Housing near Orange County Public Schools

04The drive to OCPS headquarters

Orange County Public Schools runs its administration from West Amelia Street on the western edge of downtown Orlando, a few blocks from the same corridor our Amelia House sits on. A relocating teacher, a district specialist reporting in between site visits, or a contractor bidding a schools project usually starts with the same question: which of the thirteen homes gets them there fastest. The answer changes by cluster, not by home alone, so it helps to see the whole list side by side before you settle on a neighborhood.

Fruit Tree Home in Holden Heights is the closest at about 5 minutes. Amelia’s Arena Retreat on the downtown edge and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando and Sunset Lake House in Washington Shores are each about 7 minutes away, three homes in two neighborhoods that land on the same number. Meet. Play. Stay., Entertainment Home and Cozy Home are each about 10 minutes, The Clue House about 9, Piedmont and WinterPark Home about 11, Downtown & Stadium Cozy Retreat about 13, and Wekiwa Home, farthest out in Hiawassee, about 17. All of these are typical road-routing times without traffic; Orlando's rush hours add to the longer ones.

Downtown is one of the few parts of the metro where the last few minutes of the drive get easier rather than harder: I-4 and SR-408 carry the longer trips in from the west and northwest, but Orange Avenue and the surface streets around Parramore and Holden Heights cover the final stretch, so the two closest homes barely need the interstate at all. Both expressways are tolled by transponder or by plate, and a SunPass or E-PASS is worth setting up if a school-year stay runs past a few weeks.

Parking follows the same pattern everywhere in the portfolio. Every home has its own driveway, carport or parking pad, so a district specialist moving between headquarters and a school site each day is not hunting for curb space at the end of a long one, and a contractor with a crew truck or a work van has somewhere private to leave it overnight instead of parking it on the street.

05Where the homes sit around headquarters

The map below plots each home on its real compass bearing from West Amelia Street, with its distance from the centre standing in for drive time rather than miles. Holden Heights and Parramore sit closest in, right on the downtown edge; Washington Shores is a few minutes further out to the west, past Camping World Stadium; Pine Hills, Rosemont and Lockhart spread across the northwest; and Wekiwa Home sits farthest out, west in Hiawassee.

Two homes in different directions can land on the same drive time, so the compass alone will not tell you which cluster suits you; the neighborhood pages fill in the rest. The Holden Heights and Parramore pages cover the downtown edge, Washington Shores covers the stadium side, and Pine Hills, Rosemont and Lockhart cover the homes spread across the northwest.

06A school year based near headquarters

Most of the people who end up staying near West Amelia Street are not there for the building itself. A relocating teacher meets with the district before the first day at a new school; a specialist or an administrator on a temporary assignment reports to headquarters between visits to individual campuses; a contractor working a construction or technology project stops in for inspections and paperwork even though the actual job site is somewhere else in the county. A furnished house near headquarters keeps all of that inside a short drive without committing anyone to a year-long lease before they know which part of Orange County their placement will actually be in.

The stay itself works like any of our monthly bookings. You move into a house that already has beds made up and a stocked kitchen instead of a hotel room, cook most nights instead of eating out, and use the spare bedrooms for a partner, a roommate teacher, or family visiting while you settle in. Because the agreement runs month to month, a placement that starts as one month can stretch to two or three without a new booking each time, which matters when a certification step, a background check, or a permanent housing search is still open when the first month ends. Several homes also accept pets, with the policy and any deposit confirmed in writing before you commit, which matters if a relocation means bringing a dog or cat along.

An international teacher arriving on an exchange program has a slightly different list to work through before the first paycheck clears: a bank account, a Florida driver's license or state ID, and a lease history that does not exist yet in this country. A written monthly agreement with itemized receipts covers the housing side of that list cleanly, whether the district, the exchange program, or the teacher is the one paying, and it gives a landlord reference for whatever comes next once the first year settles. A furnished house also removes one more variable from that first year: there is no furniture to buy, sell or ship before the assignment even starts.

07The homes closest to headquarters

Four homes put OCPS headquarters inside 7 minutes, spread across three neighborhoods: Holden Heights, Parramore and Washington Shores.

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 the closest at about 5 minutes, and it also carries more reviews than any other home we have: 142 on Airbnb at a 4.83 rating. It's a three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow with full-size laundry on site, keyless entry, and a fenced backyard with mature shade trees, small enough to suit one relocating teacher or two colleagues well and a family of four adequately. The Amelia House, about 7 minutes away, sits on the same downtown edge as headquarters, in Parramore; it has four bedrooms, a bedroom with its own attached bathroom, and a fenced backyard, workable for two teachers on different schedules or a family that wants a bit more room.

The Dollins House, also about 7 minutes from headquarters, is a four-bedroom house in Washington Shores with blackout curtains in the bedrooms and a shaded lot of mature oaks, a fit for a family or for two or three teachers splitting one house and one bill. City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes, a smaller bungalow also in Washington Shores, matches that same 7 minutes if the other three are already booked for the dates you need; it suits one person or a couple well.

Of these four, the 25th Street, Amelia and Dollins houses publish a street address on the site, so you can look at the block before you commit; City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes publishes its neighborhood and zip code, with the exact address shared once you book. All four book on the same written monthly agreement no matter which cluster you choose.

A published street address matters more for this kind of stay than it might seem. A relocation coordinator verifying an address for payroll or a background check, or a landlord reference request further down the line, is simpler against a real street address than a neighborhood name alone, which is one reason these three homes get chosen for a district assignment even when a neighborhood-only home is a few minutes closer on a given route.

08What to settle before you book

A few questions are worth answering before you sign, whether the district is paying, a relocation coordinator is booking on your behalf, or you're covering it yourself and sorting out reimbursement later.

• Which home's cluster puts your actual school or work site inside a reasonable drive, not just headquarters
• Whether your appointment letter or contract sets a start date that lines up with when the home is available
• Whether you, the district, or a relocation coordinator will be the named party on the agreement
• Whether a pet is coming, so the policy and deposit can be confirmed in writing ahead of arrival
• Whether the placement might run past one month, so an extension can be flagged early
• Whether a short nightly or weekly stay for a scouting trip makes more sense than a monthly agreement before the full assignment starts

None of this needs to be settled on one phone call. We answer inquiries the same day, and the written agreement we send covers the home, the dates, the rate and the deposit before anyone has to commit further than a signature.

09Billing for a district hire or relocation package

Most teachers and staff book the way any individual guest does: a written agreement naming the home, the dates, the rate and the deposit, with itemized monthly receipts you can hand to HR or a relocation coordinator for reimbursement. If your contract or appointment letter mentions a housing stipend or a relocation allowance, keep the receipts; that is what most coordinators ask to see.

If the district, a relocation firm, or a staffing coordinator would rather be the party on the agreement and pay directly, we write it that way. A monthly invoice goes out in the paying organization's name, and we provide a W-9 and a certificate of insurance on request; Libema carries a commercial landlord liability policy. Net-30 terms are available for an established organization on a signed agreement or purchase order, with the first booking paid up front. A family or an individual hire booking independently pays the normal way instead: rate and deposit confirmed in writing, then receipts as the stay continues. Either way, the paperwork keeps the same shape every month: one invoice, one line item, the dates covered, and nothing added after the fact.

10Around headquarters, on the downtown edge

West Amelia Street sits right at the edge of Parramore, one of Orlando's oldest neighborhoods and the same close-in stretch Amelia’s Arena Retreat and Fruit Tree Home call home.

Holden-Parramore Historic District-1 · Visitor7 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · resized from 5472x3648

For groceries, the Publix at The Paramount on Lake Eola is the downtown option, and there's a Publix on South Orange Avenue near Holden Heights; for a bigger shop, the Walmart Supercenter on West Princeton Street and the international grocers around Pine Hills are a short drive northwest. Washington Shores puts you a few minutes from Nikki's Place on South Orange Blossom Trail, a soul food kitchen that has been open since 1999. For coffee or a sit-down breakfast, College Park's Edgewater Drive, a short hop north of downtown, is where Foxtail Coffee and Cups & Pups do business, alongside Adriatico Trattoria and Christo's Cafe.

Lake Eola Park downtown has a roughly one-mile sidewalk loop, swan boats to rent, and a Sunday farmers market; the Downtown Orlando YMCA on North Mills Avenue is a full-service gym with two pools. Two SunRail stations, LYNX Central and Church Street, put downtown on the regional rail line, and the free LYMMO bus circulates the core, so this is one of the few clusters in the portfolio where the car can sit parked some days.

Culture and pharmacies nearby

North of downtown, Loch Haven Park gathers the Orlando Museum of Art, the Orlando Science Center, Orlando Shakes and Orlando Family Stage in one place, with Harry P. Leu Gardens, a fifty-acre botanical garden, a little further along the lake. East of downtown, the Mills 50 district holds the largest Vietnamese-American community in Florida, and the pho and banh mi along Mills Avenue are the real thing; Z Asian there has earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand. For pharmacies, downtown has the Publix pharmacy at Lake Eola plus CVS and Walgreens within a few blocks, useful for anyone still settling in without a car during the first few weeks of a new assignment.

11What's in the house

Every home comes furnished and ready from the first night, with the exact inclusions 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. Bed and bath counts are the counts published in each home's own listing, and a sofa is never counted as a bed. Six homes, the 25th Street, Amelia, Dollins, Piedmont, Katherine and Head Avenue houses among them, publish a street address on the site; the other six publish the neighborhood and zip code, with the exact address shared once you book.

12What guests said

These are real reviews from Fruit Tree Home's own Airbnb listing, the home closest to OCPS headquarters, quoted exactly as the guest wrote them, with their name and the month of the stay. Every home carries its own set, and the full collection across the portfolio is on our reviews page.