Understand Eatonville before you commit to an address
Eatonville was incorporated in 1887 and is one of the oldest Black-incorporated municipalities in the United States. A town of about twenty-three hundred people, Zora Neale Hurston's home, and the setting of most of what she wrote. It is entirely surrounded by Orlando, Maitland and Winter Park, and it charges 7.29 mills, the highest municipal rate in Orange County. Figures are the same two indexes measured the same way in all 24 municipalities here, on Florida's rules including the homestead exemption. Zillow publishes no rent index for a town this size, so the rent shown is the median of the other twenty-three municipalities here and is marked as such wherever it appears.
The cost of living in Eatonville, and what a home costs
Two calculators on Florida's own rules: monthly compounding and the month private mortgage insurance stops, and the closing costs this state actually charges.
Rent or buy in Eatonville
Whether buying here beats renting, and the year it turns over. The insurance line, which in Florida decides it, is a figure you can edit.
Mortgage calculator
Monthly compounding, the 30-year fixed loan, the private mortgage insurance a low down payment triggers, and Florida's documentary stamp and intangible taxes on the loan itself.
Then work out whether Eatonville is the right part of the metro
No neighborhood guides for Eatonville yet. What is here instead is the whole metro on one comparable footing.
All 24 municipalities around Orlando
Every municipality in the four counties side by side on typical home value, the millage adopted, and the rate a homesteaded buyer really pays.
Compare the metroThe 24 towns around Charlotte
The same two Zillow indexes for the same month, in a metro where the effective tax rate runs about six-tenths of Orlando's and insurance a little under six-tenths as much.
Compare the two metrosOrlando, neighborhood by neighborhood
The one municipality here with sourced guides rather than a single row of figures, including the first pages on this site to price a community development district assessment.
Explore OrlandoWhat buying in Eatonville actually involves
The rate tells the same story it tells for a small enclave anywhere: 1.7 square kilometers with almost no commercial assessment cannot fund a town cheaply, and the millage is what that costs. But the arithmetic runs the other way from Winter Park's, because Eatonville's typical home value of about $255,000 is the lowest of these twenty-four, so the effective rate is high at 1.57% and the actual bill is about $4,000, among the smallest in the metro.
The pressure on Eatonville is not fiscal so much as existential. The 100-acre former Hungerford School site at the town's center, sold and resold and fought over for a decade, is the largest development question in this metro relative to the size of the place it sits in, and the outcome will decide whether the town keeps its own character or is absorbed by the market around it. Buying here means buying into that argument.
The town's cultural standing is national: it is the community Zora Neale Hurston wrote about, and the museum and festival built around that work draw visitors and scholarship to a town of two thousand. That is a genuine asset and it is not one that shows up in a housing index.
Practically, the town is small enough that services and schooling are shared with neighbours, and the boundary with Orlando, Maitland and unincorporated Orange runs through blocks rather than along obvious lines. Confirming which jurisdiction an address is in matters here more than almost anywhere else in the layer.
Moving to Eatonville: check these before you commit
- The Hungerford site and the town's development pipeline, which will reshape a place this small more than anything else could.
- The condition and age of the housing stock, much of which is small, old and has been under-invested in for decades.
- That the address is in Eatonville rather than Orlando or Maitland. The boundaries here are tight and the millage differs sharply across them.
- Which jurisdiction the parcel is actually in, since the boundaries here run through blocks.
- Which services the town provides directly and which come from the county or a neighbour.
Eatonville levies 7.2938 of the 18.7316 mills charged here; the rest is Orange County, the school district and the water management district, none of which the city council sets.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Eatonville figure below is cited, stamped with the period it describes, and editable, because a number for the whole city rarely describes your purchase. Appreciation and investment returns are assumptions rather than facts, and they are labelled that way. Read the methodology for how the line is drawn.
- Prices, rents and tax rates: published statistics and the official schedules.
- Nothing here is a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice.
Where the Eatonville figures come from
- Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), all homes, mid-tier, smoothed and seasonally adjusted: city file, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical home value for the 35th to 65th percentile of each municipality's market, computed on one method across all twenty-four, Year-over-year change to June 2026, which is negative in twenty-two of the twenty-four, The same series and month the Charlotte metro pages use, so the two American metros can be read against each other
- Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), all homes, smoothed: city file, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A repeat-rent index of asking rents across the whole rental stock, single-family homes included, Municipality-level rent measured on one method across the metro, for twenty-three of the twenty-four
- 2025 Final Millage Rates · Orange County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Orange County general at 4.4347 mills, the library district at 0.3748 and the St Johns River Water Management District at 0.1793, School state and local levies totalling 6.449 mills, Municipal rates from Windermere's 3.7425 to Eatonville's 7.2938, A published total against every mill code, including Winter Park's 15.3615 on codes 2, 4 and 6, Maitland's 16.3055 on code 6, and Windermere's 15.2311 on code 35 and 15.4839 on code 75, A blank library column on every Winter Park and Maitland code, which is what puts both municipalities outside the district
- Special taxing district information: the Orange County Library District's boundary · Orange County Library System · retrieved Supports: The district's boundary is Orange County exclusive of Winter Park and Maitland, each of which operates its own library, Laws of Florida chapter 99-486 as the enabling act behind it
- Final 2025 Millage Rates, fiscal year 2025-26 · Seminole County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Total millage by taxing authority for every Seminole municipality, from Lake Mary's 14.3929 to Casselberry's 18.1808, School required local and discretionary levies totalling 5.2490 mills, The county fire and road MSTUs, which apply in the unincorporated area and in some cities but not others
- 2025 Final Millage Rates · Osceola County Property Appraiser · retrieved Supports: Kissimmee at 17.4114 mills and Saint Cloud at 17.8989, School levies totalling 5.3060 mills across required local, discretionary and capital, Dozens of separate municipal service taxing units in the unincorporated county, from 0.13 to 12.42 mills, which is why an unincorporated Osceola address cannot be given one rate