What to Check Before You Buy Buying a vacant lot looks simpler than buying a house, no inspection, no repairs to negotiate, sometimes no financing to arrange at all. It’s actually the opposite. With a house, the building tells you a lot about itself. With raw land, everything that would normally show up in an … Read more
Florida sits on a foundation of limestone that’s been slowly dissolving for millions of years, and every so often, that process catches up with the surface all at once. Most of the state’s sinkhole activity concentrates in a specific region, not evenly everywhere, but the insurance and disclosure rules that came out of it apply … Read more
Water follows much the same pattern as sewer and septic. Where public water is available, most properties connect to it. Where it isn’t, you need a private well, and that comes with a permitting process most people underestimate the first time they look into it. Short version: Well construction in Florida falls under Chapter 373, … Read more
Connection Rules, Permits, and Central Florida’s Springs Protections Whether a property uses public sewer or its own septic system usually isn’t your choice. It depends on what service is available nearby, and Florida layers specific rules on both options. In parts of Central Florida, springs protection laws add another layer on top. Short version: If … Read more
HVHZ, Wind-Borne Debris Regions, and What Applies in Central Florida It’s tempting to think of Florida’s wind code as organized by county, but mostly it isn’t. It’s organized by mapped design wind speeds and by distance from large bodies of water. County lines just happen to cross those maps in different places. That’s why two … Read more
What Needs One, Owner-Builder Rules, and Inspections Florida has a single statewide building code, which many states don’t. But a uniform code doesn’t mean a uniform process. Every county and city still runs its own building department, with its own forms, fees, and way of handling the gray areas. That’s where most of the real … Read more
