The over-65 school tax freeze is one of the best-known perks of retiring to Texas, and it's genuinely real. What gets left out of the pitch is the fraction of your actual tax bill it covers. School tax typically runs 55–65% of a DFW property tax bill. The other 35–45% — city, county, and any special district — has no ceiling and keeps climbing with your home's appraised value.
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Talk to a Specialist →So a retiree who hears "your property taxes are frozen once you turn 65" and stops asking questions is only half right. If your county reappraises your home upward 6% next year, roughly 40% of your bill can still move with it, freeze or no freeze. That's a real, recurring number worth running before you assume 65 means your housing cost is locked in for good.
Several DFW 55+ communities sit inside a Municipal Utility District (MUD) or Municipal Management District (MMD) — a special taxing entity created to finance the roads, water, and flood control under the neighborhood, repaid over decades through its own separate line on your tax bill.
Del Webb Trinity Falls sits outside McKinney city limits inside MUDs taxing roughly $1.00 per $100 of value. Elements at Viridian in Arlington carries an MMD on top of full city taxes, with a published combined rate near 2.46%. Neither of these is a school tax. Neither is touched by the over-65 freeze.
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None of this means the freeze is a marketing myth — it's a genuinely valuable, transferable benefit, and pairs with a real homestead exemption stack: $140,000 standard plus $60,000 over-65 against school taxes, a combined $200,000 shielded as of the 2026 tax year. That's a large, real shield. It just applies to the frozen portion of the bill, which makes it important to know which portion that is before you build a 20-year budget around it.
| Corridor | What's worth checking |
|---|---|
| North Collin (premium) | Highest home values — largest dollar exposure on the unfrozen 40% |
| Denton / Lake Lewisville | No county hospital district overlay — one fewer taxing line than some counties |
| Rockwall | Lower overall effective rate, roughly 1.6–2.2% |
| Any MUD/MMD address | Ask for the taxing entity list from the county appraisal district directly |
The honest summary: the freeze is real, the exemption stack is genuinely generous, and neither one means your Texas property tax bill stops moving at 65. Ask which portion of any specific community's tax bill is school tax versus city, county, or special-district tax before you build the freeze into your long-term budget as if it covered everything.
Connect with a specialist who knows this market from the inside — real cost math, honest community comparisons, and what's actually happening right now. Every agent is personally vetted by the Nova55Living founder.
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