Housing near Lockheed Martin

04Getting to the Sand Lake Road campus

Five homes sit closest to Lockheed Martin's Sand Lake Road campus, all inside a two-minute band. The 25th Street House in Holden Heights runs about 11 minutes. The Amelia House in Parramore, the Piedmont House, the Dollins House and the Sunset Lake House, all three in Washington Shores, each run about 13. That puts the whole west-side cluster close to the campus, not just one home.

Across the rest of the portfolio the drive stays reasonable. Meet. Play. Stay. in Malibu Groves runs about 15 minutes, the Head Avenue, Entertainment and Cozy houses in the Pine Hills area run about 17, Downtown & Stadium Cozy Retreat is about 20, Wekiwa Home is about 23 and WinterPark Home is about 24. These are typical road-routing times without traffic; Orlando rush hours add to the longer routes, and the drive south runs mainly on I-4 or John Young Parkway, both of which see heavier traffic at the shift changes common on a defense campus, an early badge-in and a late-afternoon release.

Some assignments start with a flight rather than a drive up the interstate. Orlando International Airport runs about 26 minutes from Fruit Tree Home, about 30 from Amelia’s Arena Retreat and about 33 from Piedmont, all by road without traffic. That puts the airport run in the same range as the daily commute itself, so a guest flying in for a short assignment can treat the two drives as roughly the same kind of trip.

The map below places the Sand Lake Road campus at the center and each home along its real compass bearing. Because the campus sits toward the south side of the metro, all thirteen homes read north of it: the Downtown Orlando, West Orlando and South-of-Downtown clusters, where the five closest homes sit, form the nearest ring, and the Northwest Orlando cluster around Pine Hills, Rosemont and Lockhart reads a little farther out. A few homes land close together on the map despite sitting in different neighborhoods, which is normal; read the minutes above alongside the map rather than the map on its own.

05A program schedule near the campus

A program assignment away from home still needs groceries, a decent meal after a long day and somewhere to unwind before the next shift. The Amelia and 25th Street houses sit in the part of the portfolio covered by our downtown and close-in area guide: the Publix at The Paramount on Lake Eola is the closest full grocery store for a downtown-edge stay. East of downtown, the Mills 50 district holds the largest Vietnamese-American community in Florida, and Z Asian there has earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand; College Park's Edgewater Drive, a short drive north, adds the heaviest concentration of independent restaurants and cafes in the portfolio, Foxtail Coffee, Cups & Pups Coffee and Adriatico Trattoria among them.

North of downtown, Loch Haven Park gathers the Orlando Museum of Art, the Orlando Science Center and Orlando Shakes in one place, and Harry P. Leu Gardens, a fifty-acre botanical garden on the lake, sits a little farther out. None of it is required for a work stay, but it is there on a day off between shifts.

Lake Eola Park in Orlando 05 · Miosotis Jade · CC BY-SA 4.0 · resized from 2816x2112

Piedmont, in Washington Shores, sits in the territory of our west-side area guide instead. Nikki's Place on South Orange Blossom Trail has served soul food since 1999, and Lake Lorna Doone Park, a twelve-acre city park with a walking loop, outdoor fitness stations and a splash pad, sits close to that cluster of homes. Downtown and Church Street, five to ten minutes east, open up the wider restaurant and bar scene covered in the same guide.

None of the five closest homes is walkable to a SunRail station, but the two downtown stations, LYNX Central and Church Street, are a short drive from the Amelia and 25th Street houses if you want to leave the car parked on a day off, and the free LYMMO bus circulates the downtown core. For a workout after the shift, the Downtown Orlando YMCA on North Mills Avenue is a full-service gym with two pools, and Lake Eola's roughly one-mile sidewalk loop is a free option a few minutes from the downtown-edge homes. Lake Eola itself adds a fountain, resident swans, pedal-powered swan boats to rent and a Sunday farmers market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with food stalls, local makers and live music, an easy Saturday or Sunday for anyone based at the Amelia or 25th Street houses between shifts. None of this replaces the drive to Sand Lake Road itself, which stays a car trip regardless of which home you pick.

06The homes that fit

South of Downtown

Holden Heights

Fruit Tree Home

3 bd 2 ba Sleeps 10

6 min downtown · 5 min ORMC · 13 min Universal

Travel Nurse & MedicalInsurance & Displacement

Downtown Orlando

Parramore / Downtown Edge

Amelia’s Arena Retreat

4 bd 2 ba Sleeps 8

7 min downtown · 9 min ORMC · 16 min Universal

Travel Nurse & MedicalInsurance & Displacement

West Orlando

Washington Shores

Piedmont

4 bd 3 ba Sleeps 14

11 min downtown · 11 min ORMC · 13 min Universal

Travel Nurse & MedicalInsurance & Displacement

Fruit Tree Home is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow with full-size laundry on site, keyless entry and a fenced backyard with mature shade trees. It carries 142 Airbnb reviews at a 4.83 rating, the most of any home we have. Its bedrooms are compact, which suits one engineer well and two colleagues sharing adequately, and it works for a family relocating ahead of a home purchase too.

Amelia’s Arena Retreat is a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a bedroom that has its own attached bathroom, useful when two people on the same program keep different hours. The kitchen was recently renovated with white shaker cabinets, stainless appliances and granite-look counters, and the backyard is fenced with mature shade trees.

Piedmont has four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a large concrete parking pad that fits several vehicles, plus a fenced backyard and a corner with a foosball table and arcade basketball. It is a workable pick for a small team splitting one house or a family that wants the extra bathroom.

All three are modest, older houses rather than new builds. Piedmont's front driveway and parking pad show some cracking and age, and Fruit Tree Home's yard trees show some browning in photos, which is typical of an older lot in this part of Orlando. None of the three has a desk listed in our amenity records; if a home office setup matters as much as the drive, the Head Avenue House and the Meet & Play House both have one, about 17 and 15 minutes from Sand Lake Road.

07Housing a bigger integration or test team

A single engineer or a couple filling one of the five closest homes is the most common case, but a subcontractor bringing an integration or test team for a multi-week push needs more bedrooms under one roof and one invoice rather than several hotel folios. The Clue House in Pine Hills has six bedrooms and sleeps up to fifteen, with full-size laundry and a desk already in the house, about 17 minutes from Sand Lake Road.

Piedmont, one of the five closest homes, has four bedrooms and the parking pad to match a crew that arrives in more than one vehicle. Both homes book on the same written monthly agreement as a single-guest stay, with one rate for the whole house rather than a rate per bedroom, which is usually simpler for a subcontractor's accounting than splitting a team across several hotel rooms. The same one-rate structure applies no matter how many bedrooms are in use, so the accounting is no different from housing one person for the same length of time.

08Billing a program or a relocation

Defense contractors and subcontractor firms book the same way any company does with us: one written monthly agreement naming the home, the dates, the rate and the deposit, with itemized receipts for each stay that a contracts office can process. We can write the agreement to the company, the staffing agency or a relocation coordinator, and invoice in that party's name.

Established companies, agencies and insurers can arrange Net-30 terms on a signed agreement or purchase order; the first booking is paid up front while that relationship is set up. A W-9 and a certificate of insurance are available on request, and Libema carries a commercial landlord liability policy. None of it requires a lease: a program that runs six months and then extends is handled month by month, and telling us as soon as the extension looks likely is what lets us hold the following month.

This works the same way across corporate and business housing, government and per-diem orders, and a contractor crew booking a whole house for the team. We are a housing provider, not a Lockheed Martin office or a program vendor, and none of this implies any affiliation with the company; we have homes close to where its people end up working. Coordinators handling this kind of booking for someone else often find our coordinator's checklist useful before the first call.

09Around the Sand Lake Road campus

Lockheed Martin's Sand Lake Road campus is home to its Missiles and Fire Control business. A second part of the company's Orlando work, training and simulation, sits on the east side of the metro near the Central Florida Research Park, a research and technology park that also houses Team Orlando, the region's military simulation and training group.

The drive depends on which cluster the assignment is at:

• Sand Lake Road, home to Missiles and Fire Control: about 11 to 24 minutes, depending on the home.
• Central Florida Research Park, home to the training-and-simulation work and Team Orlando: about 26 to 36 minutes, reflecting its spot farther east in the metro.

Engineers and integration teams are more often at Sand Lake Road; staff on the training-and-simulation side are the ones more likely to be assigned near the Research Park. If your assignment is on that side rather than at Sand Lake Road, plan around the longer number and check with your program office which campus applies before you book. Our guide to getting around Orlando for work covers the wider commute picture if your household includes someone commuting to a different site.

10What's in the house

Every home comes furnished for a program that can start on short notice: beds and linens made up, a stocked kitchen with cookware and dishes, a washer and dryer, Wi-Fi from day one, and private parking in a driveway, carport or parking pad. Guests let themselves in with keyless entry or a lockbox, and arrival notes with the code or the key location come a few days before check-in. Exact inclusions are confirmed in writing when you book.

Exact inclusions vary a little by home and are confirmed in writing when you book.

Fruit Tree Home is one of four homes with full-size laundry; the Head Avenue, Cozy and Wekiwa houses are the others. The Amelia and Piedmont houses each have their own washer and dryer as well. Amelia’s Arena Retreat's bedroom with its own attached bathroom, shown below, is one of the details guests sharing a house on a program ask about most: two people on different schedules can each have a private bathroom without working around each other.

None of the thirteen homes has a pool; they are residential houses, not a resort. Six of them, the Amelia, Piedmont, Dollins, Katherine, Head Avenue and 25th Street houses, publish a street address on the site; the other six publish the neighborhood and zip code, and we share the exact address at booking.

11A bridge while you house-hunt or wait on a start date

Not everyone headed to Lockheed Martin needs housing tied to a badge and a contract. Some of our guests have accepted an offer and are waiting on a start date; others have sold a house elsewhere and are waiting to close on one here. For both, a month in a furnished house is simpler than a short-term apartment lease: you book by the month, extend by the month if the closing date slips, and move out with a few days' notice once the keys to the new place are in hand.

Several of the homes accept pets, which matters for a family moving with a dog or a cat rather than boarding it during the transition; the policy and any deposit are confirmed in writing before you commit. Individually booked stays follow the same steps as a company booking: a rate, a deposit and the pet policy confirmed in writing, then a written agreement naming the home and the dates. For a shorter overlap, a week or two rather than a month, the closest homes' Airbnb and Vrbo listings cover it too.

Our corporate housing checklist and our neighborhood starter guide go through the wider decision if Sand Lake Road is only part of a bigger move, a spouse's job or kids changing schools included.

12What guests said

These are real reviews from Fruit Tree Home's own Airbnb listing, quoted exactly as guests wrote them, with the reviewer's name and month. Every home carries its own set on its page, and the full collection is on our reviews page.