Two homes go on the market in Trophy Club this fall, priced within ten thousand dollars of each other. One sits in the original village section that wraps around the country club, built in the 1980s or 90s. The other sits in The Highlands, the town's newest master-planned pocket along the Trophy Club and Roanoke line. A buyer touring both assumes the carrying costs are roughly the same, because the town, the ZIP code, and the school of thought about Trophy Club as a whole all say "safe, established, well-run." Then the tax estimate comes back and the two homes do not match. One has a line item the other does not.

That line item is not a mistake. It is the last visible seam of a real structural change that Trophy Club just went through, and it is the reason a citywide tax estimate for this town is close to useless without knowing which section a house sits in.

What Actually Changed, and When

For decades, Trophy Club ran two separate systems for paying for fire service. Most of the town sat inside the boundary of Trophy Club Municipal Utility District No. 1, known locally as TC MUD 1, and paid for fire service through the district's property tax. But The Highlands, developed as the Town of Trophy Club Public Improvement District No. 1, sat outside that boundary. Homeowners there paid for fire service a different way: an annual Emergency Services Assessment, plus a monthly PID surcharge tacked onto the water bill.

Effective January 1, 2025, the Town and the District expanded TC MUD 1's boundary to cover all of Trophy Club, including The Highlands. The stated goal was to align the district's boundary with the area it already serves, and to give Highlands residents a vote in electing the MUD board, something they never had while sitting outside the district. The practical result showed up on paper starting with the 2025 tax year, on bills due January 31, 2026. The PID's Emergency Services Assessment was removed. In its place, Highlands homeowners now pay a comparable amount through the standard TC MUD 1 property tax, the same as everyone else. The monthly PID surcharge on water bills disappeared too, folded into that same MUD tax line starting with the October 2025 billing cycle.

If you were shopping Trophy Club before that window, you would have seen an extra assessment on Highlands listings that the rest of town didn't carry. If you're shopping now, several months into the new structure, that particular line has quietly vanished from most Highlands tax summaries. On the surface, it reads like simplification.

Why This Is Not the Simplification It Looks Like

Here is the part worth sitting with before you fall in love with a floor plan. The Town's own PID office is clear that the Highlands assessment always had two separate components. One paid for fire service, and that piece is what just got folded into MUD tax. The other is a fixed, per-lot assessment that pays off the original infrastructure bonds for the neighborhood's roads, utilities, and improvements. That second piece did not go anywhere. Highlands homeowners still receive it, and the Town's PID FAQ says explicitly that this assessment is unrelated to fire service and continues regardless of the boundary change.

So the honest way to describe what happened is not "The Highlands got cheaper" or "the town leveled the playing field." It's that one specific cost got standardized across all of Trophy Club, while a second, larger cost stayed exactly where it always was, attached only to Highlands lots. A buyer skimming a listing's estimated tax field after this reform can easily see a lower number than the property will actually carry, because the automated estimate may reflect the fire-service change without capturing the fixed infrastructure assessment that's billed separately.

The dollar amounts make the gap concrete. The average annual MUD tax bill across the district has been reported at $558.06 per home for 2025, up from $464.63 the year before, a district-wide figure that now applies uniformly whether a home sits in the original village sections, the larger 2000s-era neighborhoods, or The Highlands itself. The Highlands' separate fixed infrastructure assessment runs on top of that, reported in a range of roughly $1,037 to $2,357 a year depending on lot size. That is not a rounding difference. It is the width of a real monthly payment, and it exists on some Trophy Club addresses and not others within the same town, the same MLS area, and often the same price bracket.

Here's the stack, section by section, as it stands today:

The Town's adopted property tax rate for fiscal year 2025 was $0.415469 per $100 of valuation, split between a general operations component and debt service. That rate applies townwide. The MUD tax now applies townwide too, at least for fire service. The fixed PID assessment is the one line that still separates The Highlands from the rest of Trophy Club, and it will keep doing so until those original infrastructure bonds are paid down, which the Town's own materials describe as a 20 to 40 year horizon unless a homeowner pays it off early.

The Negotiation Lever Most Buyers Never Ask About

This is where the story stops being trivia and starts being useful at a closing table. Texas Property Code Section 5.014(A) requires that Highlands sellers give buyers formal written notice of the PID assessment before closing, spelling out that it can be paid in full at any time or carried forward in annual installments that vary year to year with interest, collection costs, and delinquency factors. Most buyers read that notice once, nod, and move on. Few realize the assessment is negotiable the same way a repair credit is.

A seller in The Highlands can choose to pay off the remaining fixed assessment before closing, which removes the ongoing carrying cost for the buyer and can be a meaningful selling point in a market where every dollar of monthly payment gets scrutinized under current mortgage rates. A buyer, on the other hand, can ask a seller to pay it off, or negotiate price to account for the years of assessment still outstanding on that specific lot. Neither side does this reflexively, because the assessment shows up as a small annual line rather than a lump sum, and small annual lines get underweighted in offer conversations. There's also a deductibility wrinkle worth knowing before tax season: the Town's own FAQ notes that a PID special assessment is only deductible on federal returns if it covers maintenance, repair, or interest, not the portion tied to the original infrastructure improvement itself, while ordinary MUD and property tax generally are.

None of this is a reason to avoid The Highlands. It has some of Trophy Club's largest and newest homes for a reason, and that reason is the same infrastructure the assessment paid to build. It's a reason to ask the specific lot's remaining assessment balance and payoff figure before you write an offer, the same way you'd ask about an HOA transfer fee or a survey.

What to Ask Before You Write an Offer

• Which taxing and assessment entities actually apply to this specific parcel: Town, TC MUD 1, and, if it's in The Highlands, the PID
• The current outstanding balance and remaining term on any fixed PID assessment tied to the lot
• Whether the seller is willing to pay off the assessment at closing, and how that compares to a price adjustment
• Whether the listing's estimated tax figure reflects the fire-service fold-in or is carried over from an older, pre-2025 estimate

FAQ

Does every home in Trophy Club now pay the same tax structure? No. Fire service is now funded the same way townwide through TC MUD 1 property tax. The Highlands still carries its own separate fixed infrastructure assessment on top of that, which no other section of Trophy Club has.

When did this change actually take effect? The MUD boundary expansion was effective January 1, 2025. The fire-service assessment fold-in first appeared on 2025 tax year bills due January 31, 2026, and the water-bill surcharge disappeared starting with the October 2025 billing cycle.

Can a buyer negotiate the PID assessment? Yes. It can be paid off in full by either party at or before closing, or left in place as an ongoing annual cost. Texas Property Code 5.014(A) requires written disclosure of it before closing so this is never a surprise, but plenty of buyers still don't think to negotiate around it.

Is the PID assessment tax deductible? Only the portion tied to maintenance, repair, or interest is deductible on a federal return, according to the Town's guidance. The share tied to original infrastructure construction generally is not, while standard property and MUD taxes typically are.

Trophy Club's tax bill is more layered than a single median or a single "MUD town" label suggests, and the layers changed shape again in the last year. If you're comparing a Highlands listing to one in the original village sections, or trying to figure out what a specific address will actually cost to carry, that's exactly the kind of parcel-level digging a local team should be doing before you ever see a number. The Wall Team Signature works Trophy Club and the surrounding northeast Tarrant County suburbs section by section, not by citywide average, and can pull the current assessment balance on a specific lot before you write an offer. Start with a free home valuation or reach out directly if you're comparing Trophy Club sections and want the real numbers behind the listing.