Look up the median home price in Katy this summer and you'll get four different answers depending on which site you trust. Movoto put it at $410,000 for homes sold in June 2026. Orchard's most recent 30-day window landed at $363,056. Redfin's three-month trailing figure through May 2026 came in near $350,000. One portal's July 2026 average price ran as high as $462,804. These aren't typos or bad data feeds. They're describing four different slices of a metro area that isn't really one market at all.
Katy sits at the meeting point of Harris, Fort Bend, and Waller counties, and it contains more than 200 distinct subdivisions, each with its own combination of city, school district, county, and utility district tax rates stacked on top of the sale price. Two houses priced within $10,000 of each other can carry monthly payments $400 or more apart, and the sale price on the sign has nothing to do with why. The number that actually determines what you pay every month is buried a line lower on the tax bill, in a rate most buyers never ask to see before they write an offer.
Why the Same Price Doesn't Mean the Same Payment
The line in question belongs to a Municipal Utility District, or MUD, the special taxing entity that financed the water lines, drainage, and roads under most of Katy's newer subdivisions. There are more than 900 of these districts across the Houston metro, and Katy alone has dozens of them layered across its subdivisions. A MUD issues bonds to build the infrastructure before a single house sells, then repays those bonds over 15 to 30 years through a property tax rate charged only to homeowners inside its boundary. Even the city layer stacked on top of that is its own line item: the City of Katy's own tax page puts its 2025-2026 rate at $0.425 per $100 of value, so a $100,000 valuation carries a $425 city tax bill before the county, school district, or MUD are added on.
That structure means the age of the bond, not the age of the house, sets the rate. A subdivision built out and mostly paid off carries a low MUD rate because the debt is largely retired. A subdivision still building new phases carries a high rate because the debt is still being serviced. Two homes at the same price point, a mile apart, can sit in completely different places on that repayment curve.
The county line adds a second layer on top of that. Fort Bend, Harris, and Waller counties each run their own appraisal district and base rate, and on two otherwise identical $500,000 homes, the county alone can account for roughly $1,250 a year in difference, more than $100 a month in escrow, before either home's specific MUD rate is even factored in.
Here's what that looks like when you put names to it:
| Community | Combined tax rate | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| Cinco Ranch | 1.89% as of a mid-2026 ranking, down from a 2.31% to 2.77% range reported in 2023 | Mature master-plan, bonds have kept retiring |
| Seven Meadows | 1.96% as of mid-2026, down from 2.23% to 2.51% in 2023 | Established, debt load shrinking year over year |
| Nottingham Country | 2.10% as of mid-2026, down from 2.24% in 2023 | Older subdivision, minimal remaining district debt |
| Elyson | $3.284859 to $3.346028 per $100, per the community's own January 2026 tax information sheet | Active construction, bonds early in repayment |
| Sunterra | Roughly 3.2% to 3.65%, per a spring 2026 rate breakdown that names Katy ISD or Royal ISD, Harris-Waller Counties MUD No. 5, and the Port of Houston Authority as the stacked entities | Still building out, one of the newer large MUDs in west Katy |
The first three rows are the more interesting story. The same publisher measured Cinco Ranch, Seven Meadows, and Nottingham Country in 2023 and again in 2026, and every one of them came in lower the second time. That's the bond-repayment mechanism showing up in real numbers rather than in theory: as debt gets serviced and appraised values climb, the rate needed to cover the same bond payment shrinks. It also means a table like this one is a snapshot, not a guarantee. The rate that describes a community today may already be different from what it was three years ago, in either direction, which is exactly why the number worth trusting is the one on this year's notice for this specific address, not last year's blog post.
What the Gap Is Actually Worth
A Houston mortgage broker who publishes his own rate comparisons ran the math on two $400,000 homes: one inside the Loop with no MUD at all, one in Elyson. The difference came out to $460 to $510 a month in taxes alone, or roughly $165,000 to $183,000 over the life of a 30-year mortgage. You don't need to leave Katy to find a version of that same gap. Run the spread between Nottingham Country's current 2.10% and Elyson's roughly 3.3% on a $450,000 taxable value and you're looking at close to $450 a month in property taxes alone, before any homestead exemption is applied. That's not a rounding error. It's close to a car payment, attached permanently to the address rather than the loan.
New Construction Just Gave Some of That Back
None of this means the higher-rate communities are the wrong call. It means the comparison has to include what the builder is putting on the table right now, because in 2026 that number has moved a lot.
Beazer Homes ran a promotion in Elyson through July 1, 2026, offering up to $10,000 in free design options plus 3 percent in closing costs for buyers using their preferred lender. Davidson Homes has been running its own Sunterra offer in the same window, advertising rates as low as 2.99 percent with $10,000 toward closing, or a 4.99 percent fixed rate paired with up to $15,000 at closing. Stack either offer against three or four years of the tax differential and the higher-MUD new build can pencil out ahead of the lower-tax resale home, at least for a while.
The catch is timing. These offers are tied to specific inventory, specific lenders, and specific windows that close and reopen without much notice. The number a blog post quoted in June may already be gone by the time you tour the model home. The only version of this comparison worth trusting is the one built from what's live the week you're actually writing an offer.
Four Numbers to Pull Before You Compare Two Addresses
- The actual combined tax rate for that specific address, not the subdivision's advertised range. Ask for the current MUD rate, city rate, school district rate, and county rate itemized separately, and confirm which phase or section the home sits in if it's part of a larger community. For homes in Fort Bend County, the Fort Bend Central Appraisal District's tax rate records list current rates by entity, and they're worth pulling directly rather than trusting a subdivision-wide average.
- Which county the address falls in. Harris, Fort Bend, and Waller each set their own base rates, and the difference shows up in escrow even when everything else about the home is identical.
- Where the MUD sits in its bond schedule. A district five years into a 25-year bond behaves very differently than one three years from retirement. Ask how much bonded debt remains and how many more phases the district expects to finance before you assume the rate will fall on any particular timeline.
- What incentive is active today, not last month. Builder promotions expire and rotate on their own schedule, and the only number that matters is the one attached to a contract you can actually sign.
Pulling these four numbers before you compare two listings turns a guess into a real decision. It's the difference between comparing two price tags and comparing two actual monthly payments, which are rarely the same thing in a city built almost entirely on utility district financing.
That's the kind of homework Jaime Fallon runs before any client writes an offer in Katy, pulling the actual district records and current builder terms for a specific address rather than relying on a subdivision's reputation. If you're weighing communities and want the real numbers behind two addresses side by side, that consultation starts with a phone call.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Does a MUD tax rate ever go away completely? Not usually to zero, but it can shrink to a small operations-only charge, sometimes as low as $0.10 to $0.25 per $100 of value once most bonds are retired. In practice, some districts approve additional bonds for later phases or added amenities before the original debt is paid off, which can keep the rate elevated longer than a buyer expects.
Is a high MUD rate automatically a red flag? No. It's a trade-off. Newer MUD-financed communities generally bring newer infrastructure and amenity packages that older, lower-tax neighborhoods don't have. The rate is a cost, not a defect, and it should be weighed against price, incentives, and what the amenities are actually worth to your household.
Does the homestead exemption change any of this math? It helps on the appreciation side. Once a homestead exemption is active, Texas law caps how much your taxable value can rise each year regardless of market conditions, which protects you from a runaway bill later. It doesn't touch the MUD rate itself, which is set by the district's board based on its own debt and budget.
