The cheapest way to live next to Frisco, on the same tollway, with the lake on the other side.
Curious how The Colony stacks up against nearby options? Let's talk through current inventory, new-build timelines, and off-market opportunities tailored to you.
The Colony is a Denton County city of roughly 45,500 people wedged between Lewisville Lake and the Frisco line, on the Sam Rayburn Tollway. Its median sale price is about $454K against Frisco’s $688K next door, which is most of its appeal - and unlike a lot of value plays, it is not a slow market: homes here average three offers and sell in about 40 days, faster than Frisco does. Two things a buyer must understand. It is in Denton County, not Collin. And its schools are split by address between Lewisville ISD and Little Elm ISD, so the city name tells you nothing about the campus.
Lakeside and tollway-adjacent suburban living, with a regional retail and entertainment anchor
Summers are hot and sunny with highs in the mid-to-upper 90s°F. Winters stay mild - expect 50°F afternoons mixed with the occasional cold snap. North Texas averages 229 sunny days, roughly 41 inches of rain, and minimal snow each year.
Match your wish list - from walkable districts to gated communities - with these buyer favorites. Mali can share recent closings, HOA nuances, and off-market conversations for each pocket.
A lakeside master-planned golf community on a Lewisville Lake peninsula - zoned to Little Elm ISD, not Lewisville ISD.
One of The Colony’s best-known established neighborhoods, set on a peninsula along Lewisville Lake on the north side of town. It is built around the Stewart Peninsula Golf Course - a short 9-hole layout with a neighborhood restaurant - and offers lakeside trails, parks, and a community pool.
A newer, amenity-rich enclave in the Austin Ranch area near the Dallas North Tollway; a mix of attached and single-family homes with resort-style amenities.
A Del Webb 55+ active-adult community with a The Colony lake address - gated, golf-oriented, and age-restricted, a different buyer than the rest of the city.
Understanding The Colony's community composition helps buyers match lifestyle preferences with neighborhood character. The figures below reference recent American Community Survey estimates and city planning reports.
Total Population
45,454
US Census ACS 2024 5-year estimate. A worldpopulationreview 2026 projection puts it near 46,500 - a steadily growing but no longer frontier city.
Population Density
≈3,245 per sq mi
US Census ACS 2024 5-year, on roughly 14 square miles of land - conventional suburban density, with about 13% of the city’s area under water.
Median Household Income
$114,511
US Census ACS 2024 5-year estimate, margin of error ±$6,433. Well below neighboring Frisco, which is much of the affordability story.
Homeownership Rate
59.8%
ACS 2024 - lower than the built-out Collin County suburbs, reflecting The Colony’s larger share of townhomes, attached product and rental communities like Austin Ranch.
Median Age
37.8 years
US Census ACS 2024 5-year estimate (±1.6).
The Colony High SchoolHigh
Lewisville ISD. The city’s comprehensive high school, on Blair Oaks Dr. north of SH-121. Serves most of the city.
Griffin Middle SchoolMiddle
Lewisville ISD, serving The Colony addresses.
Lakeview Middle SchoolMiddle
Lewisville ISD, serving The Colony addresses.
Peters Colony ElementaryElementary
Lewisville ISD.
Camey ElementaryElementary
Lewisville ISD.
B.B. Owen ElementaryElementary
Lewisville ISD.
Ethridge ElementaryElementary
Lewisville ISD.
Morningside ElementaryElementary
Lewisville ISD.
Memorial Elementary - STEM AcademyElementary
Lewisville ISD, a STEM-focused campus serving The Colony.
Prestwick STEM AcademyAll
Little Elm ISD, K-8. Zones the northwest lake peninsula - The Tribute - which is Little Elm ISD, not Lewisville ISD.
Strike Middle SchoolMiddle
Little Elm ISD, serving the Tribute peninsula section of the city.
Moving to The Colony means lining up the right vendor team, understanding seasonal weather shifts, and comparing neighborhoods before touring. Mali guides you through scouting trips, remote video tours, and negotiation strategy so your The Colony plan comes together smoothly.
Answers to common questions about living, buying, and relocating to The Colony, Texas.
For buyers who want to be next to Frisco without paying Frisco prices, it is one of the strongest answers in the metro. The median sale price is about $454K against Frisco’s $688K, and The Colony sits on the same Sam Rayburn Tollway. The market is genuinely competitive rather than a leftover - homes average three offers and sell in around 40 days, which is faster than Frisco. Median household income is $114,511 (ACS 2024) across roughly 45,500 residents.
Two of them, split by address: Lewisville ISD and Little Elm ISD. Western neighborhoods generally feed Lewisville schools and eastern sections tend to land in Little Elm boundaries, which earns an A rating from the Texas Education Agency. The city name does not tell you the district, so run the exact address through the district’s boundary lookup before you write an offer.
No - The Colony is in Denton County, which surprises buyers who have been shopping the Frisco corridor and thinking in Collin County terms. It changes your appraisal district and tax jurisdictions, so confirm it before you build a budget from comps you gathered elsewhere.
About $454K at the median (Redfin, three months ending May 2026), down 1.9% year over year, at roughly $224 per square foot - which is actually up 2.3% year over year. Those two figures move in opposite directions because the mix of what sold shifted, not because homes got cheaper per foot. It is a competitive market: three offers on average and about 40 days to sell.
Grandscape is a 400-plus-acre mixed-use shopping, dining and entertainment district on SH-121, and it is the city’s regional anchor - the kind of destination a suburb of 45,500 does not usually get to claim. Nebraska Furniture Mart of Texas sits at its heart on a roughly 100-acre campus, one of the largest home-furnishings stores in the country and one of the city’s top employers. Great Wolf Lodge, with its indoor waterpark, adds to the draw. For residents the practical effect is that a lot of the shopping, eating and entertaining you would otherwise drive to Frisco for is inside your own city.
The dividing line is lake-and-golf versus value-near-Frisco, and it also tracks the school district split. The Tribute is the marquee address, a golf and lake community on a peninsula into Lewisville Lake - and note it zones to Little Elm ISD, not Lewisville ISD. Stewart Peninsula is the other waterfront-and-golf option, with its own course and lakeside trails. Austin Waters and the Lewisville-ISD interior of the city are the play if what you actually want is Frisco adjacency at a lower price. One thing to know across the board: The Colony has a larger share of townhomes, attached product and rental communities than the built-out Collin County suburbs, which is why homeownership here runs about 59.8%.
For its size, an unusual amount. Grandscape handles shopping, dining and entertainment, with Great Wolf Lodge’s indoor waterpark next door for a rainy day. Lewisville Lake wraps roughly 23 miles of shoreline, including two peninsulas, inside the city limits, so marinas, boating and lakeside parks are a local amenity rather than a drive. Golf is a defining feature: The Tribute Golf Club, the Old American Golf Club and Stewart Peninsula Golf Course are all inside the city, and the first two are among the better public-access courses in Denton County. Liberty by the Lake is the free Independence Day festival with music and fireworks - the 2026 edition is set for Saturday, July 4.
Better than the price suggests, which is much of the argument for the city. The Sam Rayburn Tollway (SH-121) is the spine, putting the Frisco and Legacy job corridors a short hop east and DFW International Airport about 15 minutes away. The Dallas North Tollway is roughly five minutes east via SH-121, opening a fast route south toward Dallas. FM 423 runs north toward Little Elm and Frisco. Mean travel time to work is 27.1 minutes (ACS 2024 5-year). Two honest caveats: that access is all tolled, so budget for it, and there is no rail - DCTA’s A-train serves Lewisville and Denton, not The Colony. The city’s own job base is retail, hospitality and entertainment rather than corporate campuses, so most residents do commute out.
Have more questions about The Colony? Contact Mali at yourealtordfw@gmail.com or call (972) 408-6939.
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Every public campus inside The Colony city limits, with the letter grade and score the Texas Education Agency published for it in 2025. Enrolment and grades come straight from TEA's accountability download and the federal school directory, so nothing here is a third-party score that nobody refreshes.
The Colony is split across 2 school districts. Two houses on the same street can feed different districts, and boundaries in this corridor get redrawn most years as new campuses open. Confirm the assignment for the exact address with the district before you write an offer - and if the school is a reason you are buying, ask Mali to put the district's written confirmation in your file.
Denton County · 8 campuses in town
Denton County · 1 campus in town
Lewisville ISD · Grades PreK-5
Lewisville ISD · Grades PreK-5
Lewisville ISD · Grades PreK-5
Lewisville ISD · Grades PreK-5
Lewisville ISD · Grades PreK-5
Little Elm ISD · Grades PreK-5
Lewisville ISD · Grades 6-8
Lewisville ISD · Grades 6-8
Lewisville ISD · Grades 9-12
The Colony homes are taxed by 3 separate governments, and the combined 2025 adopted rate is 1.93% per year of appraised value. That is the number before any exemption and before the special districts below - which is why the figure on a listing page and the figure on your first tax bill are so rarely the same.
| Taxing unit | Rate per $100 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Lewisville ISD | 1.117800 | 58% |
| City of The Colony | 0.630000 | 33% |
| Denton County | 0.185938 | 10% |
| Combined | 1.933738 | 100% |
Denton County has neither a community-college district nor a hospital district, so a The Colony bill has three lines where a Dallas County bill has five. That structural difference, not municipal thrift, is most of the gap when you compare rates across the metro.
We are not publishing a homestead estimate for The Colony. The rates above come from the Comptroller's statutory filings and are solid, but the exemption each taxing unit has adopted is confirmed here by only one published schedule - and those schedules demonstrably lag a council vote. (One 2025 county schedule still listed a town at 12.5% months after it had voted to 20%.) A figure built on that would look precise and be wrong, so you get the rates and a real answer instead: ask Mali, or call the appraisal district, and we will confirm the exemptions in writing before you budget from them.
Denton County has 48 special districts levying their own rate on top of everything above - 22 Municipal Utility Districts, 3 Municipal Management Districts, 11 Water Control & Improvement Districts, 12 Fresh Water Supply Districts. Adopted 2025 rates run from 0.07 to 1.20 per $100. At the top of that range a district adds more than half again the entire The Colony stack, and none of it is reduced by a homestead exemption.
These follow subdivision boundaries, not city limits, so two houses a mile apart in The Colony can differ by a full point. They are most common in newer master-planned communities, because that is what the bonds paid to build.
A Public Improvement District is not a taxing unit. It is an assessment a city levies on the specific parcels that benefited from the roads, water and amenities its bonds paid for - set per parcel, absent from every rate table and every listing-site tax estimate, and not reduced by a homestead exemption because it is not a tax. It typically runs the life of the bonds, often 20 to 40 years, and can frequently be paid off in a lump sum. In a new-build community that is the difference between the budget you built and the payment you owe, and the option period is when you find out.
HOA dues are a private contract with the neighbourhood association. They are not on the tax bill, not collected by the county, not deductible, and not touched by any exemption - and a community can have an HOA and a MUD and a PID at once, which is the combination that catches people out. Ask for the dues, the transfer fee, the reserve study and any special assessment in writing, and read them alongside the tax bill rather than instead of it.