City of Orlando · Orange County, Florida · United States · Figures as of June 2026

Orlando adds a second assessment that appears on no tax table

Almost nothing people call Orlando is the City of Orlando. Winter Park and Maitland are separate municipalities; Dr. Phillips, Celebration and Horizon West are unincorporated county; the theme parks are in Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake. What is left is a city seventy-six to a hundred and seventeen feet above sea level, which is why the storm-surge argument that dominates Miami and Tampa on this site barely applies here, and why the cost that actually surprises buyers is a community development district assessment that appears on no tax table. These are 16 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.

Neighborhood guides

76–117 ft

Elevation range across these guides

$1.2–3k

Typical CDD assessment, on no millage table

$375,175

Typical home value, June 2026

$1,904

Two-bedroom rent

1.61%

Tax rate a buyer pays, 2025

Photograph: Downtown from Lake Eola · JER3L1337 · CC BY 4.0 · source

What everyday life costs

Living in Orlando

What the household next door earns, what the government takes, how people get to work and what the two ends of the year feel like. Every figure below is the one the comparison pages run on, with the year it describes where the source publishes one, and anything the source does not publish is left out rather than guessed.

$77,597

Median household income, 2024

$13,449

Income tax on $100,000

6.5%

Sales tax

1.5%

Commute by transit, 2024

15.9 °C

January mean

28.1 °C

July mean

Property tax is the cost that varies most from one address to the next, and the rate in the tiles above is this municipality's alone. Orlando metro puts what every town around Orlando actually charges on a single table, alongside the exemptions and caps that change what an owner pays.

01: Work out the money

The cost of living in Orlando, 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.

The question worth answering first

Rent or buy in Orlando

Whether buying beats renting in the one Florida city on this site where flood is not the headline, and where the cost that catches people is an assessment the tax rate does not include. Every input is editable, including that one.

Work out your break-even

American math, on Florida's rules

Mortgage calculator

Monthly compounding, the 30-year fixed loan, the private mortgage insurance a low down payment triggers and the month federal law makes your lender stop charging it, plus the documentary stamp and intangible taxes Florida charges a buyer on the loan itself.

Interest over 30 years

Work out your payment

02: Work out where

Then find where in it to live

The neighborhood index groups Orlando into four sectors: an editorial grouping, though the City does publish named neighborhood boundaries, which makes it the best-sourced of the three Florida cities here. Every guide keeps sourced facts apart from editorial observation, credits its photographs, and dates what it claims.

The full index

16 neighborhood guides

Each with sourced facts, schools, parks, amenities, drive times, its measured elevation, and (where one applies) what the community development district actually assesses.

Browse every neighborhood

How the city divides

Downtown, north, east and south

A 1920s bungalow grid around the lakes, a naval base rebuilt as a New Urbanist neighborhood, and seventeen square miles of master plan by the airport. Orlando's four sectors are not variations on a theme. They are four different products.

Compare the four sectors

Outside the city limits

The 24 municipalities of the Orlando metro

Winter Park, Maitland, Kissimmee, Sanford and twenty more on one comparable footing. The millage each actually charges and the rate a homesteaded buyer really pays. Orlando is one row on that table; this hub is the same city read a neighborhood at a time.

Compare the metro

Photographs: Village Center at Baldwin Park by Freeholdman12, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Lake Nona Town Center by East Park, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

By sectorDowntown, Lake Eola and Thornton Park College Park and north Orlando Baldwin Park and the east side Lake Nona and south Orlando

Before the arithmetic

What buying in Orlando actually involves

A great deal of the newer housing around this city sits inside a community development district, whose assessment arrives on the tax bill alongside the millage on this page. It is a bond repayment for the infrastructure of the subdivision rather than a service charge, it can run to thousands a year, and it has a remaining term. Two houses at the same price can differ by that amount annually, and the listing will not always say so.

This is sinkhole country in a way the coasts are not. Central Florida's limestone geology means subsidence claims and remediation history follow a property, and both affect insurability and resale. A property with a repaired sinkhole is not necessarily a bad purchase, but it is a specific conversation with an insurer rather than a general one.

The tourism corridor is a genuine housing consideration south and west of the city. Whole subdivisions there are licensed for short-term letting, which changes what living in one is like and what the neighbours' incentives are, and the rules differ between Orange and Osceola counties and between subdivisions. If the plan involves letting, or specifically avoiding letting, the rules attached to the parcel are the thing to read.

Away from the corridor the city's own neighborhoods are older than the metro's reputation suggests, with bungalow districts near downtown and post-war housing around them. Roof age decides whether an insurer will write the property at all, which is the practical constraint on the older stock.

Moving to Orlando: check these before you commit

Whether the subdivision carries a community development district assessment, its amount and its remaining term
Sinkhole and subsidence history on the property and its immediate neighbours
Short-term rental rules for the specific parcel, which vary by county and by subdivision
The roof's age and whether an insurer will write the property at all
Your own tax bill after the assessment resets rather than the seller's under Save Our Homes

Weigh it against another city

Orlando compared

Home prices, rents, crime, climate, taxes and transit next to each of the other cities on the site, with what each does better and who should choose which. Nearest first.

03, Where the numbers come from

Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork

Every Orlando 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.

Housing data

Version 1

Figures as of June 2026

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 Orlando figures come from

Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), all homes, mid-tier, smoothed and seasonally adjusted: city file, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved 2026-08-14
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 2026-08-14
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 2026-09-14
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 2026-09-14
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 2026-08-14
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 2026-08-14
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