The Orlando market, without the gloss
The numbers that change your maths, with the source next to them. I keep this updated — and when I don't know, I write that I don't know.
- Orange · single-family
- $509,990
+0.8% year over year · 27 days on market · Jul 2026, Florida Realtors- Osceola · single-family
- $418,268
+0.4% year over year · 57 days on market · Jul 2026, Florida Realtors- Inventory
- 3.8 vs 9.1
Months. Orange single-family against Osceola condo — a seller's market and a buyer's market at once- 30-year fixed rate
- 6.71%
Freddie Mac, 3 September 2026
Insurance is easing, but the roof still decides
Citizens cut 8.7% on this spring's renewals, and Florida law mandates a wind mitigation discount (§627.0629) — a cheap report almost nobody pulls before closing. What still decides is the roof: under §627.7011(5) a carrier cannot refuse a roof under 15 years old; above that it requires an inspection proving five more years of useful life. Patching doesn't reset the clock. A house ten thousand dollars cheaper with a 2009 roof can be the most expensive house you ever buy.
CDD isn't HOA, and it lands on your tax bill
HOA is the association fee. A CDD is a unit of government (Chapter 190) and appears as a non-ad valorem assessment on your property tax bill — not on the HOA statement. It has two parts: debt, which eventually ends, and operations, which is perpetual. In Lake Nona the observed range is $1,500 to $4,000 a year. Two identical houses in neighbouring communities can carry very different costs because of it, and listings rarely highlight that.
Non-residents pay more, and it rises faster
Property tax in the region runs between 1.20% and 1.81% of value, depending on the municipality's millage. Someone living in the home gets homestead (§196.031) and the 3% Save Our Homes cap. Someone who doesn't gets a 10% cap (§193.1554) — and no cap at all on the school portion, which is roughly 40% of the bill in Orange. It isn't a trap, it's public rule. It just has to enter your maths beforehand.
The short-term rental map froze in 2011
§509.032(7)(b) bars municipalities from banning short-term rental — except those that already banned it before 1 June 2011. That's why the map is a mosaic with no visible logic. In the City of Orlando, renting a whole house for 1 to 29 days is not permitted: only home share, with the owner living on site. In Osceola, only inside overlay districts, with two licences. And the HOA declaration can prohibit it even where the law allows — the preemption reaches government, not private contract.
After the NAR settlement, more people use an agent
The fear was the opposite. In the first full year, 88% of buyers and 91% of sellers used an agent, and for-sale-by-owner fell to 5%, the lowest on record. Commission left the MLS and became a written negotiation before any showing, in the buyer agreement, with language stating it is fully negotiable. The effect was formalisation, not disintermediation.
Buying property doesn't get you a visa — and EB-5 isn't this
There is no immigration status requirement to buy property in the United States. But buying doesn't create a visa or a green card either. EB-5, the investment visa that always comes up in this conversation, requires a new commercial enterprise in operation and ten jobs created — a residential house doesn't qualify. That's an immigration lawyer's territory. If someone sells you a house claiming it solves a visa, walk away.