Georgetown's Property Tax Line Depends on the Year a MUD Was Approved, Not Just the Neighborhood

Two buyers toured Georgetown open houses on the same Saturday this month. One walked through a new build in Wolf Ranch's West Bend section, the community's third and final phase going up on 325 acres south of Highway 29. The other walked through a resale in Berry Creek, the golf-course neighborhood on the north side that's been selling steadily for years. Both homes landed close to Georgetown's June 2026 median sale price of $429,766, a figure that's held essentially flat year over year as the city cools into a more balanced market.

Same price band. Different monthly payment. Not because of interest rates or square footage, but because of a line on the tax bill that has nothing to do with either neighborhood's reputation and everything to do with when a piece of paper got signed at City Hall.

The Base Rate Isn't What Splits These Two Homes

Every home in Georgetown pays into the same basic stack: a city rate near $0.353 per $100 of assessed value, a Georgetown ISD rate near $1.0506, plus county and college levies. Add it up and you land close to a 1.82% combined rate before anything else gets layered on. That's the number both buyers would see if they only glanced at a listing's estimated taxes.

It's also the number that stays put in neighborhoods like Berry Creek, which sits entirely inside city limits with no additional district on top. Sun City, the 55-plus community with roughly 9,700 homes, holds close to that same base rate for the same reason. Old Town, Georgetown's historic core near the courthouse square, does too.

Wolf Ranch does not.

The Line That Only Shows Up on Some Addresses

Wolf Ranch carries two Georgetown Municipal Utility Districts, numbered 28 and 29, according to the community's own HOA. Those MUDs fund the water, sewer, drainage, and park infrastructure behind the neighborhood's amenity build-out, and they show up as a separate tax line even though the community sits fully inside city limits. Cimarron Hills goes further still: it sits in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction, carries Williamson MUD #26, layers its own public improvement district on top, and requires a mandatory Troon-managed country club membership running roughly $5,000 to initiate and $295 a month after that. Georgetown Village, a smaller and tighter-inventory neighborhood with strong school-feeder appeal, carries a PID but no MUD. Teravista adds a different kind of wrinkle: the same 1,500-acre community, same HOA, splits across a school district line, with some sections in Georgetown ISD and others in Round Rock ISD.

Stack a MUD or PID on top of the base rate and the effective combined rate commonly climbs past 2%, sometimes closer to 2.4% depending on the district's current assessment. That gap, on a $430,000 home, is real money every year, and it exists independent of whether the house itself cost more or less than the one three streets over.

Why the Newest Community Isn't Automatically the Cheapest One

Here's the part that catches people off guard. The instinct is to assume a brand-new master-planned community, built with the latest efficiency standards and freshest amenities, should also be the leanest on carrying costs. Georgetown's recent development history says otherwise.

At a March 24, 2026 city council meeting, developer Freehold Capital Management brought forward a new municipal utility district for Rock Bluff Ranch, a planned community east of County Road 245 and north of Ronald Reagan Boulevard that was scaled back from an original 2,375 homes to 1,728 after council raised density concerns. The initial ask on the MUD itself was a maximum tax rate of $0.75 per $100 of assessed value. Freehold brought that down to $0.65, but even the reduced number sits above the city's own MUD policy ceiling of $0.55 per $100.

That ceiling itself is a policy choice, not a law of physics, and Georgetown's mayor has said plainly that it's become close to universal practice for large developments:

"Pretty much every larger master-planned development is using MUDs."

As of a May 2025 city report, seven special districts had been approved in the Georgetown area over the preceding five years, and the newest proposals since then are landing at or above the city's own baseline. A MUD approved this year starts its life at a higher rate than many of the districts approved five or ten years ago, simply because construction and infrastructure costs have climbed since those older bonds were issued.

The Rate Moves, Just Slowly, and Only One Direction

MUD taxes aren't permanent at their starting rate. They exist to repay bonds, and as that debt gets retired the rate declines, sometimes over one or two decades, occasionally ending in the district dissolving or converting into a city-run utility system entirely. That's a meaningfully different pattern than an HOA fee, which typically holds steady or rises and never has a built-in expiration.

That means a district approved in 2016 may already be paying down toward a lower rate today than a district approved in 2026 that's just getting started. The vintage of the MUD, not just its existence, is doing real work in what a buyer actually pays. A newer community's tax line isn't a flat number frozen in time. It's closer to the starting point of a long, slow decline, and where it starts depends on when the city and developer negotiated the deal.

What This Means If You're Comparing Two Listings This Fall

Before writing an offer on anything in a master-planned Georgetown community, it's worth running down a short list:

• Pull the Williamson Central Appraisal District parcel report and check the full taxing unit list, not just the headline rate a listing shows
• Ask the listing agent which specific MUD or PID number applies, and what its current adopted rate is for this tax year
• Confirm whether the address sits inside Georgetown's city limits or its extraterritorial jurisdiction, since that affects who provides police and trash service alongside the tax picture
• Price the full monthly payment, principal and interest plus the actual combined tax rate plus any HOA or club dues, rather than comparing list prices alone

A home in Wolf Ranch and a home in Berry Creek priced within a few thousand dollars of each other are not the same purchase once that math runs. Neither is a home in a district approved in 2018 versus one approved this year, even inside the same neighborhood name.

A Short FAQ

Does a MUD tax ever go away? Yes, though slowly. MUD taxes fund bond repayment for infrastructure, and once that debt is retired the district can lower its rate progressively or be dissolved or converted into city-run utilities. There's no fixed timeline that applies to every district, so checking a specific district's current bond status matters more than assuming a set number of years.

Is a PID the same thing as an HOA? No. A public improvement district is a government financing tool, created under city or county authority, that funds public improvements like streets, sidewalks, and parks through a special assessment. An HOA is a private association that collects dues for community amenities and maintenance. Georgetown's city government maintains its own record of active PIDs and the special purpose districts overseeing them.

Does being inside city limits mean a home has no MUD? Not necessarily. Wolf Ranch sits fully inside Georgetown's city limits and still carries two MUDs. City limits determine which entity provides services like police and trash pickup. It doesn't automatically determine whether a utility district tax applies to a specific address.

If you're comparing Georgetown neighborhoods this fall and the tax lines aren't adding up the way the list prices suggest, that's usually the district structure at work, not a pricing error. JBGoodwin REALTORS® can pull the specific taxing unit history on any Georgetown address before you write an offer, so the payment you plan for is the payment you actually get.