County guide · Lake
Lake County property appraiser and zoning: can you build on that parcel?
The Lake County Property Appraiser tells you who owns a parcel and what it is used for; it does not tell you what you may build. That answer belongs to the zoning office of whichever of Lake's 15 jurisdictions holds the land, read together with its future land use. In unincorporated Lake, half the parcels zoned A for agriculture are planned for rural homes, not farms.
Three records, three offices
- The appraiser: owner, use, value. lakecopropappr.com has a Property Search, a Sales History Search and a Map Search that opens on the county's GIS site. Every Lake parcel also carries a 7-digit alternate key, a shorter handle than the parcel number.
- The zoning office: what the code allows. Unincorporated land is zoned by Lake County. Land inside Clermont, Leesburg, Groveland or any of the other cities and towns is zoned by that city, under its own code book.
- The comprehensive plan: how dense it may ever get. Future land use caps density. A rezoning has to fit it; changing it takes a plan amendment, a longer process.
Reading a Lake parcel number
Lake's parcel numbers mostly run 99-99-99-9999-999-99999, six groups split by dashes. The first three are the survey section, township and range, in that order: section first in 214,288 of 215,806 parcels. That is backwards from what you may know from other counties, so two IDs that start the same share a square-mile section, not a township. The fourth group is the subdivision, the last two the block and lot.
Zoning in Lake, by jurisdiction
Our map carries zoning from Lake County and 13 of its 14 municipalities, 197,795 parcels or 91.7% of the county. The parcels that show no code are mostly in Eustis (9,383 by site city), whose zoning is not on our map; ask Eustis's planning office for it.
| Who zones it (measured 31 October 2026) | Parcels |
|---|---|
| Lake County, unincorporated (22 district codes) | 101,443 |
| City of Clermont | 18,879 |
| City of Leesburg | 17,398 |
| City of Groveland | 10,978 |
| City of Tavares | 10,366 |
| Minneola, Lady Lake, Mount Dora | 24,711 |
| Six smaller cities and towns | 14,020 |
| No zoning on our map (Eustis and stray parcels) | 18,011 |
The six smaller ones are Fruitland Park, Mascotte, Umatilla, Astatula, Howey-in-the-Hills and Montverde. Each city's codes mean what that city's code says: an R-1 in one is not the R-1 of the next.
Two Lake codes that mislead
PUD. The most common code in unincorporated Lake is PUD, planned unit development, on 28,193 parcels (27.8%). A PUD carries its own ordinance, setting lot sizes, uses and setbacks for that one project. The code alone tells you nothing; ask the county for the PUD's ordinance number and read it.
A. Agriculture is the second code, on 25,942 parcels. Lay future land use over them and only 3,329 (12.8%) sit in an agriculture plan class. 13,377 (51.6%) are planned as rural residential, at most one home per two acres, and 3,035 (11.7%) as conservation, where building is the hardest. So read an A lot as "large-lot rural, check the plan", and read the plan's density before you count homes. Our map has future land use on 97.0% of Lake parcels. How future land use and zoning differ.
What else decides a building permit in Lake
- Flood zone A, without a base flood elevation. Of the 202,490 Lake parcels with their own outline, 17,981 (8.9%) are in FEMA's floodplain, and 10,650 of those are zone A, not AE. In zone A, FEMA's glossary says "no depths or base flood elevations are shown", so a builder may have to have the elevation worked out. Lake has no coast and no surge zone.
- Septic. The state's wastewater inventory puts 69,914 Lake parcels (33.4%) on a known or likely septic system. A new house beyond the sewer lines needs a septic permit; the Department of Health's septic page explains who issues it in each county.
- Growth. 44,030 Lake buildings on the roll were built in 2015 or later, 26.1% of those with a year built, 12,002 of them in Clermont. Fast growth means rezonings and new PUDs; a parcel's code can be newer than any map.
Where this stops
Our zoning is a copy of each jurisdiction's published layer, not the zoning letter the county or city will write for you, and Eustis is missing. Sales on our copy of Lake thin out after April 2026; over May 2025 to April 2026 the median qualified one-parcel sale was $370,000 over 11,496 deeds, $390,000 for a single-family home and $170,000 for a mobile home, counting codes 01 to 06 as qualified. The 2025 millage ran across 82 districts, 12.97 to 19.94 mills.
On Map Views
Type a Lake address and the report puts the zoning code and its jurisdiction beside the future land use class, the FEMA zone with the share of the lot in it, wetlands, soils, the wastewater method and the land cover, under the owner, values and sales. Turn on the zoning and future land use layers to see the outlines and codes over a county aerial, and keep your notes on the parcel. 10.7% of Lake parcels have an owner matched to a Sunbiz filing, shown with its officers.
The zoning code and future land use that bind a parcel are the ones the county or city confirms in writing; the Lake County Property Appraiser is the authority for owner and value, and FEMA's rate map for the flood zone. Ask the jurisdiction for a zoning verification before you buy to build.