Blog Nona

The oldest company on the Lake Nona builders list, and the one whose homes here are now old enough that the roof decides the deal.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

KB Home built two Lake Nona area neighborhoods: Stratford Pointe, where it was developer and sole builder, and part of Eagle Creek, where it was one of six builders. KB Home was founded on December 10, 1957 in Detroit as Kaufman and Broad by Donald Bruce Kaufman and Eli Broad, on $25,000 of borrowed money, and took the KB Home name in January 2001. It was the first homebuilder listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trades as KBH; headquarters is in Los Angeles. Stratford Pointe was built in roughly 2005 to 2007 and has about 130 homes, block and stucco with shingle roofs, from roughly 1,800 to 3,400 square feet. It is not gated, has two entrances off Kirby Smith Road, and backs the 417 on its north side behind a sound barrier wall. Both KB neighborhoods here are fully built out and trade as resale.

KB Home is the oldest company on the Lake Nona builders list by a comfortable margin. Kaufman and Broad opened for business in December 1957, twenty-one years before D.R. Horton and Mattamy, twenty-eight before Meritage and Beazer. It was also the first homebuilder ever traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

None of which tells you much about buying a house here. What matters is that both KB neighborhoods in Lake Nona went up around twenty years ago, which puts them in a specific and consequential moment: built after Florida rewrote its building code, and now at the age where roofs, systems and insurance underwriting drive every transaction. That is the honest center of this post.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did KB Home build?

Two: Stratford Pointe, where KB was the developer and sole builder, and part of Eagle Creek, where it was one of several.

The distinction matters. In Stratford Pointe every house is KB's. In Eagle Creek, KB built a portion of a very large multi-builder golf community, so "KB Home — Eagle Creek" describes a slice, not the neighborhood.

Who is KB Home, and why is it the oldest name on this list?

Because it started in December 1957, with $25,000 and two model homes in a Detroit suburb.

Donald Bruce Kaufman and Eli Broad borrowed the money and built two models in Madison Heights, Michigan. Their idea was arithmetic: strip out the basement, put in a carport, streamline the build, and price the house so the monthly mortgage came in under the rent on a two-bedroom apartment. They called the model the Award Winner and priced it at $13,700. Seventeen sold in a weekend. Six hundred homes followed within two years.

The company left Detroit for Phoenix in 1960 out of concern that the local economy leaned too hard on the auto industry, reached California in 1963, and in 1967 became the first American homebuilder to expand into France. It was also the first homebuilder to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation became KB Home in January 2001. Headquarters is in Los Angeles; the ticker is KBH.

Eli Broad went on to build a second Fortune 500 company in SunAmerica and became one of the country's better-known philanthropists. That is unrelated to your house, but it is the kind of thing worth knowing about the name on your permit.

What is Built-to-Order, and does it matter to a resale buyer?

Built-to-Order means KB sells the homesite and plan first and lets the buyer personalize through a design studio, rather than building finished inventory and selling it off the shelf.

It is the company's central positioning and it runs against where most of the industry has gone. Several large builders now lean on speculative inventory because a finished house closes faster. KB's argument is that buyers would rather choose.

For someone buying new, that is a real difference. For someone buying a twenty-year-old KB house in Lake Nona, it matters in one practical way: the original buyers made different choices, so two homes with the same floor plan on the same street can differ noticeably in finishes, layout options and what is behind the walls. Do not assume that because you toured one Stratford Pointe home you know what the one down the street looks like.

KB also builds to ENERGY STAR certification across its homes, and has for a long time. On a 2006 house the certification tells you something about the original specification and very little about the current condition of the equipment.

What is Stratford Pointe actually like?

Roughly 130 traditional block-and-stucco homes on mostly zero-lot-line homesites, not gated, with two entrances off Kirby Smith Road — and the 417 along its northern edge.

Homes run roughly 1,800 to 3,400 square feet, three to five bedrooms, block and stucco with shingle roofs. Some back to conservation or water. About a quarter back to the neighborhood's brick wall along Kirby Smith Road. There is a community park with a playground and sidewalks throughout. It sits just east of Narcoossee Road, directly north of the Shores at Lake Whippoorwill, with a shopping plaza right outside the entrance and Lake Nona Landing and Cornerstone at Lake Hart within a mile.

Now the part a builder's page would not mention: the neighborhood is adjacent to the 417 expressway, and a large sound barrier wall now lines its north side. That wall exists because the highway is right there. If you are looking at a home on the north end, go stand in the back yard at rush hour before you decide how much the wall solves. Homes on the south side of the neighborhood are a different proposition entirely.

The construction timing is genuinely a point in its favor. Florida substantially tightened its building code in the wake of the 2004 hurricane season, and Stratford Pointe went up after that change — block construction, post-revision standards. That is a meaningfully better starting point than a late-1990s house of similar price.

What did KB Home build in Eagle Creek?

A portion of the single-family housing inside the gates — not the golf-front estates, and not most of the neighborhood.

Eagle Creek is a 24-hour guard-gated golf community built out over many years by six builders: Centerline Homes, Standard Pacific, CalAtlantic, Lennar, KB Home and Toll Brothers. It contains townhomes, bungalows and villas, single-family homes, and large estate homes on the course. Toll Brothers handled the estate end.

Two things follow. First, if you want a KB home in Eagle Creek specifically, you are shopping a subset and should ask which sections and years. Second, Eagle Creek carries no CDD assessment, which is a durable cost advantage over several other Lake Nona neighborhoods — and it applies whichever builder put up the house.

One piece of corporate housekeeping that matters for warranty questions: Standard Pacific merged with Ryland to form CalAtlantic in 2015, and Lennar acquired CalAtlantic in 2018. So three of those six builder names now sit under Lennar. KB Home is not one of them; KB remains independent.

What should you check before buying a KB home here?

The roof, and then the roof again. Everything else is secondary.

Stratford Pointe homes were built with shingle roofs in roughly 2005 to 2007. A shingle roof in Central Florida is typically at or past the end of its service life at twenty years, and Florida insurers underwrite hard on roof age — some carriers will not write a policy over a certain age regardless of condition, and others price it in a way that changes what you can afford. Some Stratford Pointe roofs have been replaced. Some have not. Which one you are buying is the single biggest variable in the transaction, and it should be answered before the inspection, not during it.

Behind that: HVAC, water heater and the original electrical panel, all of which are in the same age window. Ask what has been replaced and get documentation, not recollection.

Then the usual. Confirm the assessment on the specific parcel rather than trusting a listing remark — our CDD fees explainer covers how. Confirm school zoning for the exact address, since assignments are set by OCPS and change; our schools guide is a starting point. And in Stratford Pointe, check which way the house faces relative to the highway.

KB Home in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. Stratford Pointe is one of the more affordable ways into a Lake Nona address with a real single-family house, not a townhome — and 3,400 square feet at the top of the range is a lot of house for what these trade at. Block construction built after the post-2004 code revision is a genuinely stronger starting point than the price implies. It is not gated, which some buyers prefer and which keeps dues down. Eagle Creek's lack of a CDD is a durable cost advantage. And KB remains an independent company, which is not true of half the builder names on the Eagle Creek list.

What does not. The 417 runs along the north edge of Stratford Pointe, and a sound wall reduces highway noise without eliminating it — that is a permanent condition of the address, not a negotiating point. Twenty-year-old shingle roofs are the defining risk here, and in the current Florida insurance market a roof past its service life can make a home difficult to insure at any price. Most lots are zero-lot-line, meaning limited yard and a neighbor's wall close by. And the neighborhood is small and turns over slowly, so recent comparable sales can be thin when it comes time to price.

What the neighbors know

Stratford Pointe residents will tell you the two entrances off Kirby Smith are the practical advantage — you can get out of the neighborhood two ways, which is more than several larger Lake Nona neighborhoods can say. They will also tell you exactly which streets hear the 417 and which do not, and that the sound wall made a real difference without making it silent.

The other running theme is roofs, which is what happens when a neighborhood built in one two-year window hits twenty at the same time. Neighbors compare contractors and insurance carriers the way people in newer neighborhoods compare landscapers. Over in Eagle Creek, the conversation is the golf course and the guard gate, and most residents there could not tell you which of the six builders put up their house.

Official sources

• KB Home corporate site
• KB Home company overview and financials
• KB Home company history

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Looking at Stratford Pointe or a KB home in Eagle Creek? I can tell you which homes have had roofs replaced, what has recently sold, and what an insurance quote is likely to look like before you write. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

The largest homebuilder in America built fewer homes in Lake Nona than almost anyone else on the list.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

D.R. Horton built two townhome sections in the Lake Nona area, both inside East Park: Ravinia at East Park and Overlook at East Park. Both were built out around 2015 to 2016 and are now resale only. D.R. Horton was founded in November 1978 by Donald R. Horton, who built his first house in Fort Worth, Texas; the company is headquartered in Arlington, Texas and trades on the New York Stock Exchange as DHI. It has been the largest homebuilder in the United States by volume every year since 2002, delivering 84,863 homes in fiscal 2025 across 36 states. It sells under four brands: D.R. Horton, Express Homes, Emerald Homes and Freedom Homes. Most homes in East Park were built in the early 2000s by other builders, not by D.R. Horton.

Here is the number that makes this post worth reading: D.R. Horton delivered 84,863 homes in fiscal 2025. It has been the biggest builder in America every single year since 2002. It works in 36 states and something north of 120 markets.

And in Lake Nona it built two small townhome pods inside somebody else's neighborhood, finished them a decade ago, and left. Ravinia is 69 townhome sites. That is the entire D.R. Horton footprint here, and it makes this builder the sharpest example of a rule that runs through every post in this series: national scale tells you nothing about local presence.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did D.R. Horton build?

Two townhome sections, both inside East Park: Ravinia at East Park and Overlook at East Park.

Neither is a standalone neighborhood. Both are enclaves within East Park, sharing East Park's amenities and its HOA structure, built as the last new construction in a neighborhood that was otherwise finished.

Who is D.R. Horton, and what does "largest builder in America" mean?

It means volume: 84,863 homes closed in fiscal 2025, and the top spot every year since 2002.

Donald R. Horton talked a bank into lending him money for one house in Fort Worth, Texas in November 1978. The insight he built the company on was that production builders told buyers "no" and custom builders were unaffordable — so he sold standardized homes but said yes to changes, a bay window here, an option there, for a price. That flexibility was the original differentiator.

The company went public in 1992, expanded hard through acquisitions in the 1990s and 2000s, and took the number one volume position in 2002. It entered Florida in force in 2001 by buying Emerald Builders and Fortress Homes and Communities of Florida — the first of those is where the Emerald brand name came from. Headquarters is in Arlington, Texas; the ticker is DHI; fiscal 2025 revenue was $34.3 billion.

There is an irony in there worth naming. The company that made its reputation on saying yes to customization is now the volume leader precisely because it standardized. Scale and flexibility pull in opposite directions, and Horton went with scale.

Is East Park a D.R. Horton neighborhood?

No, and this is the single most useful thing on this page.

East Park is a large, mixed neighborhood between Dowden Road, Narcoossee Road, Moss Park Road and the 417. It has single-family homes, townhomes and condominiums, ranging from roughly 1,500 to over 4,000 square feet. Most of it was built in the early 2000s by builders other than D.R. Horton.

Horton came in last. Around 2015 to 2016 it built the Ravinia and Overlook townhome sections as infill, and that was the end of new construction in East Park. So a buyer who reads "D.R. Horton — East Park" on a builders list and goes looking at East Park houses will mostly be looking at other builders' work, fifteen years older than the Horton product.

Practically: if the builder matters to you, look at the section name in the listing. Ravinia and Overlook are the Horton ones. Everything else in East Park is somebody else, and the gap in construction year is more than a decade.

What are Ravinia and Overlook actually like?

Three-story townhomes with rear-load garages, no elevators, and a vertical layout that suits some households and rules out others.

The typical plan puts a game room or bonus room and the garage on the first floor, living and dining on the second, and all bedrooms on the third. Ravinia's plans run roughly 2,245 to 2,283 square feet across three bedrooms, with two full and two half baths, and a couple of plans adding a balcony off the living room. Overlook is similar in size and structure.

The lots are the differentiator. Ravinia sits off Lake District Lane surrounded on all sides by conservation, which in practice means conservation behind and pond views in front and no direct front or rear neighbors — genuinely unusual for townhomes at this price point. Overlook sits nearer East Lake with water views on a number of units.

Residents share East Park's amenities: walking and biking trails, picnic areas, tennis and basketball courts, sand volleyball, a dog park, and a dock and pavilion on the lake. The townhome HOA also covers year-round landscaping and lawn care, which is the maintenance-free part of the pitch.

Be honest with yourself about the stairs. Three stories with no elevator means bedrooms are two flights above the front door and groceries are one flight below the kitchen. That is fine at 35 and a real consideration at 70, and it affects who buys the home from you later.

What do D.R. Horton's four brands mean?

They are four different price and product tiers under one corporate roof, and they are not interchangeable.

D.R. Horton is the core move-up brand. Express Homes is the entry-level line, built to a tighter specification and a lower price. Emerald Homes is the luxury product — different finish level, different plan library, sometimes different structural specification such as block construction on both floors. Freedom Homes serves active-adult, age-restricted communities.

Most buyers hear "D.R. Horton" and picture the entry-level product, which is a fair reflection of where most of the company's volume sits — it closed on the order of 43,000 first-time buyers in fiscal 2025. But an Emerald home and an Express home are meaningfully different houses wearing the same corporate name.

For Lake Nona specifically this is background rather than a decision point, since what got built here is townhomes rather than any of the segmented single-family lines. It matters more if you are cross-shopping Horton communities elsewhere in the Orlando metro.

What should you check before buying a D.R. Horton townhome here?

Roof age, the East Park HOA structure, and the assessment on the specific parcel.

Roof first. These homes are about a decade old, which puts them in the window where Florida insurers start asking hard questions and where roof replacement enters the negotiation. Some Ravinia and Overlook buildings have already been through roof work; some have not. Find out which before you get attached, and get the date in writing.

Then the HOA. These are townhomes inside a larger neighborhood, which means a layered structure: the townhome association covering landscaping and exterior items, plus access to and cost of the broader East Park amenities. Ask what each layer covers, what the reserve position is, and whether any assessment is pending. A townhome HOA with thin reserves and an aging roof inventory is a future special assessment wearing a disguise.

On assessments, do not take CDD status from a listing remark or from anything published, including this page. Districts can cover some phases of a community and not others and amounts reset annually. Our CDD fees explainer covers how to pull the figure for a specific parcel. School zoning is set by OCPS and can change, so confirm assignments for the exact address; our schools guide is a starting point.

D.R. Horton in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. The lots are better than the price suggests. Ravinia backing conservation on all sides with no direct front or rear neighbors is a genuine rarity in attached housing, and Overlook's water views are real. The square footage is generous for a townhome — well over 2,200 feet where many Lake Nona townhomes sit closer to 1,600. Lawn care is in the dues. And residents get the full East Park amenity set, including the dock and pavilion, without having bought a single-family home to get it.

What does not. Three stories, no elevator, bedrooms on the top floor. That is a hard constraint for some buyers and it shrinks your resale pool. These are the entry price tier in a neighborhood full of early-2000s single-family homes, which cuts both ways — you get the address, but you are the least expensive product on the street. The roof-and-reserves question is live right now at this age, and townhome associations tend to discover it all at once. And the D.R. Horton name carries a mixed finish-quality reputation nationally; whatever you think of that, a decade-old volume-built townhome deserves an independent inspector who will actually get on the roof and into the attic.

What the neighbors know

The Ravinia conversation is about the trees. Being ringed by conservation means no one is building behind you, which residents talk about the way people in other neighborhoods talk about a view — because it functions like one and it is protected. The pond in front does the same job on the other side.

Across East Park generally, the amenity people actually use is the dock and pavilion on the lake, plus the trail loop. Two Publix-anchored centers sit right outside the neighborhood, at Cornerstone at Lake Hart and the Shoppes at Storey Park, which is the kind of thing residents stop noticing and newcomers immediately do. And everyone in the townhome sections has an opinion about the third-floor laundry situation, which is the recurring subject in any three-story townhome anywhere.

Official sources

• D.R. Horton corporate site
• D.R. Horton company overview and financials
• D.R. Horton company history

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Looking at Ravinia or Overlook? I can tell you which buildings have had roof work, what the association's reserves look like, and how the townhomes have traded against the single-family homes around them. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

The only builder in Lake Nona with a 55+ community — and the only one who put up a French Country neighborhood in the middle of Florida.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Beazer Homes built four Lake Nona area neighborhoods: Nona Crest, Belle Vie, Moss Park Preserve, and Gatherings of Lake Nona. Beazer Homes USA is headquartered in Atlanta and trades on the New York Stock Exchange as BZH, but its U.S. operations began in 1985 as the American arm of the British firm Beazer PLC, which entered the market by buying Atlanta's Cohn Communities. It became an independent public company in 1994 and now operates in 13 states. Gatherings is Beazer's national brand for 55-plus condominiums, and Gatherings of Lake Nona is the area's first 55-plus community, with 216 units across eight buildings in the Laureate Park section. Belle Vie is a gated French Country neighborhood of roughly 85 homes off Dowden Road. Nona Crest sits on Narcoossee Road directly across from the entrance to the Lake Nona Golf & Country Club.

Beazer covers more different kinds of buyer in Lake Nona than any other name on the builders list. A mid-2000s gated neighborhood of 250 homes across from the country club gate. A French Country enclave of 85 large houses. A small conservation-front community in Moss Park. And a 216-unit elevator condominium for people over 55.

Those four have almost nothing in common architecturally, and that is the point. Beazer's stated position is that it does not build for one buyer segment — it builds for first-time buyers, move-up buyers and active adults, and in Lake Nona you can see all three sitting within a few miles of each other.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did Beazer build?

Four: Nona Crest, Belle Vie, Moss Park Preserve, and Gatherings of Lake Nona.

Three of the four are small by Lake Nona standards. Belle Vie has roughly 85 homes, Moss Park Preserve about 114, and Gatherings 216 units. Nona Crest, the oldest, is the largest at around 250 homes.

Who is Beazer, and why does an Atlanta builder have a British name?

Because it started as one. Beazer's U.S. operations began in 1985 as the American arm of Beazer PLC, a British construction firm, which entered the market by acquiring an Atlanta homebuilder called Cohn Communities.

Cohn had been building in Atlanta since 1967. Brian Beazer led the U.S. expansion, and the strategy from the beginning was to buy established local builders rather than start from scratch in each market — which is why Beazer showed up in Florida, the Carolinas, Texas, Nevada and Arizona in fairly short order.

Beazer Homes USA separated from its British parentage and went public on its own in February 1994, and has traded on the New York Stock Exchange as BZH since. It is headquartered in Atlanta, operates in 13 states, and is a mid-sized national builder rather than one of the giants — it delivered roughly 4,400 homes in fiscal 2025, against Lennar's 82,000.

That size difference is worth holding onto. Beazer builds fewer, smaller communities, and in Lake Nona that shows: no 2,000-home master plan with its own school, but four compact neighborhoods that filled in and finished.

What is Gatherings, and is it just this one community?

Gatherings is Beazer's national brand for low-maintenance 55-plus condominiums, and Gatherings of Lake Nona is Lake Nona's first 55-plus community.

This trips up buyers regularly. "Gatherings of Lake Nona" reads like a one-off local neighborhood name, but Gatherings is one of three brands Beazer reports under, alongside Beazer Homes and Choice Plans. The same brand and the same basic product appear in other Beazer markets, which means when you research Gatherings you may be reading about a community in another state.

What is here specifically: eight four-story buildings in the Laureate Park section, 216 units total, four floor plans running roughly 1,368 to 1,805 square feet. Three of the eight buildings have direct water views. Every unit gets a one-car garage, though some are interior to the building and some are detached. Elevator access in each building, covered balconies on floors two through four, patios on the ground floor. The clubhouse runs about 4,400 square feet with both an indoor and an outdoor kitchen, and the HOA fee covers cable, wifi, elevators, common areas and exterior maintenance.

Construction started in 2017 and was scheduled to wrap in 2026. Being inside Laureate Park and next to Lake Nona Town Center is the real draw — this is a low-maintenance product in a walkable location, which is a genuinely scarce combination in Central Florida.

What should you know before buying a 55+ condo at Gatherings?

Two things a single-family buyer never has to think about: condominium financing and the age restriction's effect on resale.

Financing first. Condominiums are underwritten differently than houses. Lenders look at the association's finances, its reserve funding, its owner-occupancy ratio, and whether the project is approved for the loan type you want. A condo that is not warrantable, or not FHA or VA approved, narrows your lender options and narrows your future buyer's options too. Ask for the association's budget, reserve study and any pending special assessment before you are emotionally committed, not after.

Then the age restriction. A 55-plus community limits who can buy from you. That is not automatically bad — the buyer pool for well-located active-adult housing in Central Florida is deep and getting deeper — but it is a smaller pool than for an unrestricted condo, and it means resale timing is less flexible.

Post-2021 Florida condo law also changed the reserve and inspection landscape for condominium associations statewide. Any Florida condo purchase now deserves a hard look at structural reserve funding. That is a general caution, not a claim about this association specifically — ask for its documents and read them.

Why is Belle Vie the only French Country neighborhood in Lake Nona?

Because Beazer built it that way on purpose, and nobody else here tried it.

Steeply pitched roofs, brick, stone, stucco and half-timbering. In an area where the default is Mediterranean tile or Florida contemporary, Belle Vie looks like it was airlifted in. Four plans — the Sequoia, Washington, Willow and Wilson — ranging from four to six bedrooms and roughly 2,900 to over 5,200 square feet, on lots larger than the Lake Nona norm.

It is gated, it has a fountain at the entrance, a neighborhood park with an open field and a walking trail into the woods, and roughly 85 homes total. It is CDD free. New construction finished in 2019, so everything trading now is resale. It sits off Dowden Road just east of the 417, adjacent to Storey Park.

The distinctive architecture cuts both ways, and it is worth being honest about. A house that does not look like anything else in the area is memorable, and memorable helps when there are three listings and yours is the one buyers remember. It also narrows the pool to people who want that look, and with 85 homes there is not much comparable sales data to argue with an appraiser about.

What do Nona Crest and Moss Park Preserve have in common?

Both are small, gated or semi-private, amenity-modest and low-carrying-cost — which is the recognizable Beazer pattern in this market.

Nona Crest is the oldest of the four, built in the mid-2000s on Narcoossee Road directly across from the main entrance to the Lake Nona Golf & Country Club. That address is the whole pitch: country club frontage without country club pricing. Roughly 250 homes in two size tiers, from about 1,400 to 3,800 square feet, with the larger tier offering three-car garages and many backing to water or conservation. Brick pavers throughout the sidewalks and driveways, a pool complex with a cabana-style clubhouse, a sports park and a basketball court, and dues that have historically run low for the area.

Moss Park Preserve is the newer, smaller cousin: about 114 single-family homes on conservation and pond-front homesites in the Moss Park area, with a pool, cabana, restrooms and playground, a low HOA and no CDD.

Neither is trying to be Storey Park or Laureate Park. Both are trying to be a good house behind a gate with a modest monthly number, and both succeed at it.

What should you check before buying a Beazer home here?

Age, product type, and in the condo, the association's books.

Age spreads widely across these four. A mid-2000s Nona Crest home and a 2024 Moss Park Preserve home are two decades apart in building code, materials and insurability. Nona Crest homes in particular are now at or past the point where original roofs and mechanical systems have been replaced — or have not been, which is the more important question. Florida insurers price hard on roof age, so get the roof date early.

Product type matters because Gatherings is a condominium and the other three are fee-simple houses. The inspection, the financing, the insurance and the association review are all different processes. Do not carry assumptions from one to the other.

On assessments, Belle Vie and Moss Park Preserve are both CDD free. Do not generalize that to the other two, and do not take any of it from a listing remark — districts can cover some phases of a community and not others, and amounts reset annually. Our CDD fees explainer covers pulling the figure for a specific parcel. Compare the amenity packages across all four on the amenities chart before deciding which trade suits you.

Beazer in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. All four are small, and small neighborhoods with gates and modest amenity packages carry low, predictable monthly costs — two of the four have no CDD at all. Nona Crest's location across from the country club entrance is arguably the best address-per-dollar in Lake Nona. Belle Vie's architecture is genuinely distinctive in a market where most streets look alike. Gatherings solves a real problem: there is very little walkable, low-maintenance, elevator-served housing for people over 55 anywhere in Central Florida, let alone next to a town center. And Beazer builds to ENERGY STAR standards with a company-wide Zero Energy Ready commitment, so the envelope spec is above average for the price point.

What does not. Small neighborhoods mean thin comps. With 85 homes in Belle Vie and 114 in Moss Park Preserve, there may be no recent comparable sale when you list, and appraisals get harder in both directions. Nona Crest is twenty years old and the roof-and-systems conversation is now part of every transaction there, in a state where that determines whether you can get insured at all. Gatherings carries the full condominium apparatus — reserves, special assessments, warrantability, an association that can outvote you — plus an age restriction that shrinks your future buyer pool. And Beazer is a mid-sized builder, roughly a twentieth of Lennar's volume; it is not going anywhere, but it does not have the same balance sheet standing behind a warranty claim a decade out.

What the neighbors know

Nona Crest residents will tell you about the gate and the pavers, but what they really talk about is the address — being directly across Narcoossee from the country club entrance without paying country club money. The HOA there runs an active community site and a real events calendar, which in a 250-home neighborhood means people actually know each other.

Belle Vie owners talk about the trail into the woods and the fact that people slow down to look at their houses. Over at Gatherings, the conversation is the walk — residents chose it to be near Town Center and Laureate Park's amenities without maintaining a yard, and the ones who use that walk are the ones who love it there. Moss Park Preserve talks about the conservation lots and the Orange County park down the road, which is a swimming, picnicking and boating amenity nobody has to pay dues for.

Official sources

• Beazer: Gatherings of Lake Nona
• Beazer Homes USA company overview
• Beazer Homes USA (NYSE: BZH) company profile

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Looking at a Beazer home in Lake Nona? With neighborhoods this small, knowing what has actually sold matters more than usual — and if you are considering Gatherings, I will walk you through the condo documents before you write anything. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

One neighborhood, and it makes the opposite trade from almost everything else in Lake Nona: more house, fewer amenities, lower carrying cost.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Meritage Homes built one Lake Nona area neighborhood: Fell's Landing, on the southern edge of the area at the Orange and Osceola county line. Meritage was founded in 1985 in Scottsdale, Arizona as Monterey Homes by Steve Hilton and William Cleverly, took the Meritage name in 1998, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange as MTH. It is now the fifth-largest homebuilder in the country and delivered its 200,000th home around its fortieth anniversary in December 2025. Fell's Landing homes run roughly 2,500 to 5,000 square feet and were built with spray-foam insulation, low-E2 vinyl windows and low-VOC finishes. The neighborhood has no community pool or clubhouse, no CDD, and unusually low HOA dues for the Lake Nona area. It is fully built out, so these homes trade as resale.

Almost every Lake Nona neighborhood sells you an amenity package. Resort pool, clubhouse, fitness center, trails, sometimes a golf course and a gate with a person in it. You pay for that twice — once in the purchase price and then every month, forever, in dues and assessments.

Fell's Landing does not do that. Meritage built a small neighborhood of large houses with a dog park, a shaded tot lot and a gazebo, and stopped. No pool. No clubhouse. No CDD. The dues are low because there is almost nothing to maintain. Whether that is the best deal in Lake Nona or a dealbreaker depends entirely on who you are, and that is the whole story of this builder here.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did Meritage build?

One: Fell's Landing, at the southern edge of the Lake Nona area on the Orange and Osceola county line.

It is off Narcoossee Road, entered on the right just before the Boggy Creek light heading south. Small — on the order of eighty homes — and finished, which means the only way in now is resale.

Who is Meritage, and where does the name come from?

Meritage started in 1985 as Monterey Homes in Scottsdale, Arizona, and took its current name in 1998 from a wine term for a Bordeaux-style blend.

Two Arizona State graduates, Steve Hilton and William Cleverly, founded it building upscale homes in Scottsdale. The company went public through a reverse merger in 1997 and has traded on the New York Stock Exchange as MTH since. The rename to Meritage was deliberate: the word describes a blended wine, and the company chose it to signal a blend of design and construction rather than a founder's surname.

Two strategic pivots since then explain what Meritage builds today. In 2009 it made energy efficiency a company-wide focus rather than an options-list item. In 2016 it shifted toward entry-level and first move-up buyers. It is now the fifth-largest homebuilder in the United States, operating in twelve states, and it delivered its 200,000th home around its fortieth anniversary in December 2025.

Fell's Landing was built after the first pivot and before the second, which is why it reads the way it does: serious energy specification, but square footage well above what an entry-level builder puts up.

What does the Meritage energy package actually mean in Florida?

It mostly means the building envelope is tighter than a comparable home of the same age, which shows up in the cooling bill more than anywhere else.

The features are specific and checkable: spray-foam insulation, low-E2 vinyl windows, water-efficient fixtures, and low-VOC carpets, finishes and paints. Meritage has built to ENERGY STAR certification as a standard across its homes rather than selling it as an upgrade, and the company introduced net-zero energy homes in Arizona in 2011.

In Central Florida the envelope is the part that matters. Cooling load is the dominant cost, and a tight envelope with good glazing does more for a summer bill than any appliance package. It also tends to hold the house quieter and steadier room to room.

Two honest caveats. First, an envelope built in the early 2010s is a decade-plus old now, and the equipment inside it — air handler, condenser, water heater — has a much shorter life than the insulation. The energy story on a specific home is only as good as what has been serviced or replaced. Second, spray-foam construction changes how a house breathes and how an attic is inspected; make sure your inspector is comfortable with it and ask specifically about attic ventilation and moisture.

Why does Fell's Landing have almost no amenities?

Because Meritage put the budget into the houses instead, and the low HOA dues are the direct consequence.

What is there: a fenced dog park, a tree-shaded tot lot, and a gazebo park area, with some homes backing a central pond. What is not there: a community pool, a clubhouse, a fitness center, a gate.

The math is straightforward. Amenity centers cost money to build and more money to staff, insure, resurface and replace, and those costs live in your dues and in reserve assessments for as long as you own the home. A neighborhood with a dog park and a gazebo has almost no reserve exposure. Compare the packages yourself on the neighborhood amenities chart and then compare the dues.

Whether this is a bargain depends on your household. If you would use a resort pool three times a week, you are giving up real value. If you have your own pool — and many Fell's Landing homes do — and you were never going to set foot in a clubhouse, you are buying the same Lake Nona schools and location without paying for a facility you do not use.

Which county is Fell's Landing in?

Orange County — the Osceola line runs just south of the neighborhood, which is a convenience, not a jurisdiction change.

This trips people up. Sitting on a county line makes St. Cloud and Kissimmee an easy commute, and buyers reasonably assume that proximity comes with Osceola County taxes or Osceola County schools. It does not. Fell's Landing is Orange County for taxes and falls under Orange County Public Schools for zoning.

For a household with one commute into Osceola and one into Medical City, that combination is genuinely useful, and it is the single best argument for this location. School assignments are set by OCPS and can change, so confirm zoning for a specific address rather than assuming from the neighborhood; our Lake Nona schools guide is a starting point.

Did Meritage build anywhere else in Lake Nona?

No. Fell's Landing is the only one.

Meritage is occasionally credited with homes in Randal Park, which is a mix-up worth clearing. Randal Park was started by David Weekley Homes and M/I Homes and finished by Mattamy Homes in 2019. Meritage was not one of them.

If you are searching for Meritage homes in the Lake Nona area and finding results scattered across neighborhoods, you are likely looking at listings that mention the builder for a different reason, or at homes elsewhere in the Orlando metro. Meritage builds actively across Central Florida; inside Lake Nona it built here and nowhere else.

What should you check before buying in Fell's Landing?

Check the age of the mechanical equipment and the roof, then confirm the assessment and the school zoning for the exact address.

Equipment first, because these homes are now in the window where the original air handler, condenser and water heater are at or past typical service life. The envelope may be excellent and the equipment inside it tired, and those are separate line items in your budget.

The roof matters more here than it would have five years ago. Florida insurers underwrite hard on roof age, and a home from the early-to-mid 2010s is at the point where roof age drives both premium and, in some cases, whether a carrier will write it at all. Get the roof date before you get attached.

Then assessments. Fell's Landing is marketed as having no CDD and its dues are low, but do not take either from a listing remark — districts can cover some phases and not others and amounts reset annually. Our CDD fees explainer covers how to pull the figure for a specific parcel.

Meritage in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. This is the most square footage per dollar in the Lake Nona area, and it is not a close call. The energy specification is real and above what most builders were doing when these homes went up. Carrying cost is low: no CDD, minimal dues, nothing shared to assess against later. Many homes have private pools, which for a lot of buyers is the amenity that actually gets used. And the county-line location gives you Orange County schools and a genuinely short drive into Osceola.

What does not. No pool, no clubhouse, no gate. For families who want a neighborhood social hub, this is the wrong place, and no amount of square footage fixes it. The neighborhood is small — roughly eighty homes — which means very thin comp data; one distressed sale can move the perceived value of the whole street, and there may be no recent comparable sale at all when you go to list. It is on the southern edge of the area, so you are further from Lake Nona Town Center and Medical City than the interior neighborhoods. And the homes are old enough now that roof and equipment age are live issues in every transaction here.

What the neighbors know

The dog park is the social center here, which is what happens when a neighborhood has no clubhouse and a fenced green space. People meet there, and the central pond loop is where the evening walk happens. It is a smaller, quieter version of community than Laureate Park's events calendar, and residents who chose this neighborhood generally chose it for exactly that.

The other running topic is the drive. Everything in Lake Nona is up Narcoossee Road from here, and residents have opinions about the timing of the Boggy Creek light. In exchange, they are minutes from St. Cloud, which for a household with one commute heading south is the whole reason they are here.

Official sources

• Meritage Homes corporate site
• Meritage Homes company overview and history
• Meritage Homes (NYSE: MTH) company profile

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Thinking about Fell's Landing? With a neighborhood this small, knowing what has actually sold and when matters more than usual — and I can tell you the roof and equipment picture before you fall for the square footage. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

The only builder on the Lake Nona list that answers to a family instead of a stock ticker — and it runs its American operation from Orlando.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Mattamy Homes built four Lake Nona area neighborhoods: Nona Preserve, Randal Park, Randal Walk, and Meridian Parks. Mattamy was founded in Toronto in 1978 by Peter Gilgan, who named it after his two oldest children, Matt and Amy. It is the largest privately owned homebuilder in North America and Canada's largest residential builder, and it is not publicly traded. Mattamy's U.S. head office is in Orlando. Nona Preserve is a gated townhome community off Narcoossee Road built roughly 2006 to 2013. Randal Park was started by David Weekley Homes and M/I Homes and finished by Mattamy in 2019, after which Mattamy built the Randal Walk townhomes between 2019 and 2022. Meridian Parks, in the northeast corner of the Lake Nona area, is the ongoing project.

Every other national builder on the Lake Nona builders list files a quarterly earnings report. Lennar, Pulte, Toll Brothers, D.R. Horton, KB, Meritage, Beazer, Taylor Morrison — all public, all answerable to shareholders every ninety days. Mattamy is not. It is family controlled, privately held, and has been since Peter Gilgan built his first house in Burlington, Ontario in 1978.

The second thing worth knowing is geographic. Mattamy operates in eleven U.S. markets, and its American head office is in Orlando. That is not a detail a buyer usually cares about, but it means Lake Nona is a home market for this company rather than a division on a map, and it shows up in how long Mattamy has stuck around here — through the crash, through the recovery, and into the current build.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did Mattamy build?

Mattamy built four: Nona Preserve, Randal Park, Randal Walk, and Meridian Parks.

Those four span nearly twenty years and three distinct market eras. Nona Preserve went up before and through the crash. Randal Park and Randal Walk are recovery-era work. Meridian Parks is the current one and by far the largest.

Who is Mattamy, and why is a Canadian builder in Lake Nona?

Mattamy was founded in Toronto in 1978 by Peter Gilgan, and its U.S. head office is in Orlando — so Lake Nona is a home market, not an outpost.

Gilgan was an accountant before he was a builder. He put up one house in Burlington, Ontario in 1978 and named the company after his two oldest children, Matt and Amy. Nearly fifty years later Mattamy has delivered more than 135,000 homes, builds across the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton in Canada, and operates in eleven U.S. markets, most of them in Florida.

Gilgan was drawn to the New Urbanism movement, and if you have walked Randal Park or Randal Walk you have seen the result: front porches facing the street, garages pushed to rear alleys, parks doing the work that a clubhouse does elsewhere. That is a design philosophy, not a Lake Nona accident, and it is the most reliable way to spot Mattamy's work here.

Does private ownership actually matter to a buyer?

Sometimes, and mostly in how a builder behaves at the end of a cycle rather than in the quality of any individual house.

A public builder under pressure to hit a quarterly delivery number has a reason to push closings, discount inventory hard in a soft quarter, or exit a market that is not performing. A private builder answering to one family can take a longer view, and can sit on land through a slow stretch instead of dumping it.

Be careful how much weight you put on this. It is a structural difference, not a guarantee, and it says nothing about the framing on any particular house. Private ownership also means less public disclosure — there is no annual report to read, no earnings call where an analyst asks an uncomfortable question about warranty claims. You trade one kind of transparency for another kind of patience.

Where it shows up locally is staying power. Mattamy built here before the crash, came back and finished a neighborhood somebody else had started, and is still building. Not every name on the builders list can say that.

Why does Randal Park have more than one builder?

Randal Park was started by David Weekley Homes and M/I Homes; Mattamy took over and completed the neighborhood in 2019.

So there are three builders' work inside one neighborhood. This is the second Lake Nona community in this series with a split build history — Nona Terrace is the other — and it is a pattern worth internalizing: in a neighborhood that took a decade to fill in, the builder named on a listing may not be the builder who put up that particular house. Section and year matter more than the neighborhood name.

Practically, that means when you are comparing two Randal Park homes, you may be comparing a David Weekley home against an M/I home against a Mattamy home, built at different points in the cycle, all filed under one neighborhood name. Ask which builder and which year on the specific address. The seller's disclosure and the permit record will both tell you.

Having finished Randal Park, Mattamy went on to build Randal Walk at the entrance between 2019 and 2022 — four townhome plans, all three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, roughly 1,528 to 1,700 square feet, with a waterfront pool and playground. Sun Blaze Elementary sits directly behind it.

What is Meridian Parks, and how big will it get?

Meridian Parks is Mattamy's ongoing Lake Nona project in the northeast corner of the area, planned around art, parks and technology, and it is on track to be one of the largest neighborhoods here.

The plan calls for it to eventually house thousands of families, with single-family homes and townhomes across Mattamy's Executive through Estate series. Townhomes start around 1,400 square feet; the single-family range runs up from roughly 1,700. Innovation High School sits within the Meridian Parks area, Innovation Middle is down the street in Storey Park, and the community is expected to eventually connect toward the Sunbridge development to the east.

Mattamy markets the community around nature preserve frontage, trail access, rotating outdoor art installations, an amphitheater and a yoga lawn. Some of that is brochure language. The trails and the preserve acreage are real and are the reason to look here.

The thing to weigh honestly: a neighborhood this large, built over this many years, means buying early puts you next to construction for a long time, and it means the amenity package you are shown may not be finished when you close. Ask what is built today, not what is planned.

What should you check before buying a Mattamy home here?

Check the year built, the section, and the assessment — and in Randal Park, check who actually built the house.

Year built carries the most weight because Mattamy's Lake Nona work spans roughly 2006 to the present. A Nona Preserve townhome from 2008 and a current Meridian Parks home are separated by two decades of building code, insurance underwriting and finish standards. In Florida that gap is not cosmetic; it affects what an insurer will write and at what price.

Section matters in Meridian Parks and Randal Park, both large enough that the experience differs street to street. In Meridian Parks specifically, ask which phase and what is built around it now.

On assessments, do not assume a CDD is or is not present from the neighborhood name — districts can cover some phases and not others, and the amounts reset annually. Our CDD fees explainer covers how to pull the figure for a specific parcel. Nona Preserve and Randal Walk are gated townhome communities, so factor exterior maintenance and reserves into the HOA number rather than looking only at the monthly dues.

Mattamy in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. The New Urbanism design instinct produces neighborhoods that are genuinely pleasant to walk, and rear alleys and front porches age better than a street of garage doors. Randal Park's preserved acreage and park network are real amenities that cost nothing to maintain and cannot be built over. Mattamy's townhome product is well proportioned for the price point, and Randal Walk and Nona Preserve both sit within walking distance of a school. Private ownership and an Orlando U.S. headquarters mean the company has stayed put here across two decades and one severe downturn.

What does not. Rear-alley design has a cost most buyers discover after closing: alleys are narrow, guest parking is thin, and trash and delivery logistics are worse than on a conventional street. Nona Preserve homes are now fifteen to twenty years old and are entering the roof-and-systems window, which in the current Florida insurance market is a real budget item, not a footnote. Meridian Parks is a long build, meaning early buyers live beside construction and the finished amenity package arrives later than the sales center implies. And there is genuinely less public information about a private company — if you want to research a builder's financial condition before signing a build contract, you can read Lennar's filings and you cannot read Mattamy's.

What the neighbors know

In Randal Park the conversation is about the parks, plural. Eight of them, plus a five-acre central green that hosts picnics, ball games and movie nights, and residents use them in a way that people in amenity-center neighborhoods often do not use the amenity center. The other Randal Park topic is the alleys, and opinions there split cleanly between people who love not staring at garage doors and people who have tried to have four cars over.

Over in Nona Preserve, it is location. Northlake Park Community School and the Lake Nona YMCA are within walking distance, and the Publix-anchored Cornerstone at Lake Hart is right there off Narcoossee Road. In Meridian Parks the running topic is what gets built next and when, which is what everyone talks about in a neighborhood that is still going up.

Official sources

• Mattamy Homes corporate site
• Mattamy Homes company overview and history
• Forbes profile of founder Peter Gilgan

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Looking at a Mattamy home in Lake Nona — Meridian Parks, Randal Park, Randal Walk or Nona Preserve? I can tell you the year built, the section, and in Randal Park who actually put up the house. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

Three neighborhoods, three completely different jobs: master developer, production builder, and cleanup crew.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Lennar built three Lake Nona area neighborhoods: Storey Park, Nona Terrace, and homes across the Moss Park area including the Oaks at Moss Park. Lennar traces to F&R Builders, founded in Miami in 1954; the name is a portmanteau of founders Leonard Miller and Arnold Rosen. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange as LEN and delivered 82,583 homes in fiscal 2025, making it one of the two largest homebuilders in the country. Storey Park broke ground in 2015 as a Lennar-developed master plan with rooftop solar as a standard feature. Nona Terrace is a gated townhome community started by Tousa Homes as Savannah Landings and finished by Lennar after Tousa failed, which is why it still records under the older plat name. Lennar's Everything's Included model puts features other builders sell as upgrades into the base price.

Lennar is the volume player on the Lake Nona builders list. Nobody else here delivers 82,000 homes a year nationally, and nobody else here has taken on three jobs as different as the ones Lennar has taken on in Lake Nona.

At Storey Park, Lennar was the master developer — raw land, roads, amenities, schools coming in behind, the whole thing. In the Moss Park area it was a production builder working inside somebody else's plan. At Nona Terrace it was, effectively, the cleanup crew: a community that stalled and got finished under a new name. Those are three different risk profiles and three different products, and the badge on the mailbox does not distinguish them.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did Lennar build?

Lennar built Storey Park, Nona Terrace, and a substantial share of the Moss Park area, including the Oaks at Moss Park.

Storey Park is by a wide margin the biggest of the three and the one where Lennar controlled everything. The Moss Park work sits inside an established area with its own history. Nona Terrace is the small, gated townhome outlier.

Who is Lennar, and how long have they been building?

Lennar started as F&R Builders in Miami in 1954, and the company name is literally two founders' first names stuck together.

Gene Fisher and Arnold Rosen founded F&R. Leonard Miller joined in 1956 with $10,000 and 42 lots in Dade County. When the company was renamed, it took "Len" from Leonard and "nar" from Arnold. It went public in 1971 and has traded on the New York Stock Exchange as LEN since the early 1980s, with Miami still the headquarters seventy-two years later.

The scale now is hard to picture from a single street in Lake Nona. Lennar delivered 82,583 homes in fiscal 2025 on $34.2 billion in revenue, operating in 25 states and more than 50 markets. It runs its own mortgage company, title company and technology arm. The largest single reason for that scale was the 2018 merger with CalAtlantic, which briefly made Lennar the largest homebuilder in the country — and which matters locally for a reason we will come back to.

What is Everything's Included, and does it actually save money?

Everything's Included means Lennar puts features other builders sell as upgrades into the base price, and it changes the shopping process more than it changes the total.

At a builder that runs a design studio, you pick a base plan and then spend an afternoon adding granite, cabinets, flooring and smart home equipment on top. At Lennar you get a defined package with those items already in it. The base number looks higher against a stripped competitor; the out-the-door number is usually closer than the sticker suggests.

Where it genuinely helps is predictability and financing. It is easier to qualify against a number that already includes the finishes than to discover $60,000 of selections after you have been approved. Where it costs you is choice. If you have specific taste and want to drive it, a package-based builder will frustrate you, and that frustration is not a defect in the model — it is the model.

The practical resale consequence: within a Lennar collection, homes are unusually similar. That makes comps clean and it makes it harder to stand out when you sell. Your differentiators end up being lot, view, and what you did after closing.

Why do Nona Terrace listings say Savannah Landings?

Savannah Landings was the community's original name during development; it was renamed Nona Terrace, but the original name stayed on the plat, and the MLS keys to the plat.

The sign at the entrance reads Nona Terrace, and that is what the neighborhood is called today. But pull up any townhome there and the subdivision field will read something like "Savannah Lndgs." Buyers searching by subdivision name go looking for Nona Terrace, find nothing, and conclude there is no inventory. There is; it is filed under the name the community carried while it was being built.

The rename tracks a change of builder. Tousa Homes started the community as Savannah Landings, but Tousa did not survive the housing crash and Lennar took it over early in the development. Lennar acquired the remaining lots, built out the community and put the Nona Terrace name on the entrance. Because the handover came early, the overwhelming majority of what stands there today is Lennar's work, finished by around 2013 — the original name simply outlived the company that chose it.

This matters beyond search. The plat name is what appears on title work, on the county parcel record, and often on HOA documents. If you are comparing what a unit sold for, or checking an assessment, search the plat, not the sign at the gate. It also means sold data for this community is easy to under-count: pull only "Nona Terrace" and you will miss history filed under the older name.

What makes Storey Park different from Lennar's other Lake Nona work?

Storey Park is the one where Lennar was the developer, not just the builder, and it is the one built around solar.

Rooftop solar came standard, marketed as Orlando's first solar-powered community, alongside fiber internet and smart home equipment. The amenity package is deeper than a typical production neighborhood: clubhouse, fitness center, resort pool with beach entry and lap lanes, event room, tennis, playground and open field. Innovation Middle School sits adjacent on the south side, with a Publix-anchored plaza to the east, and Belle Vie and Meridian Parks as neighbors.

Because Storey Park ran for so many years across several collections, a "Storey Park home" can mean a 1,350-square-foot townhome or a 4,000-plus-square-foot estate, built anywhere across a long construction window. Two things to ask on any specific home: which collection, and what solar equipment is actually installed and who owns it. Solar arrangements differ, and the answer affects both your utility math and your closing.

Did Lennar build in Eagle Creek?

Yes, and there is a wrinkle in the builder list at Eagle Creek worth understanding.

Eagle Creek's past builders include Centerline Homes, Standard Pacific, CalAtlantic, Lennar, KB Home and Toll Brothers. That reads as six independent companies. Three of them are now one.

Standard Pacific merged with Ryland in 2015 to form CalAtlantic. Lennar acquired CalAtlantic in 2018. So a Standard Pacific home, a CalAtlantic home and a Lennar home in Eagle Creek were built by different organizations at the time they were built — construction standards and crews genuinely differed — but the corporate successor for all three today is Lennar. If a warranty or a structural question ever reaches back to the builder, that is who it reaches.

What should you check before buying a Lennar home here?

Check the construction year, the solar arrangement if there is one, and the assessment structure — in that order.

Construction year first, because Lennar's Lake Nona work spans roughly 2008 through the present. A Nona Terrace townhome and a recent Storey Park home have almost nothing in common except the corporate name on the permit.

Solar second, and only in Storey Park. Confirm what is on the roof, who owns it, whether anything transfers, and how it interacts with a roof replacement down the line. This is a question your inspector and your title company both need answered, not a detail to sort out after contract.

Assessments third. Do not assume a CDD is or is not present based on the neighborhood name — districts can cover some phases and not others, and amounts reset annually. Our CDD fees explainer covers how to pull the number for a specific parcel. HOA dues vary widely across these three, and Storey Park's amenity depth is reflected in what it costs to maintain.

Lennar in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. Value per square foot is the strongest in this group of builders, and it is not close. Everything's Included makes budgeting straightforward and reduces the chance of a nasty surprise between contract and closing. Storey Park's amenity package genuinely outperforms what a production neighborhood usually delivers, and the solar and fiber were forward-looking for 2015. Lennar's in-house mortgage and title operations can simplify a transaction, and its size means it is not going anywhere.

What does not. Uniformity is the price of the model. Inside a Lennar collection the homes are close to interchangeable, which means when you sell you are competing on price and lot rather than on anything distinctive about the house. High-volume production building also draws more finish-quality complaints than low-volume building does, anywhere in the country, and a thorough independent inspection is not optional here just because the home is newer. The in-house mortgage convenience comes with incentive structures tied to using it — compare the rate against an outside lender before you take the builder credit. And Storey Park's long build window means some sections have been living next to active construction for years.

What the neighbors know

In Storey Park the running conversation is the power bill. Residents compare notes on what the solar actually offsets month to month, and the answer varies enough by home and by roof orientation that no one quotes a single number. The other Storey Park topic is construction: people who bought early lived beside dirt and trucks for a long stretch, and they will tell you which phases got the quiet years.

Over in Moss Park, the conversation is about the public park itself — a genuine amenity within biking distance that costs nothing to use — and about Moss Park Road, which residents watch closely as the area builds out. At Nona Terrace, it is the gate, the pond views, and being a half-mile from a Publix. Three neighborhoods, one builder, and no shared conversation at all.

Official sources

• Lennar corporate history
• Lennar investor company profile
• Lennar corporate overview and financials

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Looking at a Lennar home in Lake Nona — Storey Park, Moss Park or Nona Terrace? I can tell you which construction year and which collection you are actually shopping, and what the solar question means for a specific address. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

Six neighborhoods, twenty years, and one builder that has shaped more of Lake Nona than any other.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Pulte Homes has built six Lake Nona area neighborhoods: VillageWalk at Lake Nona, the Enclave at VillageWalk, the Isles of Lake Nona, the Estates at Nona Sound, the Cove at Nona Sound, and townhomes in Laureate Park. Pulte was the sole builder in the first five; Laureate Park is the one place it built alongside other companies. PulteGroup was founded in 1950 by an 18-year-old William J. Pulte in the Detroit area, trades on the New York Stock Exchange as PHM, and is now headquartered in Atlanta. VillageWalk was started by DiVosta Homes, which Pulte acquired in 1998; Pulte finished the neighborhood as sole builder between 2006 and 2016, and the Enclave at VillageWalk followed from 2015 to 2021. VillageWalk was named Community of the Year by the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando in 2008. The Estates and the Cove at Nona Sound sit side by side off Clapp Simms Duda Road, east of Narcoossee Road.

Pulte has been building in Lake Nona longer than anyone else on the builders list. VillageWalk broke ground in 2006, back when the go-to restaurant on Narcoossee was Sweet Mama's and the Publix was the retail scene. Twenty years later Pulte is still opening sales centers here. Nobody else on that list has that run.

What that longevity produces is a set of neighborhoods that share a design instinct and almost nothing else. Five of the six are organized around water — canals at VillageWalk, interconnected lakes and ponds at the Isles, a canal with dock access at Nona Sound — and Pulte built each of those five start to finish alone, which is rare in Lake Nona and matters more than it sounds. In a multi-builder community, comps are noisy. In those five, they are not. The sixth, a run of townhomes in Laureate Park, is the exception that proves it.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did Pulte build?

Pulte built six: VillageWalk, the Enclave at VillageWalk, the Isles of Lake Nona, the Estates at Nona Sound, the Cove at Nona Sound, and townhomes in Laureate Park.

The first three are finished and trade as resale. The two Nona Sound communities are the newer end of the portfolio, sitting side by side off Clapp Simms Duda Road with Eagle Creek to the north.

Who is Pulte, and how long have they been building?

PulteGroup was founded in 1950, when 18-year-old William J. Pulte built and sold his first house near Detroit.

The company incorporated in 1956, went public and eventually landed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PHM. It is now the third-largest homebuilder in the country by closings, operating in roughly 45 markets across 23 states from a headquarters in Atlanta, and it has delivered more than 875,000 homes since 1950.

PulteGroup runs a portfolio of brands rather than one nameplate: Pulte Homes for move-up buyers, Centex at the entry level, Del Webb for 55-plus, plus DiVosta, American West, and John Wieland. Two of those acquisitions are the largest in the company's history — Del Webb in 2001 and Centex in 2009. A third, smaller one is the reason a Lake Nona neighborhood looks the way it does.

Why does VillageWalk have a different builder's name on it?

VillageWalk was started by DiVosta Homes, a builder Pulte acquired in 1998, and finished by Pulte as sole builder.

DiVosta had already built VillageWalk communities in South Florida before Lake Nona — the name, the canal layout, the pedestrian bridges and the Town Center clubhouse are all DiVosta's template, not Pulte's. Pulte bought the company early in the Lake Nona build and carried the concept through to completion. DiVosta still exists as a PulteGroup brand today.

That handoff is not just trivia, and it is the single most useful thing on this page for a VillageWalk buyer. The neighborhood was built across roughly a decade, and the product changed partway through. The earliest streets were predominantly one-story homes; construction later shifted toward larger two-story homes. Residents who bought in the original sections describe those first homes as poured-concrete construction rather than block, which is what DiVosta was known for. Two houses on two different streets in the same neighborhood, same builder name on the listing, can be meaningfully different buildings.

So do not take construction type or era from the neighborhood name. Pull it for the actual address. That is a five-minute check that occasionally changes an inspection conversation.

What is the difference between the Isles of Lake Nona and VillageWalk?

The Isles is the newer, smaller, fully gated version of the same idea: Pulte again, water again, but with current-generation smart home and energy packages instead of mid-2000s construction.

Both are Pulte, both are organized around water, both mix single-family homes with attached product. The differences are age and scale. VillageWalk is the larger of the two and carries a full Town Center with a fitness center, resort pool, lap pool, tennis and an on-site activities director. The Isles is more compact, and its water is a network of connected lakes and ponds that put views on a large share of the homesites.

Practically: VillageWalk buyers are buying amenity depth and a mature tree canopy. Isles buyers are buying newer systems and a tighter gate. Compare the packages side by side on the neighborhood amenities chart before you decide which trade-off you want.

What is Nona Sound, and how is it different?

Nona Sound is two adjacent Pulte communities — the Estates and the Cove — off Clapp Simms Duda Road east of Narcoossee, paired so that one is estate homes and the other is townhomes.

The Estates at Nona Sound is the upper end: gated, estate-style homes on oversized homesites with canal and conservation views. Some homes sit on the canal, which connects toward the East Lake Toho chain of lakes. The Cove is Pulte's townhome product next door, three floor plans between roughly 1,553 and 1,770 square feet, all with two-car garages, sharing a pool and cabana.

The location is the thing to understand. This is the southeastern edge of the Lake Nona area, near Split Oak Forest and its 2,000-plus acres of conservation land, with Eagle Creek directly north. It is quieter than the master plan core and further from Narcoossee Road retail. Pulte markets both communities as having no CDD — confirm that on the specific parcel, and read our CDD fees explainer for how to pull the number yourself.

Can you still buy a new Pulte home in Lake Nona?

Only at Nona Sound. VillageWalk, the Enclave, the Isles of Lake Nona and Pulte's Laureate Park townhomes are all built out.

That means most transactions carrying the Pulte name in Lake Nona are resale, spread across roughly twenty years of construction. A 2007 VillageWalk villa and a current Estates at Nona Sound home share a builder and very little else. For what is actually available new right now, check the Lake Nona new construction listings, or the townhome listings if the Cove is what you are after.

Pulte in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. Sole-builder neighborhoods produce clean comps and a consistent streetscape, and Pulte delivered that five times over here. The amenity packages are genuinely deep, particularly the VillageWalk Town Center, which carries on-site retail and an activities director rather than just a pool and a gate. Pulte's design studio process gives buyers real personalization at production pricing. And VillageWalk's Community of the Year recognition from the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando in 2008 was earned in a market that had plenty of competition.

What does not. Twenty years under one name means the name tells you almost nothing. Construction era, plan style and even wall construction vary across the six neighborhoods and inside VillageWalk itself, and a buyer who shops on the badge will get burned by the spread. The older communities are hitting the age where roofs, HVAC and water heaters are live negotiation items, and in this insurance market a 2007 roof is not a footnote. VillageWalk and the Isles carry amenity-heavy HOAs; that monthly number is part of your payment whether you use the ballroom or not. And Nona Sound is out toward Split Oak, which is quiet and also a real drive from the Town Center — check the commute before you fall for the canal.

What the neighbors know

Ask around VillageWalk and you will hear about the Town Center more than the houses. The deli, the salon, the ballroom, the activities calendar — residents treat it as the neighborhood's living room, and it is a real part of why people stay. You will also hear about the recession years, when residents worried the amenities would never get finished, and the general read that Pulte's mid-build switch to larger two-story homes turned out to be the right call.

Over at the Isles, the conversation is about water views and which lots have them on two sides. At Nona Sound it is about the canal and dock access, and about Split Oak sitting right there. Same builder, three different reasons people bought.

Official sources

• PulteGroup company overview
• Pulte: The Estates at Nona Sound
• Pulte: The Cove at Nona Sound
• Nonahood News: residents on early VillageWalk and Lake Nona

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Looking at a Pulte home in Lake Nona — VillageWalk, the Isles, or Nona Sound? I can tell you which construction era you are actually shopping and what the same square footage trades for across all six. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

Four neighborhoods, three price tiers, and one builder name that means something different in each of them.

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Toll Brothers has built in four Lake Nona area neighborhoods: Eagle Creek, the Shores at Lake Whippoorwill, Laurel Pointe, and Alora. The company was founded in 1967 by brothers Robert and Bruce Toll, went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1986 under the ticker TOL, and now builds in more than 60 U.S. markets. Its Lake Nona work runs from three-story townhomes at Alora, which opened with pricing from $499,995, to gated estate homes at Laurel Pointe, priced from $1.7 million when the final release was announced in May 2025. Toll Brothers broke ground at Eagle Creek in 2015 and is no longer building there. The Shores at Lake Whippoorwill is a 14-home neighborhood built out around 2021 to 2022. Several of the same floor plans — Bordeaux, Grenache, Marsanne, Corbeil, Dolcetto, Barbera — were offered in both Laurel Pointe and the Shores.

Look at the Lake Nona home builders list and you will notice something odd about Toll Brothers: it is the only name that appears twice, once under production builders and once under semi-custom. That is not a formatting mistake. It is the most useful single fact about this builder in Lake Nona.

Most national builders occupy one lane here. Lennar builds a value product. The custom shops build one-off estates inside the country club gates. Toll Brothers covers a spread that runs from a three-story townhome under 2,100 square feet to a gated estate over 5,800 square feet backing a conservation area. Same badge on the front of the house. Very different purchase. If you walked out of a Toll Brothers sales center in one Lake Nona neighborhood with a number in your head, that number tells you almost nothing about the other three.

Which Lake Nona neighborhoods did Toll Brothers build?

Toll Brothers has built in four Lake Nona area neighborhoods: Eagle Creek, the Shores at Lake Whippoorwill, Laurel Pointe, and Alora.

Two of those — the Shores and Laurel Pointe — were Toll Brothers exclusives, meaning every home in the neighborhood came from one builder. Eagle Creek was the opposite: a large, multi-builder golf community where Toll Brothers built one slice alongside Centerline, Standard Pacific, CalAtlantic, Lennar, and KB Home. Alora is the newest and the smallest per-home product.

Who is Toll Brothers, and how long have they been building?

Toll Brothers was founded in 1967 in suburban Philadelphia by brothers Robert and Bruce Toll, and has been a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange since 1986.

The company started with two model homes outside Philadelphia and grew into a Fortune 500 builder operating in 24 states and more than 60 markets. It is unusual among national builders in that it runs its own architectural, engineering, land development, mortgage, title, and building-components operations rather than outsourcing them. Fortune named it the top-ranked home builder on its World's Most Admired Companies list in 2026, the ninth time the company has held that spot.

Robert Toll, the older brother and the company's long-serving chairman, died in October 2022. The Orlando division is run by division president Brock Fanning, whose name appears on the announcements for both Laurel Pointe and Alora.

The part that matters to a buyer is the design studio model. Toll Brothers sells personalization as the product, not just square footage — buyers select finishes at a central design studio rather than picking from three packages at a sales trailer. That is why the builder sits in the semi-custom column on our builders list even though it operates at national production scale.

When did Toll Brothers start building in Lake Nona?

Toll Brothers entered the Lake Nona area at Eagle Creek, breaking ground on estate homes there in the spring of 2015.

Eagle Creek was already well underway by then — the community was platted around its 18-hole golf course and had been absorbing builders for years. Toll Brothers came in for the higher end of it, with an Estate Collection and a Signature Collection of single-family plans behind the 24-hour guard gate.

The second wave came six years later and moved north. The Shores at Lake Whippoorwill — off Kirby Smith Road just east of Narcoossee Road, directly south of Stratford Pointe — is a 14-home neighborhood built between 2021 and 2022 with Toll Brothers as the exclusive builder, drawn from six designs ranging from roughly 2,976 square feet up to 4,413 and beyond. Four of the 14 back directly onto Lake Whippoorwill. Fourteen homes is small enough that a single listing moves the whole comp set. Laurel Pointe followed inside the Lake Nona master plan, and Alora, announced in March 2025 near Luminary Boulevard and Centerline Drive, is the most recent.

What does a Toll Brothers home in Lake Nona actually cost?

There is no single answer, because the four neighborhoods sit at three different price tiers.

Two anchor points are on the record. Townhomes at Alora opened at $499,995. When Toll Brothers announced the final new-home release at Laurel Pointe in May 2025, homes there started at $1.7 million. That is a spread of well over a million dollars under one builder name inside one master plan.

Worth noting how much those numbers move. Toll Brothers first floated Alora pricing in the low $600,000s when the community was announced in March 2025; it opened closer to $500,000. Any builder price you read anywhere, including here, is a snapshot. Confirm the current one before you build a budget on it.

Eagle Creek and the Shores at Lake Whippoorwill no longer have a builder price sheet, because Toll Brothers finished building in both. Those homes trade as resale, priced by the market, condition, lot, and view rather than by an options list. A golf-frontage Toll Brothers home in Eagle Creek and a lakefront one at the Shores are not comparable properties just because they share a builder.

Why do the same floor plans show up in two different neighborhoods?

Toll Brothers offered many of the same wine-named plans at both the Shores at Lake Whippoorwill and Laurel Pointe, so cross-shopping the two often means comparing the same house twice.

Bordeaux, Grenache, Marsanne, Corbeil, Dolcetto, Barbera, Varen. If those names look familiar in a listing description, that is why — the plan library carried over. A Marsanne at the Shores and a Marsanne at Laurel Pointe are the same footprint, roughly 3,971 square feet, four to five bedrooms, three to four garage bays.

This is genuinely useful when you are comparing. Hold the floor plan constant and everything left over is neighborhood: the lot, the view, the gate, the HOA, the assessment, the resale pool. Buyers who do not know the plans repeat across both communities end up arguing with themselves about kitchen layouts when the real difference is 400 feet of lot depth and a conservation view.

Can you still buy a new Toll Brothers home in Lake Nona?

New construction from Toll Brothers in Lake Nona has narrowed considerably, and most buying activity under this builder's name is now resale.

Toll Brothers announced Laurel Pointe's last chance to build in May 2025. Alora opened for sale in spring 2025 and is the newer of the two. Both statuses change as homes sell, which is why this page does not publish an inventory count that would be wrong a month from now. Check the current Lake Nona new construction listings, or call and I will tell you what is actually standing today.

What should you check before buying a Toll Brothers home here?

Check the assessment structure and the amenity package, because they differ sharply across the four neighborhoods.

Eagle Creek does not carry a CDD assessment, which is a real cost difference against several other Lake Nona neighborhoods that do. Do not generalize from that to the other three — districts can cover some phases of a community and not others, and the amounts reset annually. Our CDD fees explainer walks through how to pull the figure for a specific parcel.

Amenities vary as much as the assessments. Eagle Creek comes with a guard gate, an 18-hole course, and a 14,000-square-foot clubhouse. Alora was master-planned without its own pool or clubhouse, but Alora residents have access to Lake Nona amenities including the pool and fitness center at Laureate Park, and the community has its own dog park, barbecues, firepit and lounge seating. The Shores has a park and open field. You can compare the packages side by side on the neighborhood amenities chart.

One more: garage counts. The Toll Brothers estate plans in Laurel Pointe and the Shores were built with three and four-bay garages. That drives lot width, which drives price, and it is a big part of why those two neighborhoods price where they do.

Toll Brothers in Lake Nona: pros and cons

What works. The plan library is deep and the homes were built with real ceiling heights, wide garages, and finish levels that hold up on resale a decade later. Because Toll Brothers ran two of these neighborhoods as the exclusive builder, the streetscapes are consistent and the construction dates are tight, which makes comps cleaner than in a five-builder community. Eagle Creek's lack of a CDD is a durable cost advantage.

What does not. You pay for the badge. Toll Brothers prices at the top of whatever tier it competes in, and a mile away in Lake Nona the same budget buys more square footage from a builder with a quieter name. Two of the four neighborhoods are fully built out, so your choice is whatever happens to be listed, not a lot and a plan you pick. Alora is three stories, and the pool is not on site — residents use the Laureate Park amenities rather than walking out their own back gate to one. Stairs and a drive to the pool suit some households and not others. And the estate plans repeat between Laurel Pointe and the Shores, so the two communities are less distinct than the marketing suggests; what actually differs is the lot and the address.

What the neighbors know

Talk to people who live in these four and a pattern shows up. Laurel Pointe and Shores owners talk about the lots — conservation frontage, water views, the depth of the back yard. That is where the money went, and they know it. Eagle Creek owners talk about the gate and the club, because the community identity there is the golf course, not the builder; ask an Eagle Creek resident who built their house and a fair number have to think about it.

The Narcoossee corridor context matters too. The Shores sits right off Narcoossee Road south of the 417, close enough to the retail plaza going in next door that residents got a private gate to it. Laurel Pointe sits inside the master plan with Lake Nona's trail and park network at hand. Alora is walkable to the Luminary Boulevard schools. Those are three different daily lives on the same builder's letterhead.

Official sources

• Toll Brothers company profile and history
• Toll Brothers investor relations
• Toll Brothers announcement: final homes at Laurel Pointe, May 2025
• Toll Brothers announcement: Alora townhomes, March 2025

The inclusion of businesses, individuals, groups, associations, and links on this site does not imply endorsement by the site owner.

Thinking about a Toll Brothers home in Lake Nona — new or resale? I can tell you which of the four neighborhoods actually fits what you are after, and what the same plan is trading for in each. Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

The K–5 campus on Luminary Boulevard — what it is, who it serves, and what to check before you buy nearby

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com · Last updated August 2026

Luminary Elementary School opened in August 2025 and is an Orange County Public Schools K–5 campus at 9420 Luminary Blvd, Orlando, FL 32827, in the Laureate Park section of Lake Nona. Laura Permenter is the principal, and the school serves roughly 474 students. Luminary Middle School sits immediately next door at 9446 Luminary Blvd and opened a year earlier, in August 2024, as a relief school for Lake Nona Middle and South Creek Middle. The two Luminary campuses share the same stretch of Luminary Boulevard, which puts a K–8 path within walking distance of several Laureate Park streets. Attendance zones in Lake Nona are redrawn as new neighborhoods deliver homes, so zoning must be confirmed with OCPS for a specific address.

If you have driven Luminary Boulevard lately, you have seen the thing that makes this corner of Lake Nona unusual: two public schools, elementary and middle, sitting side by side on the same street, with new townhomes going up across from them. That is not an accident of zoning. It is what happens when a master plan puts the schools in first and lets the neighborhood grow around them.

For a family shopping in Laureate Park, that layout is the whole story. It is also the thing most listing descriptions get slightly wrong — so here is what is actually true about Luminary Elementary, and what you should verify yourself before it factors into a purchase.

What Is Luminary Elementary School?

A traditional Orange County Public Schools K–5 elementary at 9420 Luminary Blvd in Lake Nona — not a charter, not a magnet.

It is a zoned neighborhood school, which means enrollment comes from the attendance boundary rather than an application or lottery. Principal Laura Permenter leads a campus that opened in August 2025, so as of this writing it has completed a single school year. Roughly 474 students attend, which is modest by Lake Nona standards — and normal for a first-year campus that has not yet filled to its designed capacity. Lake Nona schools tend to fill quickly as surrounding neighborhoods deliver homes.

Why Two Luminary Schools Sit Side by Side

Luminary Middle opened in August 2024, and Luminary Elementary followed a year later in August 2025 — two campuses built a year apart on the same boulevard.

Lake Nona's growth has outrun its school capacity more than once, and OCPS has responded by building relief campuses rather than expanding existing ones. The two Luminary schools are the most recent example, arriving in consecutive Augusts — you can read the full picture in our guide to Luminary Middle School.

The practical effect for families is a K–8 run on one street. Younger and older siblings can be dropped at adjacent campuses, and for households on the streets nearest Luminary Boulevard the whole thing is walkable. That is genuinely uncommon, even in master-planned communities.

Which Neighborhoods Are Zoned for Luminary Elementary?

Zones are set by OCPS and are redrawn as new neighborhoods deliver homes — which in Lake Nona happens often.

This is the part where being careful matters more than being fast. A builder's sales sheet, a listing remark, and a school-rating website can all be out of date at the same time, and none of them are the district. Attendance boundaries in southeast Orange County have shifted repeatedly as Laureate Park, Alora, and neighboring sections have come online.

Check the current zone for the exact address on the OCPS site before you write an offer, and check it again if you are buying a home that will not close for several months. Our Lake Nona schools guide covers every campus serving the area, and the Lake Nona neighborhoods directory shows where each community sits relative to them.

What Is It Like Nearby?

The campus sits inside Laureate Park, with the neighborhood's amenity package and Town Center a short drive away.

Laureate Park is the largest residential village in Lake Nona and the one built with the most walkability in mind — sidewalks, trails, an aquatic center, a fitness center, parks and playgrounds. The Lake Nona Town Center and Medical City are both close, and everyday shopping is handled by Lake Nona Station and the Publix-anchored Lake Nona Plaza down Luminary Boulevard.

Poitras Park, a new City of Orlando park, is coming in directly across from the Alora townhomes near the school — more detail in our post on Poitras Park.

The Honest Pros and Cons

The Pros:

• A K–8 path on one street — elementary and middle campuses side by side
• Walkable from the Laureate Park streets nearest Luminary Boulevard
• Smaller current enrollment than most Lake Nona elementaries
• A brand-new campus, which means new facilities and small early class sizes
• Inside Laureate Park, so the neighborhood amenity package comes with it

The Cons:

• Attendance zones here get redrawn as new homes deliver — today's zone is not a guarantee
• It opened in August 2025, so it has one completed school year and effectively no track record yet
• Smaller enrollment now usually means growth later, with the crowding that follows
• Morning and afternoon traffic on Luminary Boulevard stacks with two campuses on one street
• Homes in the older Laureate Park village core are not within a comfortable walk

Our Take:

If you want your children in the same corner of the neighborhood from kindergarten through eighth grade, this stretch of Luminary Boulevard is one of the few places in Lake Nona that actually delivers it. Just buy the house on its own merits and treat the school zone as something to verify rather than assume. Zoning is the single most common thing buyers get wrong here, and it is the one that is hardest to undo after closing.

Be equally careful with ratings. A school that opened in August 2025 has one year of data behind it, so any grade or score you see is a very thin sample. Judge this campus on the things you can observe now — class sizes, the walk, the staff you meet at an open house — rather than on a number.

What the Neighbors Know

Ask a Laureate Park parent about Luminary and the first thing you hear is usually about the boulevard, not the classroom. Two schools on one street means a real traffic pattern twice a day, and the families who love it are the ones who can walk. The families who find it frustrating are the ones driving in from farther out in the village.

That is worth knowing before you fall for a floor plan. In a community this walkable, the difference between four blocks and a mile is the difference between a school run and a commute.

For current information straight from the source, see Luminary Elementary and the Orange County Public Schools site, where you can look up the attendance zone for a specific address.

Looking at homes zoned near Luminary Elementary? Browse the latest Lake Nona listings, or Call/Text David Myers at 407.801.3286 or use our contact form. I will pull the current OCPS zone for any address you are considering before you write an offer.

Botero, Henry Moore, and the famous Charging Bull — hiding in plain sight behind a hotel in southeast Orlando

By David Myers, Broker Associate · NonaOrlandoProperties.com | Last updated: July 2026

The Lake Nona Sculpture Garden is a free, publicly accessible outdoor art gallery in southeast Orlando, FL, occupying roughly 50,000 square feet behind the Lake Nona Wave Hotel. It opened in 2022 and displays monumental works from The Lewis Collection, one of the world's largest private art collections, including Arturo Di Modica's Charging Bull, Henry Moore's Mother and Child, and Fernando Botero's Leda and the Swan. The collection rotates over time, and the garden is set within a canopy of nearly 300 hand-selected palm trees. It sits about a 10-minute drive from Orlando International Airport (MCO).

So you know Lake Nona for Medical City, tennis, and shiny new construction. But did you know one of the most impressive free art experiences in Central Florida is tucked behind a hotel out here — and that it includes a full-size cast of the same Charging Bull that stares down Wall Street?

Here's the thing: most people drive right past it. The Lake Nona Sculpture Garden doesn't announce itself with a big museum facade. It hides behind the Lake Nona Wave Hotel, and unless someone tips you off, you'd never guess that a Henry Moore and a Botero are sitting a few steps beyond the lobby. Let's fix that.

Whether you're relocating to southeast Orlando or you've lived here for years, this is one of those local gems that makes the area feel more like a real city — and it costs exactly nothing to visit.

What the Lake Nona Sculpture Garden Actually Is

The Lake Nona Sculpture Garden is a roughly 50,000-square-foot outdoor gallery that opened in 2022, right alongside the Lake Nona Wave Hotel. It's part of Lake Nona's broader public art program, but it's worth being precise here: this is a specific, curated garden — not the scattered murals and installations you'll find around Town Center (those are their own tour, more on that below).

Developer Tavistock planned it with art curators, landscape architects, and arborists. The result: meandering paths through nearly 300 hand-selected palm trees arranged in "waves" that echo the hotel's curves, with climbing vines and fragrant shrubs like gardenia and night-blooming jasmine filling in the rest. After dark, lighting and night-blooming flowers shift the whole mood.

The Lewis Collection: Why "World-Class" Isn't Just Marketing

Real estate copy throws around "world-class" until it means nothing, so let's be honest about whether it holds up here. It does — with a caveat worth knowing before you drive over.

The sculptures come from The Lewis Collection, recognized by ArtNews, Sotheby's, and Christie's as one of the most significant private art collections in the world. The names on display are the real deal:

• Charging Bull by Arturo Di Modica — the same 7,100-pound bronze "Wall Street Bull," created as a symbol of American resilience after the 1987 stock market crash.
• Henry Moore — the British master of monumental bronze, represented by works including Mother and Child and Upright Motive No. 9.
• Fernando Botero — the Colombian sculptor famous for his voluminous forms, with a stylized take on Leda and the Swan.
• Philip Jackson — the Scottish sculptor of elongated, cloaked figures, with Cloister Conspiracy and The Don.
• Enzo Plazzotta — known for ballet-inspired bronzes.
• JEFRË — the Orlando-based artist whose block-headed Baks Series figures (Faith, Empowerment, Time, Passion) have been shown here, connecting the international lineup to a genuinely local voice.

A former director of the Orlando Museum of Art called the caliber of the work "unlike anything else in the Southeast." That's a strong claim, and for a free garden behind a hotel, it's a fair one.

Now the caveat: the collection rotates. A specific piece you saw on Instagram may not be on display when you visit, and JEFRË's figures in particular have been described as a temporary exhibition. Go for the experience, not to check one exact sculpture off a list.

Planning Your Visit: What to Actually Expect

Let's get practical, because a few things about this place aren't obvious.

It's free. Genuinely, no admission, no ticket, no "suggested donation" table. That alone makes it one of the better value outings in Lake Nona.

You enter through the hotel. The garden sits behind the Lake Nona Wave Hotel, and visitors typically walk in through the lobby to reach the outdoor space. You do not need to be a hotel guest — it's public — but the first time through, it can feel like you're wandering somewhere you shouldn't be. You're not. Walk through with confidence.

Confirm the timing before a special trip. The garden is generally open during daytime hours and looks different under its after-dark lighting, but posted public hours aren't always easy to pin down — if you're driving in from across town, call the hotel to confirm current access first.

It's an easy layover stop. The garden is roughly a 10-minute drive from Orlando International Airport (MCO). Got a long layover? This beats another airport pretzel.

Give yourself 30–45 minutes to walk it slowly. There's seating tucked into shaded alcoves along the paths — no small thing in an Orlando summer. To pair it with dinner, Town Center's chef-driven spots are minutes away; browse the Lake Nona restaurants and dining guide.

How It Fits Into Lake Nona's Art Scene

The Sculpture Garden is the headliner, but it's one piece of a bigger picture. Lake Nona treats public art almost like infrastructure, and there's plenty more within a short drive:

• The Lake Nona Town Center, where JEFRË's six-story Beacon sculpture anchors the public-art scene.
• The art-and-technology Lake Nona Wave Hotel itself, whose collection extends indoors with hundreds of works.
• The annual Lake Nona Art Festival, a juried showcase of artists, live art, and family activities.

For the full picture of galleries, festivals, and installations across the community, explore our Lake Nona arts and culture guide. And if you love a free outdoor art fix, there's plenty more within an easy SR-417 drive — see our Explore Orlando guide.

Why This Matters If You're Moving to Lake Nona

Here's the real-estate angle, minus the sales pitch. Amenities like this are part of why Lake Nona commands the prices it does — a free, walkable, world-class sculpture garden makes a master-planned community feel like it has a soul, not just a gate and a clubhouse.

It's genuinely useful, too. If you work in the Medical City cluster, it's a five-minute reset between shifts. If you've got family visiting, it's a free, low-effort outing that makes you look like you have great taste. And if you're the type who likes pairing culture with the outdoors, the garden plays nicely with the community's trails and nearby Moss Park — see the full lineup in our Lake Nona parks and recreation guide and Lake Nona fun and attractions guide.

What the Neighbors Know

Locals figured out long ago that this is one of the best free things going in southeast Orlando. It's not a sprawling museum campus like the Ringling in Sarasota — it's a compact, thoughtfully curated collection you can experience in under an hour. But the quality is legitimately high, the setting is beautiful, and the price is unbeatable.

The insider move: go on a weekday morning when it's quiet, then wander over to Town Center for coffee or lunch. Bring a friend from out of town and watch their face when you casually mention the bull is the same one from Wall Street. That's a very Lake Nona kind of flex — big-city culture, no lines, no ticket booth. 🎨

For current details, hours, and the latest on which sculptures are on display, visit the official Lake Nona Sculpture Garden page, and see the developer's overview of The Lewis Collection.

Thinking about calling southeast Orlando home? Browse the latest Lake Nona listings or reach David Myers at 407.801.3286 or our contact form for honest, local relocation advice — we'll tell you the tradeoffs, not just the highlights.