Two homes can sit on the same street in Anna, share a builder and a floor plan, and carry the same list price, while costing genuinely different amounts to own. The listing sheet will not tell you that. The payment estimate in a home search app almost certainly will not either, because those tools usually estimate taxes from a county average and stop there.
What creates the gap is a special district. In and around Anna that usually means a Public Improvement District, and in parts of Collin County it can mean a Municipal Utility District. They are not the same thing, they do not behave the same way, and confusing them costs real money.
A PID Is an Assessment, Not a Tax
A Public Improvement District is created by a city or county under Chapter 372 of the Texas Local Government Code. The idea is simple. Rather than the city borrowing citywide to build the roads, water lines, drainage and sometimes the trails and amenity centers a brand new subdivision needs, the city creates a district covering just that development, issues bonds, and recovers the cost from the property owners who directly benefit.
The important word is assessment. A PID assessment is a fixed dollar obligation attached to your specific lot, not a percentage of what your home is worth. Two useful things follow from that.
First, it does not automatically climb when your appraised value climbs, which can be an advantage over a rate-based charge. Second, it has an end and it usually has a payoff. PID assessments are typically spread over a long installment schedule — the Hurricane Creek district here in Anna runs on a thirty-year term — and in most districts an owner can pay the remaining balance in a lump sum instead of carrying the annual installment. That second point is the one nobody volunteers at the model home. Ask about it.
A MUD Is a Tax, and It Usually Shrinks Over Time
A Municipal Utility District is a different animal. It is a political subdivision of the State of Texas created under the Texas Water Code, with its own elected board, and it levies an actual property tax on top of your city, county, school and college rates to pay for water, sewer, drainage and sometimes roads.
Because a MUD levy is a rate rather than a fixed amount, the bill moves with your appraised value. The flip side is that MUD rates commonly decline over the years as the district’s bonds are paid down and more homes are built inside the district to share the load. The rate you see today is not necessarily the rate you pay in ten years, though nobody can promise you where it lands.
MUDs are far more common in the Houston area and in parts of Denton County and northern Collin County than inside Anna itself. If you are shopping the wider county, though, it still belongs on your checklist.
Which Anna Neighborhoods Are Actually in a District
This is where it gets local. The City of Anna’s economic development page lists five active public improvement districts: Ana Capri I, Ana Capri II, BFB Ana 40 Acres, CADG Hurricane Creek and Crystal Park. The council has kept adding to that. The city’s own strategic work plan notes districts created for AnaCapri North, Rockhill and Liberty Hills, and the council created the Sherley Farms Public Improvement District in March 2025, with bonds for its first improvement area moving through council in early 2026.
Translated out of ordinance language and into the names you will see on a monument sign:
AnaCapri — the large Megatel community known for its crystal lagoon — sits inside the AnaCapri PID, and a separate district covers AnaCapri North. I wrote a full guide to it; my AnaCapri community page walks through the PID, the TIRZ and the HOA together so you can see the real monthly cost.
The Villages of Hurricane Creek is the neighborhood behind the Hurricane Creek PID. Its assessments run on a thirty-year installment schedule, and the district’s third-party administrator publishes a searchable assessment roll showing the annual installment for individual addresses. If you are looking at a home there, you can find the actual number for that exact lot rather than guessing.
Leonard Trails — the newer community on the TX-5 side of town where Pacesetter Homes and First America Homes are both building — also sits inside a district the council created for that development. If you are shopping there, read my full Leonard Trails community guide and ask the builder for the service plan and the current annual installment on the specific lot before you sign.
Sherley Farms — the newer community near downtown built around a working farm — has its own PID that is still early in its bond process.
Liberty Hills and Rockhill are both covered by districts created recently. If you are touring a brand new phase in either one, assume there is an assessment until someone shows you otherwise in writing.
Crystal Park, the mixed-use development on the city’s west side, has already been restructured once. The council held a hearing on dissolving the original district in early 2025 and then created Crystal Park Public Improvement District No. 2 that February.
That last one is exactly why I will not hand you a permanent list. Districts in Anna get created, amended, split and occasionally dissolved. The only list that matters is the current year’s service and assessment plan ordinance for the specific district your address falls in.
It is worth noting what is not on the city’s list, too. Anna Town Square, which has been building since around 2014 and now runs to roughly 1,900 homes, does not appear among the active PIDs. The property did carry a PID earlier in its development history and that lien was released, which is why you will sometimes see stale references to one. My full community guide walks through the builders, the phases and what the absence of an assessment does to your monthly payment. Older Anna — the streets around downtown and the established neighborhoods off Post Oak Trail — generally predates all of this entirely. That gap is real money, and it is a large part of why an older home near downtown and a brand-new home in one of the lagoon communities are not comparable properties even when the list prices look similar.
What Anna’s Tax Rate Looks Like Before Any District Is Added
For context, the City of Anna publishes its own city rate at $0.50720 per $100 of assessed value, and a combined rate across all taxing entities of $1.99296 per $100 for a typical Anna address. Call it right at two percent before anything else is layered on.
Add a PID installment or a MUD levy on top of that and the difference between two similarly priced homes stops being a rounding error. It is the single biggest reason to compare monthly payments rather than list prices when you shop new construction in a fast-growing city.
How to Check a Specific Address
You do not have to take anyone’s word for it. For any Anna address you are serious about, do these five things.
Ask the title company to confirm whether the property sits inside a PID or a MUD. It surfaces in the title commitment, and a good escrow officer will flag it early if you ask. Look the parcel up with the Collin County Appraisal District to see exactly which entities tax it. Ask the builder or seller for the current annual installment in dollars, in writing, along with the balance required to pay it off. Pull the city’s most recent annual service and assessment plan ordinance for that district, and check the district administrator’s published assessment roll, which lists the installment by property address. Then have your lender rebuild the payment estimate with the real number, because it changes the escrow portion of your payment and can change what you qualify for.
What the Seller Is Legally Required to Tell You
Texas does not leave this to good manners. For a PID, Texas Property Code section 5.014 requires the seller to give the buyer a specific written notice, in wording set by statute, before a binding contract exists. If that notice does not arrive when it is supposed to, the buyer generally has the right to terminate.
For a MUD, Texas Water Code section 49.452 requires a comparable written notice, with the required language set out in section 49.4521, and again the remedy for a missing notice runs in the buyer’s favor.
I am not an attorney and none of this is legal advice, but the practical takeaway is simple. These notices exist because the legislature decided buyers were being blindsided. Read them. When someone slides a stack of paperwork across the table and says it is all standard, that is precisely the page to slow down on.
Is a PID a Reason Not to Buy?
Not on its own, no. The infrastructure a PID funds is real: the roads, the water capacity, the drainage, and often the trails and pools that make a new Anna neighborhood pleasant to live in. Somebody has to pay for it. In a PID, the people who use it pay for it rather than spreading the cost across every taxpayer in the city.
What matters is whether you knew, whether the number is reflected in what you agreed to pay, and whether you built it into the payment you will actually live with. A home in a PID that you bought with your eyes open is fine. A home in a PID you discovered at closing is a problem, and it can complicate financing at the worst possible moment.
Resale deserves a thought as well. Whenever you sell, your buyer will run this same math, and the assessment becomes part of what they weigh. That is not a dealbreaker in a growing market. It is a reason to be honest with yourself about total cost on the way in instead of assuming it stays invisible.
Send Me an Address and I’ll Check It
I live in Anna, and district paperwork is one of the first things I look at when a client sends me a listing. Send me an address and I will tell you whether it sits inside a PID, what the current annual installment is, and what that does to your monthly payment before you get emotionally attached to a floor plan.
Call or text me at (469) 344-8111, or email amy@bigrock.properties.
If you are earlier in the process, start with the Anna, Texas area guide, browse Anna homes under $400,000 where this comes up most often, or read the companion piece on why you shouldn’t walk into a model home alone. Looking at the wider area? Here is the Collin County market. Selling instead? Request a home valuation.