ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – One day after Walt Disney World announced it’s relocating 2,000 high-wage jobs from Southern California to Lake Nona, it sparked the question: Where will they live?
This comes as the Orlando housing market is showing some of the lowest supply of houses available in history, with demand at an all-time high.
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The latest market report from the Orlando Realtors Association for June shows the supply of housing was down 53% from June 2020, the demand driving up the median price of a house to $315,000, averaging $300,000 last month.
Also in May, a house was on the market for an average of 36 days. In June, that dropped to just 19 days.
“We are excited they are coming here, we are excited for the growth,” said broker Rob Rahter, with the real estate company Stockworth. “But we need more inventory, we need more houses in the market.”
After Disney’s announcement Thursday, and out of curiosity on Friday, Rahter looked up how many homes are for sale within 5 miles of Lake Nona’s core and Rahter found just 59 homes for sale for those 2,000 employees expected to be here within 18 months.
Disney has not announced where the campus will be located yet.
“We need more inventory, we need builders to catch up and we need more sellers to decide to sell,” he said. “The good news is Lake Nona is the perfect place to be. They got the growth, they got the structure and the development is coming.”
In a statement to News 6, Tavistock Development said it is confident it will have enough housing to handle not only the 2,000 employees expected to move with their families, but also the more than 1,000 people still moving to Orange County each week.
“Lake Nona is well-positioned to meet the growing demand with thousands of future residential units available within our 17-square-mile community, in addition to the tens of thousands of entitled residential units down the road at our Sunbridge community,” wrote Jessi Blakely, vice president of Tavistock Development Company.
For an upcoming episode of Solutionaries, we want to highlight the people or organizations who are fighting for change and working to solve the housing issues in the Orlando area.
To find those people, we’re asking for your help.
Fill out the short survey below, or click here if you can’t see it, to let us know who in the community is at the forefront of this issue. We also want to hear your take on the situation, how it’s affected you and what you think needs to change.