Housing near Nemours Children's Hospital

04The drive to Lake Nona

The drive to Nemours runs on SR-408 and SR-417 from every one of our homes, and the numbers cluster closer together than the spread of the thirteen houses across the city might suggest. Fruit Tree Home in Holden Heights is 32 minutes from the campus. Amelia’s Arena Retreat in Parramore and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando in Washington Shores are each 33 minutes, and City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes, also in Washington Shores, is 33 as well. Piedmont is 34 minutes, and Meet. Play. Stay. in Malibu Groves is 35.

Moving into the Pine Hills and northwest cluster, Entertainment Home and Cozy Home are both 36 minutes, The Clue House is 37, Downtown & Stadium Cozy Retreat is 39, and WinterPark Home in Lockhart is 42. Wekiwa Home, out in Hiawassee on the west side, is 40 minutes; it sits in its own area west of Pine Hills, separate from that northwest cluster, and it lands in the same range for the same underlying reason: the whole west side shares the long crossing to Lake Nona. These are typical road-routing times without traffic. Orlando's rush hours add time to any of them, on SR-408 or on SR-417.

Because Nemours sits well across the city from every one of our homes, the gap between a 32-minute drive and a 42-minute one adds up differently depending on how often you make the trip. Over a 13-week assignment with regular shifts, the extra ten minutes each way is worth weighing against the price and the floor plan of the house at the far end of the range; a family visiting on a lighter schedule will feel the distance less.

A closed lane or a stalled accident on SR-408 or SR-417 will cost more time than the gap between any two of our homes, which is worth remembering before choosing a house on Nemours proximity alone. The floor plan, the yard and the price of the house matter over a stay of weeks or months; the extra few minutes on the drive matter most on the handful of days when traffic runs heavy.

05Where the homes sit relative to Lake Nona

The map centers on Nemours and places each home by its true compass bearing and its drive time by road, not by straight-line miles. Lake Nona sits on the southeast side of the metro, so every one of our homes has to cross a meaningful stretch of the city to reach it, whether the starting point is Parramore on the downtown edge, Washington Shores to the west, or Pine Hills and Lockhart to the northwest. That crossing is part of why the drive times bunch into a tighter band than the map's spread of directions might suggest.

Parramore, Washington Shores and Holden Heights are usually the picks for guests headed downtown, to Orlando Health, or into the west-side job corridor, not for a southeast commute to Lake Nona. For a Nemours stay they still work well, because the drive time to Nemours from any of our thirteen homes falls into a comparatively narrow band regardless of which side of the city you start from. Pine Hills, Rosemont, Lockhart and Hiawassee sit farther from downtown on paper, but the Nemours drive from that cluster runs only a matter of minutes longer than from the close-in homes, since the crossing to the southeast dominates the whole trip; the first few miles out of the driveway barely change the total. That is part of why the three homes covered in detail below sit in three separate neighborhoods across the city.

The Holden Heights, Parramore and Washington Shores pages describe the close-in cluster that includes the 25th Street, Amelia and Dollins houses; Pine Hills, Rosemont and Lockhart cover the northwest homes, and Hiawassee covers Wekiwa Home.

06The homes closest to Nemours

Three homes come out closest on the Nemours drive, and each fits a different kind of stay.

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

Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando

4 bd 2 ba Sleeps 13

7 min downtown · 7 min ORMC · 16 min Universal

Travel Nurse & MedicalInsurance & Displacement

The 25th Street House in Holden Heights is 32 minutes from Nemours. It is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow that sleeps 10, with a full-size washer and dryer on site, keyless entry, a screened front porch and a fenced backyard with mature shade trees. 142 guests have reviewed it on Airbnb at a 4.83 average, more than any other home on the site. The bedrooms run small, which works well for one clinician or two colleagues sharing, and comfortably for a smaller family taking the whole house for a stretch of weeks.

The Amelia House in Parramore is 33 minutes away. It is a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house that sleeps 8, and one of its bedrooms has its own attached bathroom, useful when two adults on different schedules each want a bathroom to themselves. Ceiling fans and a wall-mounted TV are in the bedrooms, the dining area seats four, and the fenced backyard with its mature shade trees sits behind a private concrete driveway.

The Dollins House, also in Washington Shores, is 33 minutes from Nemours. It is a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house that sleeps 13, on a shaded lot under mature oaks, with blackout curtains in the bedrooms for anyone coming off a night rotation and a private driveway for off-street parking. At 13 sleeping spots it is built for a bigger group than the other two: a family joined by grandparents for part of a treatment stay, or several clinicians sharing one lease.

All three are available by the month for a Nemours-length stay, and by the night or the week through each home's own Airbnb and Vrbo listing for a shorter trip.

07Billing a Nemours travel contract

For a travel assignment, a rotation, a fellowship or a clinical project tied to Nemours, the agreement is written the way your department or your agency needs it. You get a written agreement naming the home, the dates, the rate and the deposit, plus itemized monthly receipts to hand to a housing stipend desk or a reimbursement process. If your agency or your program wants to be the party on the agreement and pay the invoice directly, we write it that way.

A W-9 and a certificate of insurance are available on request; Libema carries a commercial landlord liability policy. Established companies, staffing agencies and insurers can arrange net-30 terms on a signed agreement or a purchase order, though the first booking is paid up front. Extensions run month by month at the same terms, so if a rotation or a research project stretches past its original end date, tell us as soon as you know and we will hold the following month where we can.

Fellows and residents on a training rotation typically need less paperwork than a staffing-agency nurse, just the written agreement and receipts for their own records, while clinical research and project staff tied to a Nemours study often need the invoice addressed to the sponsoring institution instead of an individual. Tell us which of those applies when you inquire, and we will build the paperwork around your specific situation.

08Housing for a family with a child in treatment

A stay near Nemours often runs for weeks, and the shape of those weeks changes with the right house. A kitchen means meals get cooked instead of bought for however many relatives are taking turns at the hospital. A driveway means the cars of everyone rotating through have somewhere to sit. A bedroom with a door that closes means the person who did the overnight shift at the bedside has somewhere quiet to sleep through the afternoon.

Amelia’s Arena Retreat, Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando and Fruit Tree Home all book the same way for a family stay near Lake Nona: a written agreement with the rate and deposit confirmed up front, and extensions by the month when a discharge date moves, which it often does with pediatric treatment. For a shorter admission or a scheduled procedure, nightly and weekly stays through each home's Airbnb and Vrbo listing, or a direct inquiry, cover a stay measured in days. Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, at four bedrooms and thirteen sleeping spots, is the one built to hold the most people if grandparents or siblings are coming too.

None of the three homes puts you inside Lake Nona itself. What they offer instead is a whole house with its own kitchen and laundry, for one monthly rate confirmed in writing, rather than paying for a hotel room night by night while a family cycles through it for weeks.

09What's in the house

Every home comes furnished, with the kitchen stocked and the beds made, from the first night. That holds equally for a month booked around a fellowship and for a longer stay while a child is in treatment. Wi-Fi is on from day one in every home too, useful for a parent working remotely between hospital visits or a fellow finishing paperwork at night. Exact inclusions vary a little by home and are confirmed in writing when you book.

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

None of the thirteen homes has a pool; they are residential houses, not a resort property. Bed and bath counts are the counts published on each home's own listing, and a sofa is never counted as a bed. Fruit Tree Home, Amelia’s Arena Retreat and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando are three of the six homes that publish a street address on the site; the other six publish a neighborhood and zip code and share the exact address at booking.

10Lake Nona's Medical City

Nemours Childrens Hospital, Florida · Walter Lowe · CC BY-SA 4.0 · resized from 5472x3648

What it does mean is that Lake Nona reads as its own destination on a map of Orlando, separate from the downtown, west-side and northwest neighborhoods where our thirteen homes sit, and closer in character to a planned medical and research district than to the older residential blocks most of our homes call home. For the families and clinicians we host, that distinction rarely changes the day to day: the drive is the drive, and the house gets chosen for its bedrooms and its kitchen, not for its zip code relative to the medical district.

11Planning a longer stay near Lake Nona

SR-408 and SR-417 both carry tolls in Central Florida, so if the Lake Nona drive becomes a daily one, a SunPass or E-PASS transponder is worth setting up in your first week; paying by plate on every trip costs more over the length of a stay. The monthly rate, the deposit and any pet policy are confirmed in writing before you commit, and several of our homes accept pets under those terms.

Extensions are handled the same way for every stay near Nemours. Clinicians on contract and families whose treatment timeline just moved both give us notice as soon as they know a stay is running long. We extend the same house by the month for as long as the stay continues, with no move to a different unit partway through. That one policy covers a 13-week rotation that becomes 26 weeks and a hospital stay that runs longer than anyone expected.

The first booking is paid up front no matter who is paying. Net-30 terms apply afterward for companies, agencies and insurers with a signed agreement or purchase order; a family or another leisure group pays the normal way, with the rate and deposit confirmed in writing and an itemized receipt for the stay.

12What guests said

These are real reviews from Fruit Tree Home's own Airbnb listing, the home closest to Nemours among the three covered here, quoted exactly as guests wrote them along with their name and the month of the stay. Every home on the site carries its own set of reviews, and the complete collection sits on our reviews page. For more on getting through a long hospital stay generally, our guide on staying near the hospital when someone you love is admitted covers the practical side in more depth.