Furnished housing near Nemours & the Orlando VA (Lake Nona).

The campus

Lake Nona's Medical City sits on the city's southeast side and brings together Nemours Children's Hospital, the Orlando VA Medical Center and the UCF medical campus in one part of Orlando. It is a 32-to-42-minute drive from our thirteen homes by road, without traffic, the longest range of any hospital cluster we cover. Nemours is a pediatric hospital; the VA serves veterans. We do not manage or own anything on the Lake Nona campus, and Libema Properties is not affiliated with Nemours, the VA or UCF.

What we offer sits on the other side of the metro: a furnished house in an established Orlando neighborhood, at a rate that runs far below a week of hotel nights near the campus, for the clinicians who rotate through Lake Nona and the families who need to be near someone being treated there. Because the drive is real, we say so plainly rather than talk around it. A house 32 to 42 minutes away, with its own kitchen, yard and parking, tends to make sense for a rotation of weeks or a treatment of months. For a single short appointment it may not, and later sections on this page walk through that trade-off.

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

The homes closest to the campus

Three of our thirteen homes are among the shortest drives to Lake Nona, all of them in the low thirty-minute range.

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 about 32 minutes from the campus. It is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow with full-size laundry on site, keyless entry, a screened front porch and a fenced backyard, and it carries 142 Airbnb reviews at a 4.83 rating, more than any other home in the portfolio. It sleeps 10, a fit for a solo clinician, a couple, or a smaller family in for a Nemours treatment. The Amelia House in Parramore is about 33 minutes away: a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a renovated kitchen, a bedroom with its own attached bathroom, and a fenced backyard, sleeping 8. The Dollins House, also about 33 minutes and also in Washington Shores, is a four-bedroom house on a shaded lot of mature oaks with blackout curtains in the bedrooms, and it sleeps 13, room enough for a family joined by a grandparent or two. All three are older, modest houses rather than new builds: Fruit Tree Home is a compact bungalow with small bedrooms, Amelia’s Arena Retreat shows some wear on its stucco and a patchy lawn, and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando has a driveway that shows its age. None of that is hidden; each home's own page lists it plainly, alongside the renovated kitchens and stainless appliances that all three share, with quartz-look counters at Fruit Tree Home, granite at Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, and granite-look stone at Amelia’s Arena Retreat.

City and Stadium Sanctuary Vibes also runs about 33 minutes, the same drive time as the Amelia and Dollins houses. It sits outside the three home cards above, and its own page has the full listing. Piedmont is next at about 34 minutes, Meet. Play. Stay. about 35, Entertainment Home and Cozy Home about 36, The Clue House about 37, Downtown & Stadium Cozy Retreat about 39, Wekiwa Home about 40, and WinterPark Home the longest at about 42. Across all thirteen homes the spread is only about ten minutes, so the more useful question is usually how many bedrooms a stay needs and which side of Orlando suits the rest of it, not which house shaves off a minute or two on the Lake Nona drive.

Where the homes sit relative to the campus

The map places each home in its true compass direction from Lake Nona, with the distance from the center standing in for drive minutes rather than miles. Our homes sit on the west, northwest and downtown edges of Orlando, while the campus sits on the city's southeast side, so the map reads as a spread of homes on one side of a wide metro rather than a tight ring around the hospital.

The Amelia House sits in Parramore on the downtown edge, the 25th Street House in Holden Heights just south of downtown, and the Dollins House in Washington Shores further west. None of the three gets a meaningfully shorter Lake Nona drive because of its direction; the gap between them is a minute or two. If a bigger house matters more than those minutes, The Clue House and WinterPark Home in northwest Orlando are worth weighing against the extra five to ten minutes they add to the trip.

The shift commute

These drive times are typical road-routing times without traffic, and at 32 to 42 minutes this is long enough that traffic changes the math. Orlando's rush hours add time to the longer routes on the site, and this is one of the longer ones. A shift that starts at Nemours or the VA at 7 a.m. means driving out during the morning build-up; one that ends at 7 p.m. means driving back during the evening one. Anyone who has worked a Central Florida rotation before knows to build extra minutes into a Lake Nona shift, the same way they would for a drive to Walt Disney World or the convention center on the other side of the metro.

Parramore, Holden Heights and Washington Shores, where the three closest homes sit, each have quick access to I-4 or SR-408 for the first stretch of the drive; from there the route runs across town toward the southeast side, and that leg is not something we break down road by road. What we do track is the total time door to door, which is what appears on the chart above and on each home's own page. A SunPass or E-PASS transponder is worth having if your daily driving adds up to tolled miles either way, though the exact tolls on a Lake Nona commute are between you and the roads you choose.

Parking at the house is never the complication, whichever end of the day you are thinking about. Every one of our homes has a private driveway, carport or parking pad, so a night-shift clinician getting home well after midnight pulls straight in rather than circling the block for street parking. On the campus side, parking is Nemours' and the VA's to explain; ask your unit or your agency what applies to you as a traveler.

We do not have a documented transit route between our homes and Lake Nona, and none of the thirteen is set up around rail or bus access. Plan on a car for this drive at any hour. If a rotation mixes Lake Nona shifts with days at AdventHealth Orlando or Orlando Health, the downtown-edge and west-side homes keep both drives reasonable instead of shortening one at the expense of the other.

For travel clinicians

A monthly agreement built around your rotation dates is the core of what we do for a Lake Nona assignment, the same as for AdventHealth or Orlando Health. You get a written agreement naming the home, the dates, the rate and the deposit, plus itemized monthly receipts your agency can run through a housing stipend or a reimbursement. If your agency prefers to be the named party instead of you, we write the agreement that way. Extensions run month by month at the same terms, so if a Nemours or VA contract stretches past its original end date, tell us as soon as you know and we will hold the following month at the same house where the calendar allows.

The three closest houses are set up the way clinicians actually use them. All three have a washer and dryer on site, and at Fruit Tree Home it's a full-size set tucked into a utility spot off the porch. Amelia’s Arena Retreat's bedroom with its own attached bathroom is worth knowing about if two of you are covering different shifts and would rather not share a bathroom on opposite schedules, and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando's blackout curtains help anyone sleeping through daylight hours after a night shift. Every home comes with a full kitchen, made-up beds and Wi-Fi from the first night, and you let yourself in with keyless entry or a lockbox rather than waiting on someone to hand over a key; arrival notes with the code come a few days before check-in. Bring a bag and a badge; the house is ready when you arrive.

For families of a patient

A 32-to-42-minute drive is not what most families picture when they search for housing near a children's hospital or a VA medical center, and we would rather say so up front than let anyone book and find out later. None of our thirteen homes sits inside Lake Nona. What they offer instead is a real house, with bedrooms for the people who come to be with a patient, a kitchen so meals do not turn into a running restaurant bill, and a rate that comes in far below weeks of hotel nights near the campus, with a longer commute in return.

For a family settling in for a longer stay at Nemours or keeping vigil at the VA, Amelia’s Arena Retreat and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando both hold enough people that grandparents or siblings can join partway through without renting a second place: Amelia’s Arena Retreat has four bedrooms and sleeps 8, Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando has four bedrooms and sleeps 13. Fruit Tree Home is smaller, three bedrooms and sleeps 10, and suits a parent staying with one child or a smaller family. All three are booked by the month on the same written agreement we use for clinicians, and all three extend month by month if a treatment plan or a discharge date moves, which it often does. The agreement names the home, the dates, the rate and the deposit in writing before anyone hands over a key, so a family arriving in the middle of a hard week already knows exactly what they are walking into.

For a single appointment or a short outpatient visit rather than a long admission, nightly and weekly stays through the homes' Airbnb and Vrbo listings make more sense than committing to a month you may not need. We are a housing provider, not a hospital service, and we are not affiliated with Nemours, the VA or UCF. What we can do is answer the same day, confirm the rate and deposit in writing, and keep the terms flexible while a family's plans are still moving.

What's in the house

Every home comes furnished and ready from the first night, whether you are booking for a rotation, a single appointment, or a longer admission. The 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 homes has a pool; they are residential houses. Bed and bath counts are the counts published in each home's own listing, and sofas are not counted as beds. Six homes on the site publish a street address, Fruit Tree Home, Amelia’s Arena Retreat and Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando among them; the other six publish a neighborhood and zip code, with the exact address shared once you book.

Living near the homes

Because Lake Nona is 32 to 42 minutes from every one of our homes, daily life on a stay near Nemours or the VA happens around the house, not around the hospital. Amelia’s Arena Retreat and Fruit Tree Home sit on the downtown edge of Orlando, covered in our downtown and close-in area guide; Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando is in Washington Shores, covered in the Washington Shores and west Orlando guide. Both go deeper than this page can; here is the short version.

For groceries near the downtown-edge homes, there is a Publix on South Orange Avenue near Holden Heights and the compact Publix at The Paramount on Lake Eola downtown. Near Game Day Getaway-Downtown Orlando, the closer full supermarkets are the Walmart Supercenter on West Princeton Street and the Presidente Supermarket on Pine Hills Road, a short drive northwest. For a meal out, Nikki's Place on South Orange Blossom Trail, near the Washington Shores homes, has served soul food since 1999; downtown and Church Street, a few minutes from the Amelia and 25th Street houses, cover a wider range of restaurants.

For time off between shifts or between hospital visits, Lake Eola Park downtown has a roughly one-mile sidewalk loop and rents swan boats, and Lake Lorna Doone Park by Camping World Stadium, close to the Washington Shores homes, has a walking loop, outdoor fitness stations and a splash pad. The Downtown Orlando YMCA on North Mills Avenue is a full-service gym with two pools, open to anyone settling in for a month rather than a week.

For coffee and a change of scenery, College Park's Edgewater Drive, a short hop north of the downtown-edge homes, is where Foxtail Coffee and Cups & Pups Coffee sit alongside a run of small kitchens; it is an easy stop on a day off from a Lake Nona rotation. Pharmacies sit along Orange Blossom Trail and West Colonial, plus the Publix pharmacy at Lake Eola and the CVS and Walgreens downtown, all closer to these homes than anything near the campus itself. A car is the practical choice for the Lake Nona commute, but once you are back at the house, the downtown edge is the one part of Orlando where the car can sit more than it moves: LYNX Central is the main bus hub, the free LYMMO bus circulates the downtown core, and two SunRail stations connect the regional line, useful for an errand or a night out even if none of it reaches the hospital itself.

What guests said

These are real reviews from Fruit Tree Home's own Airbnb listing, the closest of our homes to Lake Nona, quoted verbatim with the reviewer's name and month. Every home page carries its own set, and the complete wall of reviews across the portfolio is on our reviews page.