What is Pecan Square in Northlake, TX?
Pecan Square is a 1,200-acre master-planned community in Northlake, Texas, developed by Hillwood Communities and zoned to Northwest ISD. At full build-out it will hold roughly 3,100 home sites. Homes currently list from the low $300s to the high $800s, with a median list price around $612,000 as of September 2026. The piece most buyers miss is that Pecan Square sits inside a municipal management district, which adds $0.705 per $100 of value to the tax bill... and roughly 90 percent of that is repaying construction bonds, not funding the pools.
That last sentence is the whole reason this guide exists. Pecan Square is a genuinely well-built community with real amenities and real awards behind it. It is also one of the most misunderstood tax situations in Denton County, and almost none of the content ranking for it explains the district correctly. Let's fix that, and cover everything else you need before you write an offer.
What is actually there right now
Pecan Square is built around a town-square core rather than a single amenity center, which is unusual for North Texas and is most of what people respond to when they first drive in.
- Jackson Hall is the main gathering building, with a game room and two resort-style pools plus a splash pad. The fitness center occupies the east wing.
- The Greeting House holds a resident co-working space with Wi-Fi, a conference room, printing, and a self-service snack station.
- Post & Parcel is a mail room with secure Amazon lockers.
- The Arena is a 22,000 square foot indoor-outdoor pavilion with covered sport courts, a stage, a catering kitchen, and big-screen TVs. Pioneer Park sits beside it with a playground, fire pit, grills, and a pizza oven.
- The Courts is a four-court lighted pickleball facility with shaded seating.
- Blue Horizon Pool is the second pool complex and third resort-style pool, with lap lanes, a sun shelf, and cabanas.
- The Barking Lot is a large dog park with separate enclosed areas for large and small dogs.
- Elm Tower is an overlook structure on the ridge at Elm Place, plus multiple neighborhood parks.
Every home includes Hillwood's Canopy technology bundle, and the HOA dues cover a Frontier internet line. Worth noting: the developer's FAQ describes the Wi-Fi as half-gig, while the HOA dues table lists it as Frontier 2G internet. Those are different products. Ask the HOA office which one is actually provisioned at the address you are considering before you treat it as a savings line in your budget.
Current builders are Coventry Homes, D.R. Horton, David Weekley Homes, Highland Homes, and Pulte Homes. We have walked several of these in person: the Highland Homes model, the Coventry Homes model at roughly $650K, the David Weekley model floor plan, and a three-model walkthrough that is the fastest way to see how the price bands differ.
Pecan Square won the 2021 People's Choice Community of the Year and the 2025 NAHB Gold Award for Master-Planned Community of the Year. Those are industry awards for development quality, and they are earned. They tell you nothing about your carrying cost, which is the next section.
The MMD is the part most buyers miss
Pecan Square is not in a MUD. It is not in a PID. It is in Northlake Municipal Management District No. 1 of Denton County, and that distinction matters because most generic Texas content, and a fair amount of agent content, will tell you one of the first two.
Here is the full published rate table, per $100 of valuation, as posted by the developer:
- Northwest ISD: 1.084100
- Northlake MMD No. 1: 0.705000
- Town of Northlake: 0.295000
- Denton County: 0.185938
- Denton ESD No. 2: 0.100000
- Denton ESD No. 1: 0.060000
- Total: 2.430038
On a median-priced Pecan Square home at $611,941, that total works out to roughly $14,870 a year before exemptions. The MMD's share of that is about $4,314.
Now the part nobody publishes. The district is required by Texas Tax Code Section 26.18 to break its rate into maintenance-and-operations versus debt service, and that breakdown is public. For the 2025 tax year, Northlake MMD No. 1's rate splits as $0.07 for maintenance and operations and $0.635 for debt service. Ninety percent of the district's rate is bond repayment.
Translated to that median home: roughly $3,886 a year is retiring debt on infrastructure that is already in the ground, and about $428 funds the district's ongoing operations. That is not a criticism of the district. Water lines, sewer, drainage, and roads had to be paid for somehow, and bonding them is how a community of this scale gets built at all. But it does answer the question buyers actually mean when they ask "am I paying extra for the pools?" You are not. You are repaying the dirt work, and the HOA covers the pools separately.
Two more things about the district that are worth knowing before you sign.
First, the town tax rate is not the tax rate. Northlake's municipal rate of 0.295 is genuinely lower than Flower Mound's 0.387277. Add the MMD's 0.705 on top and the local district-plus-town burden lands at 1.000 per $100, roughly two and a half times Flower Mound's town rate. If you are comparing suburbs on the town rate alone, you are comparing the wrong number.
Second, the 20 percent homestead exemption everyone quotes applies only to the Town of Northlake's portion. On that median home it shaves the town's $1,805 down to about $1,444, a saving near $361 against a $14,870 bill. Useful, but roughly two and a half percent of the total. Whether the MMD grants a homestead exemption of its own is a question for the district, not something to assume.
What the district's own records tell you
The authoritative record on this district is not on the developer's site and not on the HOA's site. It lives on the statutory disclosure portal the district uses to satisfy Texas Government Code Chapter 2051 and Tax Code Section 26.18, and it is public.
What is on it is genuinely useful. The district has five board members, with terms running to 2027 and 2029, and its main office is on North Dallas Parkway in Dallas rather than in Northlake. Its operator is Inframark. Its published meeting schedule reads, in full, "No regular meeting schedule" ... it meets by special meeting, typically a handful of times a year, at 2701 North Market Square inside the community. Residents have a statutory right under Water Code Section 49.062(g) to request that a meeting location be designated within the district.
The district also posts a document titled Notice to Purchaser of Real Estate. That is the disclosure you should be reading before your option period ends, and in our experience most buyers first see it in the closing stack, when there is no longer anything to do about it. Ask for it on day one.
The district's 2026 approved budget is posted alongside 2024 and 2025. For context on scale, property tax revenue budgeted for debt service in 2025 was roughly $2.47 million, against $838,800 budgeted for maintenance and operations. The rate itself has been fairly stable: M&O ran 0.07 in 2023, 0.135 in 2024, and back to 0.07 in 2025, with debt service at 0.6375, 0.635, and 0.635.
One timing caveat we will not paper over: the rate table published by the developer is the 2025 tax year, and the developer's own page says rates are subject to change and should be verified with the Denton County tax office. The district has filed a 2026 tax rate hearing notice but had not published an adopted 2026 rate as of this writing. Separately, Northwest ISD has posted a 2026 notice stating its maintenance-and-operations rate will effectively rise by 6.06 percent. Budget from the county's figures, not from a marketing page. If you want the broader mechanics of how these districts get disclosed in a Texas contract, our piece on the Texas MUD/PID disclosure form covers the statutory notice and the rescission rights that come with it.
HOA dues do not track lot size
This one surprises almost everyone. Pecan Square's dues are billed semiannually on February 1 and August 1, and here is the published annual schedule:
- 50 foot lot: $2,260
- 60 foot lot: $2,260
- 70 foot front entry: $2,260
- 100 foot lot: $2,260
- 40 foot rear entry: $3,121
- 70 foot rear entry: $3,355
- Townhomes: $7,060
Read that again. A 70 foot rear-entry lot pays $1,095 more per year than a 100 foot lot. The smaller lot costs more. Dues here track services, not frontage: the rear-entry lots and the townhomes include front yard maintenance, and the townhomes carry a sub-association on top. Buyers who assume a bigger lot means bigger dues get this backwards, and it is a real budget difference over a ten-year hold.
Put the two obligations together on a 50 foot lot at the median price and you are looking at roughly $6,574 a year, about $548 a month, in HOA dues plus MMD taxes alone, before county, ISD, and ESD taxes and before the mortgage. That number is not a reason to walk away. It is a number you should see before you fall in love with a floor plan.
Schools, services, and what is still a plan
Pecan Square is in Northwest ISD. Johnie Daniel Elementary is inside the community. Floyd Barksdale Middle School, Northwest ISD's eighth middle school and a 2023 bond project, is also on site, with the district listing it as established 2026 and opening in August 2026. A high school with a stadium complex is described by the developer as planned for the community in the future, with no date attached.
That distinction between built, opening, and planned is the one to hold onto. A campus with a bond behind it and a principal named is a different thing from a campus shown on a site plan. If a future high school is part of why you are buying, treat it the way you would treat any unbuilt amenity: as a plan with no date, not a delivered feature. Attendance boundaries are set by Northwest ISD and can change, so confirm the current assignment for a specific address with the district directly rather than with a builder's sales office.
On day-to-day services, the honest picture is that Pecan Square trades convenience for scale. Utilities are Atmos for gas, CoServ for electric, Frontier for internet and cable, the Town of Northlake for water and sewer, and Waste Connections for trash. Per the developer, the nearest Kroger Marketplace is about nine miles out, with Tom Thumb and Whole Foods around twelve. An Argyle fire station is within two miles and Texas Health Presbyterian is about eleven. Retail shops and restaurants are in the future plan for the community, which is to say they are not there yet. Drive the grocery run at the hour you would actually make it before you decide that is fine. For many of our clients it is. For some it is the deciding factor.
What the listing data actually shows
As of September 11, 2026, MLS data tagged to Pecan Square shows 132 active listings, a median list price of $611,941, an average of $214 per square foot, and an average 86 days on site. Live examples that day ran from a 1,689 square foot attached home at $306,990 on a 0.05 acre lot up to a 4,013 square foot home at $874,990 on 0.46 acres, with the bulk clustered between $450,000 and $700,000.
Two cautions on that data, both of which apply to any community search you run yourself.
First, a large share of those listings are builder inventory, not resale. You can spot them by the pricing: $564,796, $595,148, $632,627, $696,248. Nobody reprices a used home to the dollar. That matters because builder inventory sits on the market differently than resale does, so an 86-day average is not telling you that resale homes here take three months to sell. Ask for the resale-only numbers before you draw a conclusion about pricing your own home.
Second, the community filter is a subdivision-name match, not a boundary. It sweeps in every recorded phase under slightly different names, and the count moves day to day: two sources we checked the same week reported 132 and 135 listings with medians of $611,941 and $619,000. This is the fourth community search in five weeks where we have found the portal filter doing something other than what a buyer assumes it does. Treat the count as an estimate, not a census.
How to verify all of this before your option period ends
Run these four in order, and you will know more than most buyers who close here.
- Pull the district's Notice to Purchaser of Real Estate from the district's own disclosure page, and read the rate and bond figures rather than the summary.
- Get the actual tax bill for the specific parcel from the Denton County tax office. Not the developer's table, not the listing's estimate. The parcel.
- Call the HOA office and confirm the dues tier for that exact lot, whether front yard maintenance is included, and which internet product is provisioned.
- Read the title commitment's Schedule B. The district, the declaration, and any assessments attach to the land and show up there, which is the one place the answer is legally binding rather than descriptive.
If a builder's sales office answers any of these from memory, thank them and verify it anyway. They are not the record.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Pecan Square in a MUD or a PID?
Neither. Pecan Square is in Northlake Municipal Management District No. 1 of Denton County, an MMD. A municipal management district is a special district created by the State of Texas to finance facilities a municipality does not provide, and at Pecan Square it funds infrastructure such as water, sewer, drainage, and roads, plus maintenance of right-of-way landscaping. Content that calls it a MUD or a PID is wrong, though the practical effect on your tax bill is similar.
What is the total property tax rate in Pecan Square?
The developer publishes a total of 2.430038 per $100 of valuation, made up of Northwest ISD at 1.084100, Northlake MMD No. 1 at 0.705000, the Town of Northlake at 0.295000, Denton County at 0.185938, and two Denton County emergency services districts at 0.100000 and 0.060000. That is the 2025 tax year, rates change annually, and you should verify the current figure for a specific parcel with the Denton County tax office.
How much are HOA dues at Pecan Square?
Annual dues are $2,260 for 50 foot, 60 foot, 70 foot front-entry, and 100 foot lots; $3,121 for 40 foot rear-entry lots; $3,355 for 70 foot rear-entry lots; and $7,060 for townhomes. Dues are billed semiannually on February 1 and August 1. The rear-entry tiers and the townhome tier cost more because they include front yard maintenance, and the townhomes carry an additional sub-association.
What schools serve Pecan Square?
Pecan Square is in Northwest ISD. Johnie Daniel Elementary School is inside the community, and Floyd Barksdale Middle School, funded by the district's 2023 bond program, is on site with an August 2026 opening. A high school with a stadium complex is in the developer's future plan for the community with no announced date. Attendance boundaries are set by Northwest ISD and can change, so confirm the assignment for a specific address with the district.
Who are the builders at Pecan Square?
The current builder lineup is Coventry Homes, D.R. Horton, David Weekley Homes, Highland Homes, and Pulte Homes, building on 40, 50, 60, 70, and 100 foot lots plus townhomes. Other builders have participated in earlier phases, so a resale home may carry a builder name that is no longer active in the community.
How much does it cost to live in Pecan Square beyond the mortgage?
On a median-priced home near $612,000, expect roughly $14,870 a year in total property taxes before exemptions, of which about $4,314 is the MMD, plus $2,260 a year in HOA dues on a standard lot. The Town of Northlake's 20 percent homestead exemption applies only to the town's portion and saves roughly $361 a year. Run the numbers on the specific parcel before you rely on any of these figures.
The short version
Pecan Square is a well-executed community with amenities most North Texas developments do not attempt, in a district that is repaying the cost of building it. Both of those are true at once, and a buyer who understands the second one is not less likely to buy here... just less likely to be surprised in February when the first tax statement arrives.
If you are weighing Pecan Square against the other large communities in the corridor, our complete guide to DFW master-planned communities puts it side by side with Harvest, Canyon Falls, Furst Ranch, and the rest. And if you are trying to sell your current home and land here in one clean move, that is the specific problem we solve every week. Schedule a Move-Up Strategy Call and we will map the timing, the equity, and the carrying cost before you commit to a lot.
Brian White helps families in Northwest DFW make their move-up cleanly, selling and buying in one synchronized step. He built BlueFuse Group on a simple standard: other-first service, proactive at every turn, faith and excellence in equal measure. Brian has been married to Tisha for 27 years and is dad to three adult sons. When he's not protecting a family's equity or untangling a tight closing timeline, you'll find him chasing a round of golf or at Valley Creek Church.
Schedule a Move-Up Strategy Call ... no pitch, just a clear-headed look at your next move.
