of this makes The Highlands a harder place to buy. It makes it a different cost structure than the rest of Trophy Club, and one that is actively being simplified in the direction of standard property tax treatment. A buyer who understands the mechanism before closing avoids the moment, common enough to be predictable, where a January tax bill looks different from what a September estimate implied.
A Few Direct Questions
Is the PID assessment the same thing as an HOA fee? No. A Public Improvement District is a government entity created under Texas Local Government Code Chapter 372, with assessments collected through the county tax office alongside your property tax bill. A homeowners association is a private entity with its own separate dues and governing documents.
Does the PID assessment ever go away? The fixed infrastructure assessment retires once the underlying bonds are paid off, typically over 20 to 40 years, and any owner can pay the remaining balance in full at closing rather than carrying it forward.
Is any of this tax deductible? It depends on classification. Local benefit assessments are generally deductible only when they fund maintenance, repair, or interest charges rather than new construction, and the January 2025 boundary change reclassified the emergency services charge as a District property tax rather than an assessment, which changes how it's treated.
Buying in Trophy Club means buying into one town with two different cost structures, and the only way to know which one applies to a specific address is to ask before you're past the option period. If you're comparing The Highlands against another section of town, or against Southlake, Westlake, or Roanoke, we can walk through the actual assessment balance and current tax classification on any address you're considering. K2 Simply works this corridor daily, and we'd rather you know the full bill now than find it in January. Request Your Premium Listing Strategy and let's look at the specific parcel together.
