Orlandoculture & etiquette

Florida homeowners pay the highest property insurance premiums in the United States, and the structure is as important as the number. Named-storm damage carries a separate hurricane deductible expressed as a percentage of the insured value — commonly 2%, 5% or 10% — so a 5% deductible on a $400,000 house is $20,000 out of pocket before the policy responds. Flood is never included and must be bought separately. A dozen Florida insurers failed or withdrew between 2021 and 2023, pushing policies into Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state-run insurer of last resort; the market has since been depopulating and rates have started to come down, but this is still the line that decides whether a Florida house is affordable. Get a real quote on the specific address before you make an offer, not after.

Florida gives you 10 days from establishing residency to title and register a vehicle, and 30 days to obtain a Florida driver licence. Registration requires Florida insurance from a Florida-licensed agent first, so the order is insurance, then registration, then licence — and the 10-day leg is the one people miss because they assume the licence deadline covers both. Both appointments run through the county tax collector's offices rather than a state DMV.

Florida is a no-fault state. The statutory minimum is $10,000 of Personal Injury Protection and $10,000 of Property Damage Liability — and, unusually, no bodily injury liability at all for most drivers. That means the legal minimum leaves you personally exposed if you injure someone, and it means a large share of the drivers around you carry nothing that would pay you. Buy bodily injury liability and uninsured motorist cover well above the minimum. This is not the same conversation as in California or New York.

If you buy and make the house your permanent residence, the homestead exemption removes $25,000 of assessed value from all property taxes and a further $25,000 of value between $50,000 and $75,000 from everything except school taxes. More importantly it starts the Save Our Homes cap, which limits annual assessment growth to 3% or CPI, whichever is lower — a benefit that compounds enormously over a decade. You must be a permanent resident on 1 January and file with the county property appraiser by 1 March. If you already owned a Florida homestead, portability lets you carry up to $500,000 of accumulated benefit to the new one, provided you establish it by 1 January of the third year after leaving the old one.

Orlando sits about 30 metres above sea level and well away from either coast, so storm surge is genuinely not your problem. Rainfall is. Hurricane Ian dropped more than 13 inches on Orlando International Airport in September 2022 and flooded neighbourhoods like Orlo Vista that had never been mapped as high risk, and at the time roughly 3% of Orange County single-family homes carried flood insurance. Flood is never part of a homeowner or renters' policy; it is a separate NFIP or private policy with a 30-day waiting period in most cases. Check the address on FEMA's flood maps, then buy the policy anyway if you are anywhere near a lake or a low-lying street.

Central Florida is built on toll roads — the 408, 417, 429, the Turnpike — and most of them have no cash lanes left. Without an E-PASS or SunPass transponder the cameras bill the registered owner by post at a higher rate plus an administrative fee, and rental cars add their own daily charge on top. E-PASS is the Central Florida Expressway Authority's, SunPass is the state's, and they interoperate. Order one before your first drive to the airport.