Despite sharply higher mortgage rates in 2023 than this time last year, many homebuilders and the developers of master-planned communities across North Texas are moving ahead with big projects, and a few small ones, that will bring tens of thousands of new homes to the region.

The Dallas Business Journal, with input from Dallas-based housing market analysis firm Residential Strategies Inc. as well as homebuilders and developers of residential communities in North Texas, has compiled a list of the “Sweet 16” developments to keep an eye on for the rest of this year and the next decade or so.

For a look at our Sweet 16 projects to watch, check out the gallery at the top of this story.

Our list is not comprehensive, and it’s not presented in order of the importance or magnitude of the projects. The communities selected for this roundup were picked because they'll have a major impact on their surrounding areas and shape how Dallas-Fort Worth grows and where North Texans live for years to come.

It promises to be an interesting year ahead.

Market adjustments in Dallas-Fort Worth and beyond

Homebuilders are adjusting to lower levels of housing demand brought about by the higher mortgage rates, with many of them primarily focused on completing and closing housing inventory, said Ted Wilson, principal with Residential Strategies Inc.

On a positive note, that can mean good deals for buyers, Wilson said.

“Buyers (who were) waiting for more affordable opportunities compared to earlier in 2022 will find that many communities offer compelling house prices today,” he said.

For the rest of 2023, builders are hopeful that, with the reduced start rate, they will have increased construction capacity to produce homes and that cycle times — the time it takes to build a house — will shorten, Wilson said.

“With starts slowing, competition among subcontractors, trades and suppliers likely will reverse the inflationary trends that have dogged the industry since mid-2020,” Wilson said. “Savings that can be achieved in direct construction costs likely will be passed onto the consumer.”

One of the hottest spots in North Texas for ongoing new home construction is Celina— although building permits dropped in the Collin County city last year. If that seems counterintuitive, read on.

In Celina, homebuilding companies Taylor Morrison and Toll Brothers have teamed up with Rockhill Capital & Investments to launch The Ranch at Uptown Celina, a 450-home community on 150 acres between FM 455 and future Celina Parkway.

The Ranch at Uptown Celina is part of the broader four-community Uptown Celina district, a 675-acre project planned for about 2,500 single-family homes.

Ryan Griffin, principal at Rockhill Capital & Investments, said Celina is “poised to be another Frisco.”

“They certainly have done a great job of masterplanning their city and deciding what goes where, just like Frisco did,” Griffin said. “We're bullish on Celina.”

Despite Griffin’s optimism about the city, permits to build new houses fell 34% in Celina last year compared to 2021. Some 1,650 new homes received the necessary city approvals for construction in Celina in 2022, down from 2,516 in 2021.

In fact, single-family building permit totals tanked in the second half of last year by double-digit percentages in many of the typical hot spots for new construction in the suburbs north of Dallas.

Housing permits fell 30% in Frisco, 27% in McKinney, 41% in Princeton, 21% in Prosper, and 23% in Anna in 2022 compared to 2021. In Frisco, home building permits dropped to 1,326 last year from 1,881 in 2021. McKinney’s permits sank to 1,258 in 2022 vs. 1,720 in 2021.

Princeton’s residential construction permits trickled to 1,071 houses last year from 1,776 in 2021. Prosper’s permits fell to 967 homes from 1,221. In Anna, city officials issued 867 building permits last year vs. 1,129 in 2021.

There were exceptions to the declines in northern North Texas, including Denton, Melissa and Little Elm. In Denton, permits jumped 28% to 1,227 homes in 2022 from 955 in 2021. Melissa rose 13% to 906 homes from 801 in 2021. Little Elm eked out a three-house year-over-year gain, with 1,295 new-home permits in 2022 compared to 1,292 in 2021.

Meanwhile, residential developments in other parts of the North Texas are accelerating.

Builders this year plan to add more than 200 homes to the sprawling Walsh masterplanned community in west Fort Worth — the largest new phase for the community since 2020.

The new neighborhood, called Brook Hollow, features an expansion of the development’s multi-use parks and trail system, access to all the community’s amenities and 224 homesites zoned in the Aledo Independent School District.

The expansion at Walsh gives prospective buyers “much-needed choice” in what has been a tight home market for Fort Worth and Tarrant and Parker counties in recent months, said Jim Henry, senior vice president of Community Operations at Republic Property Group.

“Adding the Brook Hollow neighborhood — with the new product types and designs our homebuilders are delivering — to the vibrant and growing Walsh community is a great step in living up to our calling of creating the best place to live and raise a family in North Texas,” Henry said.

Lot surplus ahead for North Texas

Across DFW, the supply of lots on which to build homes continued to grow throughout 2022. At the end of the year, more than 81,500 vacant developed lots sat on the market, representing a 20.1-month supply, according to Residential Strategies. Experts consider a 24-month lot supply to be ideal.

At year-end 2022, more than 83,000 lots were under development in the DFW area.

“Builders and developers ramped up their lot development efforts in late 2020 and 2021,” said Cassie Gibson, senior vice president with Residential Strategies. “Many of these lots will be delivered in 2023.”

Gibson said 15,000 to 16,000 lots will be delivered each quarter for the next 18 months.

“With (home starts) tapering from 15,000 to 16,000 per quarter earlier in 2022 down to the current pace of under 10,000 per quarter, the result will be a growing lot supply,” Gibson said. “The lot supply should reach equilibrium around (the first quarter of 2023) and then enter a period of oversupply. We anticipate that, as lot development subsides, much of this short-term oversupply of lots will get worked down in 2024.”

Across Dallas-Fort Worth, builders began construction of 7,960 new homes in the fourth quarter of 2022, down 38% from a year ago when they started 12,914 homes, according to Residential Strategies. The end of 2022 marked the largest decline in quarterly North Texas home starts since the Great Recession.

Gibson said the housing analysis firm anticipates that North Texas home starts in 2023 will be muted by 30% to 40% compared to the record high 2021 levels as builders adjust to the new market realities.

“The good news is that there are still many households that want to purchase a home,”Gibson said. “We anticipate that this downturn will be much less severe than what was experienced from 2008 to 2010.”

Top DFW communities nationally

National housing research firm John Burns Real Estate Consulting ranked Wildcat Ranch in Crandall No. 29 and Union Park in Little Elm No. 31 on its list of top-selling master-planned communities.

Wildcat Ranch, developed by PMB Capital Investments, posted 462 net home sales in 2022, an increase of 46% over the 316 sold in 2021.

Union Park, developed by Dallas-based Hillwood Communities, had 453 net sales last year, which was down 2% from 460 homes sold in 2021.

Another national housing data firm, Robert Charles Lesser & Co., placed Wildcat Ranch 28th and Union Park 31st on its list of best-selling communities in the nation.

The RCLCO rankings and the John Burns report both cite rising interest rates and affordability issues, especially in the second half of last year, for a national slowdown in sales.

Texas and Florida, though, have dominated the rankings in both reports in recent years, and DFW is consistently well represented on those lists.

Master-planned community developers nationwide are girding for slower home sales in 2023, the John Burns report says. But developers are accustomed to the ebbs and flows over time, Burns writes.

“Developers express optimism for the future despite the likelihood of slower new home sales in 2023 aligning with a national recession,” according to the report. “(Master-planned community) developers are accustomed to planning and phasing these large communities, sometimes over a decade or more, and through the ups and downs of economic and housing cycles.”

Ranked by Local new home closings in 2021

Progress is moving forward on the development of Celina’s first major hospital, and the economic impact is expected to be a boon to the city.

The hospital, set to be located at the corner of Dallas Parkway and FM 428, represents a $200 million investment on the 46-acre site in Celina. The project is slated to include a five-story hospital and a medical office building. Pam Stoyanoff, president and chief operating officer with Methodist Health System, said the site includes enough land to continuously invest in the community over the next 20 years or more.

“We’re going to be there for the long haul,” Stoyanoff said. “We’re going to continue to grow with Celina, so as they grow and that community grows, we’ll grow over the years to come. And so we’re excited about everything else we’re going to do there once we get these two buildings open.”

Stoyanoff said the hospital is expected to bring roughly 200 jobs at the beginning of operations, including nurses, clinicians and support service staff. However, the hospital will also bring in physicians from around the region, she said.

“We’ll have a lot of people in addition to those couple hundred that’ll work there. We’ll have a lot of people that will kind of be coming into Celina every day to work and then kind of going home to wherever they might live elsewhere,” she said. “So it’s going to bring a lot of activity, and we see this already with our hospital in Midlothian as it grows. It’s just going to bring a lot of activity to the community, and a lot of people who don’t know about Celina because they may not live there or work there, right, or work there, they’re going to get to know Celina, because they’re going to be coming to our hospital to treat patients or to be a patient there.”

Alexis Jackson, executive director of the Celina Economic Development Corporation, said the project is expected to bring upwards of 300-plus jobs in the first two years.

“That number is expected to increase each year,” she added.

Jackson said the hospital’s long term economic impact to Celina will be “massive.”

“Not only will the hospital bring jobs and financial impact to the city, but the peripheral businesses that will be attracted — pharmacies, doctors’ offices, rehabilitation facilities, and medical suppliers — will drastically impact the economic picture as Methodist Hospital’s campus here develops,” Jackson stated.

Methodist Health System’s Celina campus marks the first major hospital to come to Celina. Since the system’s announcement a year ago, it was announced that Scottish Rite for Children had purchased land on the Dallas North Tollway corridor. Cook Children’s has also leased office space in the Celina Station development, and the Doe Branch office park is expected to host medical offices.

“Suddenly, Celina is now that healthcare hub that one would eventually expect with our current growth projections,” Jackson stated.

The project is also expected to serve as a catalyst for other economic development in the area.

“The arrival of a major hospital expedites the urgency of others in the medical industry to begin looking to locate here,” Jackson stated. “Driving by any of the large hospitals nearby, one can see the attraction for scores of other businesses that want to be near a healthcare facility. We believe, along with the healthcare industry, the development and economic impact could include restaurants, retail establishments, hotel rooms, and others that want to be close to a world-class healthcare facility like Methodist Hospital.”

Stoyanoff said Celina came on the system’s radar a few years ago.

“It’s just one of those bright shining star communities that we saw, and we wanted to be there first,” Stoyanoff said. “We wanted to partner with that community early and grow along with them over time.”

A groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for Jan. 31 was canceled due to inclement winter weather, however Stoyanoff said construction will not be held up. In fact, work has already begun on the hospital site.

The new hospital is slated to open in 2025 and will host a variety of services, including cardiovascular care, cancer care, women’s services, orthopedics and robotic surgery, according to a press release. It will also include 30 medical-surgical beds, 10 post-partum beds, eight intensive care unit beds and 12 emergency department beds. It will also include three operating rooms, a daVinci surgical robot, and shell space for an additional operating room, as well as a cardiac catheterization lab and two procedure rooms.

“When you look at the increase in the number of rooftops and businesses around the city and couple that with the explosive growth of Celina ISD, the need for a large-scale healthcare facility becomes very apparent,” Jackson stated. “Our numbers and demographics suggest that now is the right time for the healthcare industry to invest here, and I expect more would follow in the near future.”

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Driving north from Plano up Preston Road, the signs that say you’ve made it to Frisco read “Rex Real Estate.”

Rex Glendenning’s property signs line Preston Road and the Dallas North Tollway all the way into Grayson County.

Related:Meet the men whose eureka moment brought the Dallas Cowboys and Frisco together to create The Star

The property broker has been peddling land north of Dallas for more than 40 years. He’s handled trades of thousands of acres for some of North Texas’ biggest developers and investors.

“I’ve sold the southeast corner of the tollway and U.S. 380 thirteen times,” Glendenning said. “That’s a record for me.”

This year, Glendenning will be inducted into the North Texas Commercial Real Estate Hall of Fame for his decades of property brokerage.

His wall of his office, on Preston Road in Frisco, is covered in aerial photo maps that show land ownership stretching almost all the way north to Oklahoma.

“That map doesn’t look anything like when I started,” Glendenning said.

Back then, Frisco and Celina were just farm-country railroad whistle stops. Today, they are two of the fastest growing communities in the country, with thousands of new houses being built on land Glendenning has sold over the years.

Related:Small town Gunter is in the path of the Dallas area’s northward growth

Glendenning and his wife are planning a vacation in 2023 — something he hasn’t been able to do for two and a half years because his business has been just too frantic to step away from.

But that’s changed since last summer.

“Our commercial credit market froze in August or September of last year,” he said. “Here in this office we had several hundred million dollars of deals that fell out by virtue of the commercial markets freezing.”

Developers and builders who were buying up thousands of acres hit the pause button when interest rates soared and lenders tightened credit because of worries about a recession

“There has been a pretty big pullback from all the national builders in the whole nation — it wasn’t just here,” Glendenning said. “The lenders have tightened their purse strings.

“It’s going to take maybe a year to correct, but it’s in process.”

Related:Lower interest rates, prices bring buyers back to the housing market

Glendenning said he’s gone through these cycles before and doesn’t expect a severe shakeout.

“We haven’t seen any fire sales — there is no blood in the streets,” he said. “The way we have weathered this storm so far, I’m happy.

“Some buyers are hoping this creates opportunities.”

When credit loosens, Glendenning said he expects sales of North Texas land to take off again.

“There is a demand and need for more housing up here right now,” he said. “We aren’t overbuilt, if anything we are underbuilt.

“When things get back in line with interest rates and debt, our market has so much upside,” Glendenning said. “I don’t think there is a better place in the U.S. or the world to be in than right here.”

Related:Lower interest rates, prices bring buyers back to the housing market

Following the recent land sales rush, Glendenning said a slowdown isn’t unexpected.

“The market went up so fast in the pandemic that people who scored property in 2019 doubled in their value in 2020 or 2021,” he said.

During the last couple of years, Rex Real Estate has brokered some of the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s biggest land purchases, including the sale of the 3,800-acre Veale Ranch west of Fort Worth and 3,200 acres for the new Legacy Hills community in Celina, north of Dallas.

Glendenning’s client list includes Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ Blue Star Land and developer Mehrdad Moayedi’s Centurion American Development.

“He’s probably the biggest land broker in North Texas,” said Joe Hickman, president of Blue Star Land. “Rex knows how to get a deal done.

“He has obviously been a good friend of ours,” Hickman said. “The line of growth has been right in his back door.”

Glendenning brokered the land sale for the Dallas Cowboys’ $1.5 billion Star in Frisco mixed-use development on the Dallas North Tollway. He has been working with the Jones family on land purchases since the early 1990s.

“My deals are relationship-oriented,” Glendenning said. “I have a handful of clients that have been loyal to me for years. I’d say 70% or more of my business is repeat business.”

Glendenning’s market knowledge is founded in his family’s deep roots in the area where he works.

His pioneer family migrated to the Celina area from Scotland, buying up raw land.

Related:Massive development in Celina is just one of many set to bring thousands of homes to the region

“My great grandfather came here in 1887 to farm,” Glendenning said. “My grandfather and father bought land here from the time they could buy it. I’ve always loved land.”

After graduating from Celina High School and a college football stint at the University of North Texas, Glendenning came home to help his father on the family farm. But all it took was one hot summer to convince him to find a new career.

“I decided to go full into real estate from 1981 forward.”

But he hasn’t totally stepped away from his family’s past.

His Glendenning Farms in Celina raises purebred Texas longhorns. He got into the cattle business after an early property trade.

“Back in ‘84 or so a landowner up in Celina was adamant he was going to pay half my commission in longhorn heifers,” Glendenning said. “I told him no way. I needed money. He won out, and I took them.”

Glendenning started with three heifers and has expanded his Celina herd to about 200 head.

While his cattle herd has grown, Glendenning’s real estate operation has stayed small.

“I’ve always tried to keep it a high-level boutique firm of four or five brokers,” he said. “I’d rather stay in the field and sell deals than manage people.”

The Rex Real Estate team includes Matthew Kiran and Robert Wyman.

And his son-in-law Caleb Lavey joined the firm in 2015.

“He’s a self-starter and has a great work ethic,” Glendenning said. “You have to learn this business doing it. He’s probably seen more in the last eight years than I saw and experienced in 20 or 25.”

Related:Sherman land sales pave way for new homes

Lavey said that even with the credit crunch, land deals are still getting done.

“There is still a lot of demand up here — growth going on and transactions,” he said. “It’s like we’ve been drinking from a fire hose up here. Seeing the growth along the golden corridor of the tollway and Preston Road, nobody wants to miss out on the party.”

Here’s where D-FW builders put up the most homes last year

Small town of Mabank sees building boom as buyers seek affordable homes

Controlling growth is the challenge confronting D-FW’s future boomtowns

Prosper is living up to its name with exponential growth

Pilot Point, Denton County’s oldest city, is seeing more new homes by the day

The development at 1640 W. Frontier Parkway in Celina has some new tenants.

On Monday, Jan. 23, the Celina Economic Development Corporation announced three new businesses open at the location. That includes: Allergy and Asthma of Prosper and Celina and Gideon Math & Reading, which are both open now.

According to the Jan. 23 announcement, Daylight Donuts is close to opening as well.

Applications for new vendors for Celina's Friday Night Markets are now open, the Celina Economic Development Corporation announced.

The market only accepts handmade, homemade and homegrown vendors. New vendors meeting any of these categories can apply at bit.ly/3wk8cka .

Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday announced the statewide 2023 Governor’s Small Business Summit. Hosted throughout the state in 15 different cities, the Governor’s Small Business Summit aims to help Texas small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs reach new heights by connecting them with the resources and information needed to start, strengthen and grow a business.

“Small businesses are the very heart of our mighty Texas economy,” Abbott said in a press release. “More than 95 percent of Texas businesses are small, and they employ nearly half of all working Texans. From our big city centers to our smaller rural communities, the State of Texas is focused on developing an environment where entrepreneurs have the freedom to aspire, grow, and prosper. I look forward to continuing to work with small businesses in every region of the state to ensure they have the tools needed to succeed for an even brighter Texas of tomorrow.”

The Governor’s Small Business summit offers a variety of sessions bringing together local, state, and federal resource partners to provide key insights on critical business topics. The Summit also provides participants the opportunity to network with other business owners and meet experts who will share timely, relevant, and actionable advice on a multitude of small business topics.

The Governor’s Economic Development and Tourism Office and Office of Small Business Assistance also host Governor’s Small Business Webinars, sharing information about resources for small businesses and entrepreneurs in Texas through an online format. To view recordings of past webinars, visit: gov.texas.gov/business/page/small-business-webinars

One Celina firefighter is finding a new way to support first responders in a growing city.

During a Tuesday, Jan. 10 city council meeting, Celina Fire Capt. Justin Beamis got a standing ovation — he had recently graduated from the Managing Officer Program through the National Fire Academy. He is one of 132 fire officers from Texas who have the certification, and he was one of 125 selected out of 500 applicants from across the country.

The program entailed instruction on leadership, firefighter and community safety, modern training and analytical decision-making tools, the Celina Fire Department stated, adding that students also gain insight into national response planning and incident management.

For Beamis, who had recently obtained his master's degree, undergoing the program was a personal challenge.

“I want to keep continuing on, not just for myself but for the legacy I want to leave my kids,” he said. “I want them to know that no dream is impossible. I’m going to keep pursuing everything that I can, and every goal that I’m going to strive for. I’m going to try my best to achieve, and I want that to be instilled in them. Especially in education. I think education is extremely important.”

Beamis kicked off the program in around 2018, traveling to Emmitsburg, Maryland for multiple stints of taking courses. After a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Beamis was able to finish out that portion of the program and begin the next phase: developing a capstone project that will tie in to Celina FD operations.

“If we’re going to take the next step towards a larger department as Celina’s growing, we need to have certain pieces in place,” Beamis said. “And so one of the things I saw missing was a driver development program and an officer development program. And so I wanted to task myself, because the next problem we’re going to have is having that company officer role. We want to make sure that we have company officers that are going to lead us into the next stations, and lead us into the next generation.”

With multiple young firefighters coming to the department, Beamis said they are likely to promote more rapidly than they would at another department.

“And so we needed to develop a program that meets this rising demand in company officers but also brings the traditions and the values that we expect of a company officer to operate as a Celina firefighter in that capacity,” Beamis said.

As a result, Beamis began developing a program from scratch focused on developing company officers. The program will eventually lead into a driver development program too, he added. The program is currently in the works and is expected to be launched either this year or next year, he said.

For Beamis, taking part in the Managing Officer Program was also a chance to get perspective from other fire department officials outside of Celina and Texas.

“I get to understand maybe where we’re headed based upon other departments and where their trajectory is — are we on a similar trajectory? And if we are, how do we avoid whatever problems they encountered, or how do we build off of what they’ve done?” Beamis said. “And so I think it allows me to have those kind of conversations with some of these guys across the country that are phenomenal individuals within their department.”

Beamis credited his family with supporting him through the process, adding that there were missed birthdays and sacrifices made as he pursued the goal.

“Because when they give you your time frame, you have to book it that time or you can get pushed back to the next year,” Beamis said. “We were trying to get this program done, especially after COVID, and so we had to make some tough decisions, and my family sacrificed a significant amount of time with me to try to fulfill this dream. So I just wanted to give them praise and thanks for supporting me through this entire process, because I wouldn’t have done it without them. It would have been impossible.”

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Audrey Henvey is the reporter for the Frisco Enterprise, McKinney Courier-Gazette and Celina Record. Email her with story suggestions at ahenvey@starlocalmedia.com.