Should you rent or buy in Frisco? Run the real numbers

With 20% down ($128,000) at 7.32% for 30 years: principal and interest $3,517, property tax about $729 (Collin County and Frisco ISD for tax year 2025, after the $140,000 school and 20% city homestead exemptions), insurance $291 (one twelfth of TDI's 2025 statewide average premium of $3,489), HOA $79 (a $950 a year association, as on a 2026 Griffin Parc listing) and maintenance $533 (our assumption of 1% of the home's value a year).

In year one about $407 a month of the payment is principal, which you keep as equity. The unrecoverable part is interest (about $3,110), tax, insurance, HOA and maintenance, plus about $469 a month of return you give up by putting $140,800 into the house instead of an investment earning an assumed 4%. Total: about $5,211 a month.

The median asking rent for a 4-plus bedroom house in Frisco was $3,499 as of April 2026, per Rentometer. That is roughly $1,712 a month less than owning's unrecoverable cost in this example.

Appreciation and time. To cover $1,712 a month, the home would need to gain about 3.2% a year, and buying and later selling costs (we assume about 8% of price, roughly $51,200) also have to be earned back. Remember the most recent year went the other way: Frisco's typical value fell 3.9%.

In this simplified model, owning does not catch up: appreciation of about $1,600 a month does not cover the $1,712 monthly gap, so the transaction costs are never recovered.

About 10 years to recover the roughly $51,200 of buying and selling costs.

With 3% appreciation, about 11 years. With 4%, about 5 years. Each 1 point drop in rate lowers the payment on a $512,000 loan by about $340 a month.

With 3% appreciation, about 6 years. With 4%, about 3.5 years.

If the honest comparison is a $2,600 3-bedroom house, the monthly gap at 7.32% grows to about $2,611, which would take nearly 5% a year of appreciation just to match. Renting is the cheaper path in that case unless you plan to stay a long time and prices rise strongly.

It is simplified on purpose: it holds rent, costs and rates flat, ignores income tax effects, and assumes a 4% return on cash. It is a starting point for your own numbers, not a forecast. Have a CPA review tax effects for your situation.

With about 8% of the price going to buying and selling costs, a short stay rarely pays off at current rates, especially with values flat to down over the last year.

If the down payment and closing costs leave you without several months of reserves, a roof claim deductible or HVAC replacement can turn into debt. Renting while you rebuild savings is a real strategy, not a failure.

Frisco spans two counties and four school districts. Renting for a year in the area can save you from buying the wrong zone; see our Frisco ISD school zones guide.

A long stay, a payment that fits with reserves left over, and a fixed rate that turns your housing cost into a mostly stable number. Texas also caps a homestead's taxable value increase at 10% a year once you qualify (Tax Code 23.23), and every payment adds principal.