A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Orange County Outside the HVHZ

Barndominium Builders in Orlando, FL

Most barndominium land around Orlando is not in Orlando. Roughly 88 percent of Orange County lies outside the city limits, which changes who issues your permit, what it costs, and which zoning table applies. Orange County is also one of the easier places in Florida to build this way: outside the High Velocity Hurricane Zone, outside the wind-borne debris region, and sitting on a half-acre minimum lot in the agricultural districts.

Orlando at a glance

County
Orange County
Population
333,888
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Building conditions in Orlando

What actually changes from one Florida city to the next: who issues the permit, what wind speed the structure has to be engineered to, and what the ground is like. These are the numbers your drawings have to satisfy.

Build conditions for Orlando, Orange County: design wind speed 130–140 mph, outside the High Velocity Hurricane Zone. BUILD CONDITIONS ORLANDO, FL Orange CountyOUTSIDE THE HVHZOUTSIDE WBDR DESIGN WIND SPEED 130–140 mphInterpolated to your address; no contour crosses Orange County — confirmed per parcel before plans are sealedZONING · A-1 AGRICULTURALHalf-acre minimum lot850 sq ft minimum living area · 35 ft maximum heightPERMIT REVIEW CLOCK30 business daysF.S. 553.792 · fee drops 10% per day lateIMPACT FEES≈$22,807 per dwellingTransportation, parks, law enforcement, fire and schoolWHO ISSUES THE PERMITOrange County Building SafetyAbout 88% of the county lies outside city limits
Build conditions for Orlando, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.
Who issues your permit
City of Orlando inside city limits (407 246 2271). Orange County Division of Building Safety everywhere else (407 836 5550). About 88% of the county lies outside city limits.

F.S. 553.80 (2024 Florida Statutes); Orange County Zoning Division; land areas from US Census 2024 Gazetteer (903.0 sq mi county, 111.1 sq mi city).

Permit review deadline
30 business days for a single-family home under 7,500 sq ft. Miss it and the jurisdiction must cut the permit fee by 10% per business day late.

F.S. 553.792, as amended by HB 267 (2024), effective 1 January 2025. Orange County publishes no turnaround time of its own.

Design wind speed
Orange County sits between the 130 mph and 140 mph ultimate design wind speed contours for Risk Category II. No contour crosses the county, so the figure is interpolated to your address.

Florida Building Code 8th Edition (2023), Figure 1609.3(1), adopting ASCE 7-22. Site-specific values from the ASCE 7 Hazard Tool.

Minimum lot, A-1 and A-2
Half an acre (21,780 sq ft) for a single-family residence, 850 sq ft minimum living area, 35 ft maximum height, 100 ft lot width. A mobile home on the same land needs 2 acres.

Orange County Code § 38-1501, last amended Ord. No. 2016-19 (13 September 2016).

The agricultural exemption does not apply
A non-residential farm building on bona fide agricultural land is exempt from the building code and permit fees. The moment it contains a dwelling, the exemption is gone and full residential code, engineering, and permitting apply.

F.S. 604.50, which defines a nonresidential farm building as one not intended to be used as a residential dwelling. Parallel exemption at F.S. 553.73(10)(c).

County impact fees, rural parcel
About $22,807 per dwelling before the building permit fee: $10,417.02 transportation (rural tier), $2,434 parks, $665 law enforcement, $462 fire and rescue, plus $8,829 school.

Orange County impact fee schedule: transportation effective 1 January 2026, fire/law/parks effective 1 May 2026, school effective 1 October 2022.

Also worth knowing before you build in Orlando

Faster route: private provider
Hire a private provider for plan review and the building official has 20 business days, or 10 if the provider is a sealing engineer or architect. The jurisdiction must reduce your fee by its cost saving.

F.S. 553.791. Acknowledged in the Orange County Fee Directory FY2025-26, p. 27.

High Velocity Hurricane Zone
Outside it. The HVHZ is Broward and Miami-Dade counties only, so Orange County builds avoid that entire additional approval regime.

Florida Building Code 8th Edition (2023), Section 202 definitions.

Wind-borne debris region
Outside it. Impact-rated glazing is not required by code on a typical Orange County residence, which is a real cost difference against coastal Florida. Insurers and HOAs may still ask for it.

Adopted FBC 2023 wind-borne debris region map: Orange County is entirely unshaded. The county is landlocked and under the 140 mph trigger.

Setback from water
Any principal structure must sit at least 50 ft back from the normal high water contour of an adjacent surface water body. In a county this full of lakes it is a genuine siting constraint.

Orange County Code § 38-1501, footnote a, with the lakeshore protection ordinance.

Ground conditions
55.4% of the county rates Very Limited for dwellings. The constraint is a water table 45 to 75 cm below surface, not weak ground: shrink-swell soils cover only 14,000 of 642,200 acres. This is a drainage and slab-elevation problem, not a bearing problem.

USDA NRCS Soil Survey, Orange County survey area FL095. Bearing capacity must come from a site-specific geotechnical report.

Sinkhole risk is low here
72.2% of Orange County rates Least Favorable for sinkhole formation, and the county ranks 7th statewide for subsidence reports with 3 verified sinkholes on record. Northwest Orange, toward Apopka, is the exception.

Florida Geological Survey Favorable Geology model and Subsidence Incident Reports (1909 to August 2026). Most reports are unverified; reporting is voluntary.

Termite protection is mandatory
All of Florida is Termite Infestation Probability Zone 1, Very Heavy. Florida requires registered termiticide treatment plus a Certificate of Compliance on every new dwelling regardless of framing material. Steel framing does not exempt you.

Florida Building Code Residential R318.1 (8th Edition, 2023); HUD TIP Zone map. Steel still avoids the rot and food-source problem, just not the treatment requirement.

Steel framing submittal requirement
Plans must show size of steel members, material grade, weld grade, and connection details. This is the requirement most out-of-state kit drawings fail on.

Orange County Residential Plan Review Checklist, citing FBC-R R301.1.1(2) and AISI S230.

Building permit fee
Unincorporated Orange County charges $26 for the first $1,000 of valuation plus $3 per additional $1,000. Inside Orlando city limits it is $64.94 plus $4.32 per $1,000, roughly two and a half times the county rate.

Orange County Fee Directory FY2025-26 (July 2025); City of Orlando residential fee schedule (January 2023, rev. May 2023). Verify city figures before relying on them.

Rainfall and drainage
51.45 inches a year, with about 45% of it falling in June, July and August. Site drainage gets designed around the wet season, not the annual average.

NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 Climate Normals, Orlando International Airport.

Hurricane exposure, measured
Hurricane Charley delivered 79 mph sustained winds and a 105 mph gust at Orlando International in 2004, roughly 65 miles inland. No Category 3 or stronger has passed within 50 nautical miles of Orlando in 174 years of record.

NOAA National Hurricane Center tropical cyclone report for Charley (2004); NOAA HURDAT2 best-track database, 1851 to 2024.

Flood insurance discount
Orange County holds a Community Rating System Class 5, which earns residents a 25% discount on National Flood Insurance Program premiums.

Orange County Floodplain Management. Check your parcel on the FEMA Map Service Center before you design the pad elevation.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Below the slab

The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building

Most of Orange County rates poorly for dwellings in the soil survey, and the reason is water sitting close to the surface rather than weak ground. That makes the pad elevation and the drainage plan the two line items most likely to move your budget. We price the dirt before we price the building.

What we build in Orlando

Every service we offer is available across Orange County, from a shell kit you erect yourself to a finished home we hand you the keys to. What a build costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we price against your land rather than publishing a rate card.

See all nine services

What a build looks like

Three stages every Orlando project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Aerial view of an undeveloped rural Florida lot with cleared grass, pine scrub and a sandy access track.
Stage one

The parcel

Zoning, setbacks, flood zone and utility access get checked before anything is drawn.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Stage two

Pad and permit

Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the submittal works through Orange County.

A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Stage three

Frame to finish

Shell erected and dried in, then systems, insulation and interior finish through to CO.

Those are the rules for Orange County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Orlando

Orange County and the rural land around it. The buildable acreage for a project this size usually sits outside the city limits, which is frequently what changes who issues your permit.

Our Orlando service area, covering Orange County and the surrounding rural acreage. We build across this area from our office in Lake Mary, FL — this map marks the territory we serve, not a branch location.

Keep reading

The questions that usually come next once you know what Orlando allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

Sourced per-square-foot ranges by tier and by size, with a calculator built on the same figures.

Read it

Is It Legal in Florida?

Classification, zoning, the HOA gate, and the agricultural exemption that does not cover a home.

Read it

How Long Does It Take?

Census build-duration data, and the Florida statute capping permit review at 30 business days.

Read it

Sources for this page

The primary documents behind the Orlando figures above. We would rather you checked them than took our word for it.

Nearby areas we build in

Close to Orlando, though the permitting authority and wind requirements can differ once you cross a county line.

Deltona

Volusia County
Lakeland

Polk County
Palm Bay

Brevard County

Building in Orlando: common questions

12 questions we get asked most often about building in Orlando. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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Who issues the permit for a barndominium near Orlando?
It depends which side of the city line your parcel sits on, and most rural acreage is on the county side. Inside Orlando city limits the City of Orlando Permitting Services Division handles it, at 400 South Orange Avenue. Outside the city, which is roughly 88 percent of Orange County by land area, it is the Orange County Division of Building Safety. The distinction is not academic: the city charges $64.94 for the first $1,000 of valuation plus $4.32 per additional thousand, while the county charges $26 plus $3, about two and a half times cheaper. We confirm jurisdiction before drawing anything.
How long does plan review actually take in Orange County?
Florida law gives the jurisdiction 30 business days to approve, conditionally approve, or deny a complete application for a single-family home under 7,500 square feet, and if they miss it they must reduce your permit fee by 10 percent for every business day they are late. Orange County does not publish its own turnaround figure, so treat the statutory clock as the number that matters. If speed is critical there is a faster route: under F.S. 553.791 you can hire a private provider for plan review, which drops the building official to 20 business days, or 10 when the provider is an engineer or architect sealing the work.
What wind speed does my building have to be engineered to?
Orange County falls between the 130 mph and 140 mph ultimate design wind speed contours for Risk Category II on Florida Building Code Figure 1609.3(1). No contour actually crosses the county, so the value gets interpolated for your specific address rather than read off as a single number. Be wary of anyone quoting you a flat "130 mph for Orlando" without asking where the parcel is. We pull the site-specific figure from the ASCE 7 Hazard Tool and the engineer stamps to that.
Do I need impact windows in Orlando?
Not by code, on a typical Orange County parcel. The county sits entirely outside the wind-borne debris region, because it is landlocked and its design wind speed stays under the 140 mph trigger. That is a genuine cost saving against building the same house in Cape Coral or Fort Lauderdale. Two caveats: your insurer may price it in anyway, and an HOA can require it independently of the code.
Is Orlando in the High Velocity Hurricane Zone?
No. The HVHZ is Broward and Miami-Dade counties only, and nowhere else in Florida. It carries a separate and much heavier approval regime, including product approvals specific to those two counties. Building in Orange County means you avoid all of it, which is one of the reasons a barndominium pencils out better here than in South Florida.
How much land do I need to build a barndominium in Orange County?
Less than most people assume. In the A-1 Citrus Rural and A-2 Farmland Rural districts the minimum lot for a single-family residence is half an acre, 21,780 square feet, with 100 feet of lot width and 850 square feet of minimum living area. The oft-repeated figures of one acre or ten acres are wrong. Worth knowing: a mobile home on that same A-1 or A-2 land needs 2 acres, so a site-built barndominium is actually the less restricted option. Maximum height is 35 feet, which matters if you want a tall clear-span shop bay.
Can I use an agricultural exemption to skip permitting?
No, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding in Florida barndominium building. F.S. 604.50 does exempt a non-residential farm building on bona fide agricultural land from the building code and from county permit fees entirely. But the statute defines that building as one not intended to be used as a residential dwelling. The moment there is a kitchen and a bedroom in it, the exemption disappears and the full residential code, engineering, and permitting apply. People who build first and ask later end up with an unpermitted structure they cannot insure, finance, or legally occupy.
Will an agricultural classification lower the taxes on my barndominium?
On the land, potentially. On the house, no. Florida greenbelt classification under F.S. 193.461 requires the residence and its curtilage to be assessed separately at market value, so only the remaining agricultural land gets the classified assessment. Two things worth knowing: there is no minimum acreage in the statute, it says so explicitly, and the application is due to the Orange County Property Appraiser on or before 1 March each year. What qualifies is good faith commercial agricultural use, not simply owning acreage.
What are the ground conditions like around Orlando?
Wetter than the Central Florida sand-ridge reputation suggests. About 55 percent of Orange County rates Very Limited for dwellings in the USDA soil survey, and the limiting factor is a water table sitting 45 to 75 centimetres below the surface, not weak ground. Expansive shrink-swell soils cover only about 14,000 of the county 642,200 acres. Practically, that makes your foundation a drainage and pad-elevation question rather than a bearing-capacity one. It also means the site work is where a build gets expensive, which is why we price it before we price the building.
Should I be worried about sinkholes?
Much less than the marketing around Central Florida suggests. Just over 72 percent of Orange County rates Least Favorable for sinkhole formation in the Florida Geological Survey model, and the county ranks seventh statewide for subsidence reports with only three verified sinkholes on record. Florida sinkhole claims concentrate heavily in Hernando, Pasco, and Hillsborough, not here. The honest exception is northwest Orange County toward Apopka, which rates Favorable. Note also that Florida law only requires insurers to cover catastrophic ground cover collapse; sinkhole coverage itself is an optional add-on.
Does a steel frame mean I can skip termite treatment in Orlando?
No. All of Florida is Termite Infestation Probability Zone 1, the Very Heavy category, and Florida rewrote the residential code so that R318.1 requires registered termiticide treatment plus a Certificate of Compliance from a licensed pest control company on every new dwelling, whatever it is framed in. Anyone telling you steel exempts the building is misreading the national code, which Florida amended. Steel still earns its keep here: it is not a food source and it does not rot. It just does not get you out of the treatment.
What do the county fees add up to before I even start building?
On a rural Orange County parcel, roughly $22,800 per dwelling in impact fees before the building permit itself: about $10,417 transportation at the rural tier, $2,434 parks, $665 law enforcement, $462 fire and rescue, and $8,829 school. The building permit is separate and valuation-based. We put these in the budget at feasibility stage rather than letting them surface after you have committed to a design.

Building in Orlando?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm what Orange County will actually let you put on the parcel and what wind load it has to meet. That conversation costs nothing.

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