We Buy Houses in Orlando for Cash

Many houses with an Orlando mailing address sit outside city limits. Pine Hills, Union Park and Sky Lake are census-designated places in unincorporated Orange County, and so are Azalea Park and Conway, although the city’s own neighborhood map also has neighborhoods with those two names, so the city line runs through them. College Park, Audubon Park, Baldwin Park, MetroWest and the Lake Nona neighborhoods are on the city’s map.

The answer decides who holds the records. Inside the city, permits come from the Permitting Services Division at City Hall, 400 South Orange Avenue, and code cases go to the city’s Code Enforcement Division, with contested cases heard by the Code Enforcement Board. Outside it, the parcel falls under Orange County’s building and code offices instead. We check the parcel’s jurisdiction before we talk price, because an Orlando permit search will not show a Pine Hills house’s history.

The City of Orlando has an online lookup for code enforcement cases and liens, and its Real Estate Management Division tells owners to check city liens with Code Enforcement. Every other recorded lien, such as a mortgage, judgment or contractor’s claim, is in the Orange County Comptroller’s Official Records, because in Orange County the Comptroller, not the Clerk of Courts, keeps recorded documents.

Open or expired permits are a separate check. The city takes “Conduct a Title Search” requests for a property’s permit status and answers in 3 to 5 business days. When a code board lien is paid, the city processes a satisfaction of lien within one to two weeks after the payment clears. For unincorporated parcels, Orange County’s free code title search shows open violations but not recorded liens. Our title company runs all of these when you sign with us.

Orlando has six designated historic districts: Downtown, Lake Cherokee, Lake Copeland, Lake Eola Heights, Lake Lawsona and Colonialtown South. Outside Downtown, which uses Appearance Review Board approval instead, exterior work on a house in a district needs a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Board before a building permit is issued. Minor reviews are free; a major review costs $250. Selling a historic house needs no approval at all, but a buyer who plans new windows, a porch enclosure or an addition has to budget for the review.

Short-term rentals inside the city are tightly limited. Under the home-sharing rules in force since July 1, 2018, the resident must live on site and be present when guests stay, and renting a whole home nightly is allowed only as a commercial dwelling unit in certain zoning districts with a business tax receipt. An investor shopping for a vacation rental will often pass on a city house for that reason, and we price it as a long-term rental or owner-occupied home instead.

In January 2026 we bought a College Park townhouse from a landlord who was done with the rental business. The interior had years of rental wear and the occupants were not paying. The owner did no repairs, held no showings and left the occupancy issue for us to handle after closing, which took 27 days. The full case study is linked below.