Hi.

Back in the mid/late 90's, DH lived in Sherman, which is about 65 miles north of downtown Dallas.

The City Fathers were looking at the DFW metro area's long-term plans, and decided that in about 20 years, there would be a lot of expansion in their direction.

If I had been a land speculator at that time, I totally would have bought up a bunch of land along the I-75 corridor on the way to Sherman, with the knowledge that the sprawl would catch up sooner or later, and developers would pay top dollar for my land.

But we were poor, and so we didn't. :)

In reality, things actually did expand northward. McKinney was at the halfway point to Sherman. It exploded from pop. 35k in 1997 to pop. 181k in 2017. Sherman, on the other hand, has grown as well, but at a much more sedate pace: from 32k in 1997 to 42k in 2017.

The point being, that even though those studies were commissioned by professionals who were paid a good amount of money to predict the future, it didn't come true in the way that was expected. The consultants expected people to distribute themselves evenly, but people insisted upon concentrating, and refused to cross various imaginary boundaries.

At first, they resisted crossing too heavily past 190/the George Bush Turnpike. And once they got used to, "Well, maybe Plano isn't as far away as I thought it was" or "Well, you know, Plano's good and all, but Allen's just another few minutes up the road, and it's got more room", then they were able to expand up towards 380 and McKinney. And now they're getting used to McKinney being "Well, yeah, there's a lot of stuff there now, isn't there!" and they are starting to get used to the idea of crossing that imaginary line into Melissa (pop 800, now pop 9200) and Anna (pop 800, now pop 13,000). And eventually those two places will expand sufficiently that Van Alstyne will grow, and after Van Alstyne grows, then it will be Sherman's turn.

It will happen eventually. But that might take another 20 years, depending.

I doubt the ones that are being successful there are going to let you know and ask you to join them.

sure fire way. When the land opens up-- check your deed room and parcel ownership. When you start seeing politicians names and big company names buying - jump in - it's time.