A 28-year-old New Yorker ditched the five boroughs for a booming Texas suburb — and says he’s “never” moving back as a flood of workers and companies head south in search of cheaper living and better opportunities.
Akash Khanna, a commercial real estate agent, relocated to Frisco, Texas shortly after the pandemic — a move he made after years of bouncing between Jersey City, Wall Street, Brooklyn and Queens.
“I never think about moving back there, ever,” Khanna said, describing New York as a “high-paced” metropolis that no longer fit his long-term goals.
Instead, he found what he calls the “best of both worlds” — a mix of city and suburban life — in a fast-growing North Texas hub that’s aggressively luring both talent and corporations.
Located about 25 miles north of Dallas, Frisco has exploded from a sleepy farming town of 6,000 in the early 1990s into a city of roughly 245,000 today, fueled by a steady influx of newcomers.
“It has been fastest growing city in the nation for a decade,” said Gloria Salinas, senior vice president and chief growth officer for the Frisco Economic Development Corporation.
Corporate giants including TIAA, Toyota Financial Services, SoFi, Uber Freight and the PGA of America have already established major operations in Frisco, while the Dallas Cowboys relocated their headquarters and practice facility to the suburb.
The city says it currently has about 25 companies actively considering relocation or expansion projects there, including 11 potential headquarters operations that could bring more than 15,000 jobs and roughly 3.1 million square feet of office demand.
The city now has more than 70 schools and is building out a massive commercial corridor that officials expect will add roughly 15 million square feet of office space over the next 15 years.
That expansion is aimed squarely at finance, technology and professional services firms increasingly relocating operations from higher-cost coastal markets.
Within a 30-minute radius of Frisco, roughly 68% of the Dallas-Fort Worth region’s finance, tech and business professionals live nearby, making it one of North Texas’ key “talent corridors,” according to the Frisco Economic Development Corporation.
Frisco’s allure can be boiled down to an alluring combination of lower costs, access to jobs and a rapidly expanding business ecosystem.
“There’s no state income tax in Texas,” Salinas said, adding that newcomers from coastal cities can “automatically save” a significant portion of their income.
She estimated that many transplants effectively keep “50% of your paycheck” compared to higher-cost states.
According to Forbes’ cost-of-living calculator, a household earning $100,000 in Manhattan would need just $41,189 to maintain the same standard of living in Dallas and $40,142 in Fort Worth — meaning the cost of living is roughly 143% lower in Dallas and 149% lower in Fort Worth compared to Manhattan, according to Forbes.
But Frisco’s growth story stretches far beyond lower taxes and cheaper housing.
City officials say Frisco has spent decades transforming itself through aggressive long-term planning centered on schools, infrastructure and office development. The city now spans roughly 70 square miles and adds between 10,000 and 12,000 new residents annually, according to Salinas.
Unlike many rapidly growing Sun Belt cities that struggled with congestion and overdevelopment, Frisco marketed itself as a master-planned community built around what officials describe as a “live-work-play” model.
Schools, neighborhoods and business districts were strategically laid out around the Dallas North Tollway corridor, which officials viewed as the backbone for future growth.
“There is not too much density. There is not too much of a burden on the residents as they’re continuing to move in because we are planning as we grow,” Salinas said.
Migration into the region has accelerated since the pandemic as remote and hybrid work reshaped where professionals choose to live.
“People don’t want to commute more than 30 minutes for a job,” Salinas said, adding that companies increasingly want offices closer to where workers actually live.
The city has also aggressively pitched itself as a safer and more family-friendly alternative to larger urban centers.
Officials tout Frisco’s extensive parks, mixed-use developments, entertainment districts and reputation as one of the safest cities in America, while emphasizing its highly rated public school system and expanding housing options ranging from apartments to multimillion-dollar homes.
For Khanna, Frisco represented something he no longer felt New York could offer: space to build both a career and a future.
“I never saw myself settling down there and raising a family,” he said of New York.
Khanna said his move was initially unplanned — he had been preparing to sign a new lease in Midtown Manhattan and apply to Columbia Business School before visiting Texas.
“I literally actually canceled my lease a couple months before it was even supposed to expire,” he said. “Texas just pulled me in.”
