Air Conditioning or Not: The 28-Day Gap Sellers Aren't Pricing For

Two houses. Same street, same price range, same twelve-week window. One has air conditioning. One doesn't. Put them side by side and the gap between them is bigger than almost anything else in this period's sold data.

Across the territory's 2,903 sales this summer, homes with air conditioning sold in a median 65 days. Homes without it sold in a median 93 days. That's 28 days, nearly a full month, sitting between two houses that might otherwise look identical on paper.

For context, the territory's overall median was 80 days to sell, and only about 2% of homes sold inside a week. So this isn't a market where speed is easy to come by in the first place. A house without air conditioning is starting from behind before a single showing happens.

The widest version of this split showed up in Prosper. Homes there with air conditioning sold in about 76 days, while homes without it sat for roughly 119 days, a gap of more than six weeks.

Mckinney told a similar story on a smaller scale. In the 75071 ZIP, air-conditioned homes moved in a median 57 days against 90 days for homes without it.

The pattern repeated in Celina, Allen, one of the Frisco markets, Aubrey and Justin as well. In every one of those places, homes with air conditioning sold faster than homes without it, by anywhere from roughly two to six weeks depending on the market.

Nowhere in this territory did the pattern reverse.

A separate, smaller gap showed up around pools: homes with a pool sold in a median 74 days, against 84 days without one, territory-wide. Real, but modest next to the air conditioning split. Two comfort features, two different sizes of consequence.

None of this says why air conditioning matters more this summer than it might in a milder season. The data can't answer that. What it can say is that buyers touring this territory this summer were consistently choosing, or at least moving faster toward, the house that already had it.

If you're selling a home without central air, the ask isn't necessarily to install it before listing. It's to price and market for the timeline the data actually shows, not the one you'd get if the house already had it. An extra month on market changes carrying costs, showing fatigue and how negotiable that first offer needs to be.

If you're buying in Mckinney and air conditioning isn't a dealbreaker for you, that 90-day figure for homes without it is your opening. A house sitting that long may have more room to talk than its list price suggests.

What's worth watching next: whether that 28-day gap holds once cooler months arrive, or whether it's tied specifically to a summer of showings. This period only measured one window, so that answer isn't in yet. For now, it's the single clearest split in how fast a house moves in this territory.

Figures come from MLS sold data for the twelve weeks ending August 30, 2026, aggregated by ZIP code across Celina, Allen, the Frisco ZIPs, Mckinney, Prosper, Aubrey and Justin.