Guide · Rural counties
Small rural Florida counties: what the parcel data holds in Liberty, Lafayette and the other smallest rolls
Florida's ten smallest county rolls, from Liberty's 6,012 parcels to Gilchrist's 14,763, carry the same core record as the big metros: owner, mailing address, values, use code, outline and sales. What thins out is what each county has to publish on its own. Only Calhoun has zoning on our map, only five of the ten have building details, and Liberty's sales stop in the spring.
The ten smallest rolls, side by side
| County | Parcels | With an outline | Sale records, 2025 | Qualified one-parcel sales | Public land | Timberland |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberty | 6,012 | 96.2% | 423 | 76 | 64.4% | 30.9% |
| Union | 7,111 | 96.7% | 795 | 105 | 6.7% | 70.8% |
| Lafayette | 7,463 | 95.6% | 984 | 138 | 18.0% | 66.1% |
| Glades | 11,648 | 96.9% | 1,198 | 239 | 35.1% | 8.8% |
| Jefferson | 12,353 | 95.7% | 1,071 | 186 | 22.0% | 29.7% |
| Baker | 13,182 | 95.8% | 1,584 | 295 | 45.5% | 37.1% |
| Hamilton | 13,197 | 96.5% | 1,306 | 262 | 7.8% | 42.7% |
| Calhoun | 13,294 | 86.2% | 1,096 | 105 | 1.2% | 71.8% |
| Holmes | 14,631 | 98.3% | 1,423 | 276 | 4.8% | 60.7% |
| Gilchrist | 14,763 | 93.9% | 1,445 | 426 | 3.9% | 43.0% |
Sales are the state's 2025 sale file, one source, so no deed is counted twice; qualified means codes 01 and 02 on a deed of one parcel. Public land and timberland are shares of the outlined acres by use code: codes 80 to 89 for land a government holds, 54 to 59 for timber.
What the land is
Most of the ten are working forest. Six have more than 40% of their outlined land under timber codes, and four, Calhoun, Union, Lafayette and Holmes, more than 60%. Grazing adds a fifth of Gilchrist's land. Liberty is different: the federal government holds 263,093 acres there, half the county's outlined land, and with the water management district and the state, public land passes 64%. Most of it is the Apalachicola National Forest. Baker's public share of 45.5% takes in the Osceola National Forest. Glades, the one southern county on the list, is cattle country on the shore of Lake Okeechobee: its own page.
For a buyer, the neighbor on the map may be a national forest, a water management district or a timber tract of thousands of acres rather than a household. Tap the parcels around yours and read their owners and use codes before you judge access or a view.
Where the records run thin, and what to do
- Zoning. Calhoun is the only one of the ten with zoning on our map, from the county's own layer, on 9,285 parcels. Lafayette and Union publish their zoning as PDF atlases through the regional planning council. Glades has a county layer last edited in 2018 that we have not loaded. For the other six we found no published zoning map. Call the county planning or building office with the parcel number. Future land use is on more than 90% of the outlined parcels in every one of the ten.
- Building details. Calhoun, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Holmes and Lafayette publish a file with beds, baths and stories, and the report shows them. For Liberty, Union, Glades, Jefferson and Baker the report has the state's living area and year built only. The appraiser's own parcel page can say more.
- Outlines. Calhoun has 1,829 parcels with no outline, the most of the ten. Such a parcel still has its record; search it by owner or address and read the legal description.
- Acres. Check the roll's acreage against the outline. One Liberty timber parcel is listed at 273,250 acres on the roll and its outline measures 335: a keying slip, and a reason to trust the drawn area over the typed one when they disagree.
- Sales timing. Liberty's final roll was not posted when we fetched the final rolls in October, so it has no sales after June. Holmes's newer sales come from a county file that holds a fraction of a normal month: 32 sale records for July against 120 a year earlier. Jefferson and Hamilton were thin in August. Read medians in these counties as running a few months behind; how each county lags.
A thin sale year has one more catch. Liberty had 76 qualified one-parcel sales in all of 2025: a single ranch or a single lakefront lot moves a median that small. Compare against the sales list itself rather than a figure.
On Map Views
All ten counties are in the same search box as Miami-Dade. Type an address or an owner and the report shows the owner and mailing address, values, use code, the sales we hold, future land use, FEMA's flood zone, wetlands, soils, and the septic and well line. From the owner, one tap shows what else that owner holds in all 67 counties. For which appraisers publish what statewide, see where each field comes from, and for each county's site and ID shape, the 67 appraiser sites.
Each county's property appraiser is the authority on its parcels, and its planning office on zoning. In counties this small, a phone call to either office often answers what no file holds.