Orlando is bigger and more spread out than most people expect before they arrive. The theme parks are only one corner of it. Around them sits a full metro area with dozens of residential areas, each with its own feel, price range, and drive time to work. Picking one from listing photos and a map is mostly a guess.
If a job is bringing you here (a hospital assignment, a company transfer, an insurance placement while your own home is repaired) you don't have to guess. Giving yourself a month or two on the ground lets you see the traffic, test the commute, and walk a few areas before you commit to a year. Here is a starter map of Orlando neighborhoods for anyone relocating, and what to keep in mind as you compare them.
Start near the center
Downtown Orlando is a good first base if you want to sit roughly equidistant from everything. Lake Eola and Thornton Park give it a walkable core, and both major highways cross here, so most parts of the metro are reachable in one drive. It matters for medical staff too: Orlando Health's main campus is just south of downtown, and AdventHealth's is a little to the north. Housing runs higher here than the outer areas, but the central position can be worth it while you're still figuring out where you'll settle.
The northwest: Pine Hills, Rosemont, and Lockhart
Pine Hills is one of the larger established residential communities on this side of town, mostly single-family homes and a mix of longtime and newer residents. It sits close to the 408, which keeps downtown and the west-side attractions an easy drive. Rosemont, just to the north, is quieter and wraps around a lake and golf course. Lockhart, farther north and unincorporated, feels more suburban. Housing across the northwest tends to cost less than downtown or the far west suburbs, which is a big part of the draw for people watching their budget during a move.
The west side
West of downtown you'll find MetroWest, Ocoee, and Winter Garden. MetroWest is a planned area of condos and homes built around a golf course, close to the Universal side of town. Ocoee and Winter Garden sit farther out and feel more suburban, with newer subdivisions and a walkable historic main street in Winter Garden. The 408 and the 429 make the west side commutable. The trade-off is more driving if your work or the airport is on the east side.
Getting around: I-4 and the 408
Two roads shape almost every commute in Orlando. I-4 is the main interstate, running southwest to northeast through the middle of the metro. It carries heavy traffic and slows at rush hour, so a short distance on the map isn't always a short drive. The 408 is a toll road that crosses east to west through downtown, and it's often the faster way across the city. Most people relocating end up choosing a neighborhood around which of these two they'll drive every day.
Before you commit to any area, drive your real commute at the real hour:
- Test the route around 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., not at a quiet midday.
- Plan for tolls: several of the fastest routes here are toll roads.
- Time the drive to your actual hospital or office, not just to downtown.
- Notice where you'd shop, park, and spend a normal weekend.
Why a furnished month or two beats a year lease sight unseen
Signing a twelve-month lease before you've lived here means betting on a neighborhood you've only seen online. A furnished monthly home lets you skip that bet. You arrive to a place that's already set up (beds, a stocked kitchen, utilities, and internet) and use it as a base while you learn the city. If the commute from the northwest works for you, good. If the west side turns out to suit you better, you move when your search or your assignment points you there, not when a lease locks you in.
This is how many of Libema's guests use these homes: travel nurses and medical staff on assignment, families waiting out a repair on an insurance or ALE stay, and employees who transferred in and haven't chosen a permanent spot yet. The homes are modest, renovated single-family houses, rented by the month and ready to live in. If you're on a displacement stay, confirm what your policy covers with your adjuster before you book.
When you're ready to see what's open for your dates, check availability and tell us your timing and where you'll be working. We'll help you find a base that keeps the commute reasonable while you get to know Orlando at your own pace.
Living inside Parramore and Holden Heights
The downtown edge holds two of our thirteen homes, and it sits right against downtown's hospital and arena district. The Amelia House is in Parramore, on the western line of downtown, with quick on-ramps to both I-4 and SR-408. By road and without traffic it runs about 9 minutes to Orlando Health / ORMC, 7 minutes to Creative Village, and 6 to 8 minutes to the Kia Center and Inter.co Stadium, worth knowing if a conference, a game or a concert happens to fall during your first weeks in the city.
A few minutes south, Holden Heights is where the 25th Street House sits: a three-bedroom bungalow with fruit trees in the yard, keyless entry and full-size laundry on site. It is about 5 minutes from Orlando Health / ORMC, 4 from Arnold Palmer and Winnie Palmer, and 6 from the downtown core.
Neither block is polished. Both are older, working-class streets close to the interstate, and both home pages say so under 'worth knowing before you book.' What you get in exchange is transit you can actually use: the LYNX Central and Church Street SunRail stations and the downtown LYMMO bus are a short drive from both houses, so if your relocation search starts downtown, the car can sit in the driveway some days while you look around on foot.
Washington Shores, Malibu Groves and the west side
West Orlando is where four of our homes sit, on wider, quieter streets than downtown, with room to park a truck or a work van in the driveway. Washington Shores is the anchor neighborhood: a long-established residential area around Lake Mann, Sunset Lake and Camping World Stadium, about seven to twelve minutes from downtown by SR-408 or I-4. The Piedmont House here has a parking pad that fits several vehicles and sleeps up to fourteen; the Dollins House sits on a shaded lot of mature oaks and sleeps up to thirteen; the Sunset Lake House is a small bungalow under a live oak, about two minutes from the stadium and seven from downtown.
A little farther west in Malibu Groves, between Kirkman Road and Pine Hills Road, the Meet & Play House is the newest-built home in the portfolio: a game room with a pool table and a dart board, desks in two bedrooms, a fenced yard and a covered patio. From there downtown is about nine minutes, and Valencia College's West Campus and the MetroWest office corridor are a few minutes south on Kirkman Road.
This side of the city is a straightforward trade: a downtown address for a driveway, a yard, and, in the Piedmont and Dollins houses, enough bedrooms for two families relocating together to split one house while each looks for a permanent place. City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes suits the opposite case, a single relocating professional who wants the same short commute without the larger bedroom count. Camping World Stadium and the Kia Center sit close enough that a game or a concert during your stay fits into a short drive from the door.
Pine Hills, Rosemont, Lockhart and the northwest corridor
Five of our thirteen homes sit in this stretch of northwest Orlando, more than in any other cluster, which makes it the easiest part of the portfolio to compare houses without changing which side of the city you are on. Pine Hills itself, off Silver Star Road and Pine Hills Road along the SR-408 East-West Expressway, is where the Head Avenue House, the Entertainment House, the Londonderry House and the Cozy House sit. The Clue House is a six-bedroom ranch that sleeps up to fifteen, with an in-home desk and full-size laundry. Entertainment Home and Cozy Home sit near the Central Florida Fairgrounds, one built around a foosball table and table tennis, the other a simpler three-bedroom layout with a single bathroom. Downtown & Stadium Cozy Retreat has a bunk room with two sets of bunk beds, useful if a family relocating together includes kids who are happy to share a room.
Rosemont, just north around Lake Orlando, is quieter still, with I-4 close enough to reach downtown to the south or AdventHealth Altamonte Springs to the north without much thought. Lockhart, north along US-441 toward Altamonte Springs, is where the Katherine House sits: a three-bedroom home with a screened porch, a private driveway and a community park with a playground a short walk away. For the AdventHealth system specifically, Lockhart has a real edge: no other neighborhood in our portfolio sits as near to AdventHealth Altamonte Springs and AdventHealth Winter Park.
By road and without traffic, the Pine Hills homes reach AdventHealth Orlando, Universal and downtown Orlando in 11 to 17 minutes, and Pine Hills' own southern edge backs onto the Central Florida Fairgrounds and the Orlando Amphitheater, so a weekend concert or the Central Florida Fair can turn up on your own street.
Hiawassee and the quiet far west
Hiawassee is the farthest west of our four areas, a residential community in unincorporated Orange County along Hiawassee Road between Silver Star Road and Clarcona-Ocoee Road. It trades a longer run into downtown for quieter streets and quick access to the SR-429 beltway toward Apopka and Ocoee. The Wekiwa House is the only home we keep here: a compact two-bedroom, two-bath house that suits one or two people best, with a vaulted living room, a stocked white kitchen and a full-size washer and dryer.
Wekiwa Springs State Park entr01 · Ebyabe · CC BY-SA 3.0 · resized from 3264x2448
By road and without traffic, Wekiwa Home is about 16 minutes from AdventHealth Orlando and 17 from downtown, toward the long end of the portfolio's commute range if your work is downtown, but a reasonable option if you are weighing Orlando Health's Health Central campus in Ocoee or AdventHealth's Apopka campus instead. Wekiwa Springs State Park itself, a clear spring that swimmers and paddlers use year round, is about 18 minutes north, which is the real point of scouting this side of the metro during a relocation: you get to find out whether living near the springs suits your family before you decide it should be permanent.
Comparing the commute before you choose
Every one of the four clusters above looks reasonable on a map. The difference shows up during the actual drive at the actual hour, which is why testing 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. before you sign anything is worth the trouble. Here is what sits behind that advice across our own thirteen homes: by road and without traffic, the drive to downtown Orlando runs from 6 minutes at Fruit Tree Home to 17 minutes at Wekiwa Home, with most of the rest of the portfolio landing in the 7-to-13-minute band in between.
Two things are worth remembering when you read a chart like this. These are road-routing estimates without traffic, and Orlando's rush hours add real minutes to the longer routes, especially anything that leans on I-4. And 'downtown' here stands in for whatever your actual daily destination turns out to be, a hospital campus, an office park, a client site, so once you have a short list of neighborhoods, ask us for the same kind of number against your real address instead of against downtown alone. We track drive times to dozens of destinations across the metro, from hospital campuses to the airport, so what you get back is a number specific to your own commute.
SR-408 threads through nearly every one of these drives, and it is a toll road, so setting up a SunPass or E-PASS transponder in your first week is worth doing before the tolls start arriving as a mailed invoice instead of a flat cost you can plan a budget around.
What's already set up when you arrive
The general list is furniture, beds and linens, a stocked kitchen, a washer and dryer, Wi-Fi and private parking, and every home has all of it, confirmed in writing when you book. What actually varies from house to house is worth knowing before you commit to one for a relocation month, because the small differences are what turn a furnished house into somewhere you can actually settle for a month.
Exact inclusions vary a little by home and are confirmed in writing when you book.
A full-size, in-unit washer and dryer is confirmed at The Clue House, Fruit Tree Home, Cozy Home and Wekiwa Home. Every home has a private parking spot, but a few go further: Meet. Play. Stay. and Entertainment Home each have an attached garage, Piedmont has a parking pad that fits several vehicles, WinterPark Home has a screened porch, and City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes parks under a carport instead of a driveway. If you plan to keep working while you look for a permanent address, The Clue House and Meet. Play. Stay. both have a desk set up in a bedroom.
None of this replaces walking through a house yourself, which is one more reason a monthly stay beats signing a lease from photos. You can test the water pressure, see how the kitchen actually cooks, and find out whether the street is as quiet at 7 a.m. as it looked in a listing photo, all before you commit to anything longer than a month.
Homes suited to a relocation month
Eight of our thirteen homes are set up for exactly this kind of stay: Amelia’s Arena Retreat, The Clue House, Piedmont, Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, WinterPark Home, Fruit Tree Home, Cozy Home and Wekiwa Home. Between them you get a real spread of sizes, from Wekiwa Home's two bedrooms for a couple to The Clue House's six bedrooms and three bathrooms for a large family or two households moving together. Seven of the eight sleep eight people or more, useful if a move involves more than one adult splitting costs while the household gets settled.
Northwest OrlandoWinterPark Home
13 min downtown · 10 min AdventHealth · 26 min Universal
Northwest OrlandoCozy Home
11 min downtown · 12 min ORMC · 14 min Universal
West OrlandoWekiwa Home
17 min downtown · 16 min AdventHealth · 19 min Universal
Booking one for a relocation month works the same way no matter which cluster you pick. You tell us your dates and the part of the city you want to test first, we point you to two or three homes that fit, and we confirm the monthly rate, deposit and pet policy in writing before you commit to anything.
Tell us the basics
Your dates, what brings you to Orlando, how many people, and anything that matters: pets, a work truck, a desk, a budget.
We match a home
We point you to the homes that fit your commute, length of stay and budget, with real photos and drive times, usually the same day.
Book the way you like
Nights and weeks through Airbnb, Vrbo or us directly; months on a written agreement with receipts.
Move in and settle
The house is furnished, stocked and ready. Bring a suitcase.
Six of our thirteen homes, including Amelia’s Arena Retreat, The Clue House and WinterPark Home, publish a street address on the site itself. The other six, including Cozy Home and Wekiwa Home, list a neighborhood and zip code and share the exact address once you book. What matters more for a relocation stay is that extensions run by the month: if you need another 30 days to keep looking, you give notice and we extend the same written agreement for another month, with no new paperwork to sign.
What guests relocating have said
Reviews from people using these homes to relocate tend to circle two things: whether the host actually knows the area, and whether the street felt calm enough to relax on. Jordan, who stayed at Cozy Home in May 2026, wrote: 'Brandon was a great host, he knows the local area very well and has tons of recommendations!' That is close to the job description for anyone helping you settle into a new city, not just a place to sleep while you look.
"Brandon was a great host, he knows the local area very well and has tons of recommendations!"
"I love how close everything was and he was very nice"
"Pics were accurate for the place. People who inhabit the neighborhood are nice as well. Overall great stay"
If you want to keep reading before you inquire, two of our other guides go further into the pieces this one only touches: how the highways and the SunRail line actually work day to day, and the practical checklist a relocating employee or a coordinator should run through before booking a furnished house.
Getting Around Orlando for Work
A plain orientation to moving around metro Orlando for a job: the main highways, the commuter train, and how to pick housing that keeps your daily drive short.
Read →
What to Look for in Corporate Housing
A practical checklist for booking furnished monthly housing near an Orlando worksite, written for HR teams, relocation coordinators, and the employees who move in.
Read →When you are ready to test a neighborhood for real instead of reading about it, tell us the dates and the part of Orlando you want to try first. We will point you to two or three homes that fit, with the drive time to wherever you actually need to be each morning, not just to downtown.
