Fast Doesn't Mean Strong: What July 2026 Looked Like in Sachse, Wylie, Murphy and Lavon

Fast Doesn't Mean Strong: What July 2026 Looked Like in Sachse, Wylie, Murphy and Lavon

How is the North Texas housing market doing in July 2026? It depends entirely on which city you're standing in. Sachse homes sold twice as fast as a year ago and a third of sellers got their asking price. In Murphy, homes sold just as fast, but only one seller in fifteen closed at or above list.

I pull the actual MLS numbers for Sachse, Wylie, Murphy and Lavon every month, and I usually write them up one city at a time. This month all four are in one place, because the comparison says something none of them say alone. Murphy and Sachse homes sold at almost exactly the same speed in July. Forty percent of Murphy sales went under contract in two weeks or less, against thirty-nine percent in Sachse. If speed were the whole story, those two markets would be twins.

They are not twins. In Sachse, thirty-six percent of sellers closed at or above their original asking price. In Murphy, that number was seven percent. One seller out of fifteen. And nearly half of Murphy's July sales closed more than five percent below where they started.

Speed and leverage came apart this month. That's the story.

The July Scoreboard

Every one of these is a percentage of that city's closed sales for the month, because raw counts don't compare across a city with fifteen sales and a city with sixty-six.

Read across the rows rather than down the columns. Sachse and Murphy look alike in the speed column and nothing alike in the leverage columns. Lavon barely resembles any of them.

Murphy: Fast Sales, No Pricing Power

Murphy had fifteen closings in July at a median price of $575,000.

I want to flag the sample size before anything else, because fifteen sales is small enough that the median moves on whichever houses happened to close. The median home that sold in Murphy in July was 3,704 square feet, and seven of the fifteen sales were at $700,000 or more. When the mix skews large, the median follows, and it isn't telling you what a Murphy house is worth.

Price per square foot is the honest number in a market this size. Murphy closed July 2026 at $189 per square foot against $183 in July 2025. That's up about 3.3 percent year over year, and it's been remarkably stable all year, sitting between $189 and $198 every month since March.

So values are holding. What isn't holding is seller pricing power. One seller in fifteen got their asking price. Seven of fifteen took a cut of more than five percent. A home in the Gables at North Hill listed at $619,999 and closed at $500,000 after 203 days. A home in the Timbers took 301 days to sell and closed $35,000 under its original list.

The read: Murphy homes are worth what they were worth, and Murphy sellers are asking more than that. The ones who price correctly go fast, which is why the speed number looks healthy. A home in Moonlight Estates listed at $1,075,000 and closed at $1,160,000 in six days. That's not a market problem. That's a pricing problem, and it's fixable.

Sachse: The Genuinely Strong Month

Sachse is the one city in the rotation having an unambiguously good month, and the year-over-year change is dramatic.

In July 2025, the typical Sachse home sat sixty days before going under contract. This July, twenty-six days. The market is moving more than twice as fast as it was a year ago, and nine more homes closed this July than last July. Thirty-six percent of sellers closed at or above their original asking price.

The median came in at $430,000, down from $466,000 in June. I don't read that as a decline. Sachse's monthly medians have bounced between $407,500 and $483,500 all year on thirty-odd sales a month, and the days-on-market trend tells a much cleaner story: 107 days in January, 92 in February, 74 in March, then 26, 13, 22 and 26 from April on. That's a market that woke up in the spring and stayed awake.

The split underneath is still there, and it's the thing I keep flagging about Sachse. Thirteen of thirty-three homes sold in two weeks or less. Nine took more than sixty days and four took more than ninety. A home in Cedar Creek Estates went under contract in one day at $415,000. A home in Peachtree Estates took 159 days and closed $70,000 below its original list price. Two homes in Sachse Farms each gave up more than $59,000.

Same city, same month, two completely different experiences. Which one you get is decided almost entirely at list price.

Wylie: Volume Is There, Pricing Is Softening

Wylie had the most activity of any city in the rotation with sixty-six closings, and the softest underlying numbers.

Price per square foot came in at $182, down from $191 in July 2025. That's a decline of about 4.7 percent year over year, and unlike Murphy's, it isn't a sample-size artifact. Sixty-six sales is a real number. The monthly series has drifted down steadily: $191 last July, $185 through the fall, $179 in February, back to $189 in May and June, and now $182.

The median tells a similar story with more drama, falling from $482,500 in June to $440,000 in July. Some of that is mix, since June had eighty-three sales and July had sixty-six.

The slower half of the market is where Wylie's real story sits. Twenty-four of sixty-six homes took more than sixty days. Fourteen took more than ninety. Nine took more than 120. A home in Inspiration took 369 days to sell. Another in the same community took 336 days. A home in Sage Creek came down $90,000 from its original list price before it closed.

Seven of the sixty-six sales were new construction built in 2024 or later, which matters because builder inventory sets the ceiling a resale seller is pricing against.

The Collin Central Appraisal District agrees that Wylie softened. The city's total taxable value came in at $8.58 billion, down 0.93 percent, and the average Wylie home market value fell from $448,501 to $431,596.

Lavon: A Builder's Market, Reported Like a Resale One

Lavon is not really a resale market right now and its numbers shouldn't be read like one.

Forty-four of Lavon's fifty-one July sales were new construction built in 2024 or later. Eighty-six percent. Only seven were resale homes. Elevon alone accounted for nineteen closings, with Trails of Lavon at ten, Hillstead at seven, and Nicholson Ranch at six.

That single fact explains almost every strange-looking number in Lavon's row. Six percent of homes sold in two weeks or less, and fifty-nine percent took more than sixty days, because a spec home sitting in a builder's inventory accrues days on market whether or not anyone is competing for it. Forty-nine percent closed more than five percent below original list, because builders adjust list prices and offer incentives as standing policy rather than as a concession to a specific buyer.

Price per square foot came in at $165, down from $175 in July 2025, a decline of about 5.7 percent. Median sold price was $338,990 on a median home size of 2,261 square feet.

If you own an existing home in Lavon, understand what you're competing against: a builder who can buy down a rate, cover closing costs, and throw in upgrades in ways you cannot. That's the pricing conversation, not what your neighbor listed at.

The Appraisal District Disagrees With the MLS

The Collin Central Appraisal District released certified values in July, and in three of these four cities the tax roll is telling a different story than the sales data.

• Murphy: average home market value rose from $611,297 to $615,856, and total taxable value climbed 3.25 percent to $4.07 billion. That's in the month Murphy sellers cut prices hardest.
• Sachse: average home value fell from $520,737 to $509,558, while Sachse homes sold twice as fast as a year ago and taxable value still rose 1.54 percent on $4.4 million in new construction.
• Wylie: total taxable value fell 0.93 percent and the average home value dropped roughly $17,000.
• Countywide: the average Collin County home value fell from $603,190 to $588,119.

Your appraised value and your market value are two different numbers produced by two different processes on two different timelines. If you're a Murphy homeowner whose value went up on paper while your neighbors were cutting prices, that gap is worth a look before the protest window closes next spring.

What This Means If You're Buying

In Murphy, negotiate. Seven of fifteen sellers took more than a five percent cut. If a Murphy home has been sitting, the seller has probably already concluded they were optimistic. Bring a number.

In Sachse, decide fast on the good ones. With thirty-nine percent going under contract inside two weeks, waiting a weekend on a well-priced Sachse home is a real risk. The ones still sitting after sixty days are a different conversation entirely.

In Wylie, look at the aging inventory. Fourteen of sixty-six homes took more than ninety days. Those sellers are motivated in a way a fresh listing's seller is not.

In Lavon, ask the builder what they'll do. Rate buydowns and closing cost help are often worth more than a price cut, and they're on the table in a market that's 86 percent new construction. Compare a builder's total incentive package against a resale home's price, not their list prices against each other.

What This Means If You're Selling

Price at the market, not at your appraisal. That's the whole month in one sentence. Murphy shows what happens when sellers anchor high: the house sells eventually, for less, after months. The Murphy homes priced correctly sold in under a week, and one closed $85,000 over asking.

In Sachse, the split is decided at list price. Homes in Sachse either go in two weeks or sit for months, and almost nothing lands in between. Getting the first two weeks right is worth more than any other decision you'll make.

In Wylie, account for the softening. Per-square-foot value is down about 4.7 percent from last July. If you're pricing off a neighbor's sale from last summer, you're pricing off a different market.

In Lavon, price against the builders. You're not competing with the resale down the street. You're competing with a spec home that comes with incentives you can't match, so your advantage has to be something the builder can't sell: a finished yard, window coverings, a fence, an established location.

What's Being Built

Sachse. Chick-fil-A has a filed project at the southeast corner of Miles Road and The Station Boulevard, a $4.5 million, 4,920 square foot build with a filed completion date of November 11, 2026. The Ranch Road retail center at 4310 Ranch Road, next to J.K. Sachse Park, is a 15,991 square foot building on 1.73 acres with a $3 million construction value, developed by TWCARE, LLC. The site was rezoned to a neighborhood shopping base in April 2025, and that zoning specifically prohibits drive-throughs, gas stations, hotels, child care, and auto sales and repair. The city's proposed tax rate for FY2026-27 is flat at $0.680416 per $100, with final adoption scheduled September 8.

Wylie. The City Council unanimously called a $90.5 million bond election on August 18, structured in five propositions, for the November 3 ballot. Trader Joe's has an approved development at 2710 W. FM 544, a 12,500 square foot store plus roughly 6,000 square feet of additional retail on just under four acres. Walk-On's Sports Bistreaux opened at 906 FM 544 on August 10. The Wylie EDC also closed on three FM 544 corridor properties in March totaling roughly $9.57 million, and its incentive budget is rising from $1.51 million to more than $5.5 million.

Murphy. H-E-B opened at 740 E. FM 544 on July 22 at six in the morning, roughly twenty months after breaking ground, and donated $40,000 across four local organizations at opening. The city's proposed FY2026-27 budget is $67.4 million, up six percent. Council gave preliminary approval on August 18 to a tax rate of $0.361832 per $100, up about 1.2 percent, which works out to roughly $165 more per year on a median-value Murphy home. The public hearing is September 15 at 6 p.m. Murphy also adopted its first master plan update since 2008, projecting roughly 161 additional housing units over the next five years.

Lavon. The City Council approved a Chapter 380 incentive agreement with Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust on July 7 for a retail project near SH 78, negotiated under the name "Project Ignite." The format, address, size and opening date have not been made public, so I'm not going to guess at them. Separately, the city set a Municipal Development District election for November 3, funded by a half-cent sales tax on non-residential property near SH 205, SH 78 and FM 2755. The data center question on roughly 79 acres within Elevon remains open: the city issued a statement in June, canceled a July information session, and had a temporary moratorium on its August 6 agenda, with no moratorium ordinance in the public record as of this writing. Statewide, the governor directed the PUC and ERCOT in early August to audit data centers connecting to the grid, with no new connections during the review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is now a good time to sell in Murphy? It's a good time to sell a correctly priced Murphy home. Forty percent of July's sales went under contract within two weeks, but only one seller in fifteen got their asking price and nearly half took a cut of more than five percent. Price-per-square-foot value is actually up about 3.3 percent from last July, so the value is there. The asking prices are what's off.

Why did the median price drop in Wylie and Sachse in July? Partly mix and partly softening, and the two cities differ. Wylie's price per square foot is down about 4.7 percent year over year on sixty-six sales, which is a real decline. Sachse's median bounces month to month on roughly thirty sales, and its days-on-market trend improved sharply, so I'd read Sachse as normal variation rather than a downturn.

Why do homes in Lavon take so long to sell? Because 86 percent of July's Lavon sales were new construction. A builder's spec home accumulates days on market while it sits in inventory, whether or not buyers are competing for it, and builders adjust prices and offer incentives as a matter of policy. Lavon's long days-on-market figures describe how builders sell homes, not how much buyers want them.

If you want to know what your specific home would do in this market, that's a different question than what the city median did, and it's the one I'd rather answer. Visit MartenTeam.com or book a consultation.

Jeanie Marten Real Estate 972-414-0719 | MartenTeam.com

Sales data from NTREIS / MLS Matrix, pulled August 20, 2026, single family residential. Value and tax data from the Collin Central Appraisal District certified values released July 2026, and from City of Sachse, City of Wylie, City of Murphy and City of Lavon council records and budget documents.