(((Buyers Agent, for listing information click here.)))

Orlando is a city in central Florida and it is one of the world’s premier tourist destinations. Orlando draws visitors with its several major theme parks, a delightful climate, and extensive convention facilities. Orlando’s evolution is divided into two eras: before and after the opening of the Walt Disney World theme park in 1971. Prior to that year, the quiet town functioned mainly as a service center for the surrounding citrus growing region and as the seat of sparsely-populated Orange County. Following the opening of Disney World, the Orlando area quickly became a booming metropolis that was home to both a major tourist playground and high technology industry.

Orlando is located near the center of the low-lying Florida Peninsula in the heart of a lake-studded region. The city’s climate is humid subtropical. Winter daytime temperatures in the lower 70°s have contributed substantially to the city’s tourist industry. But Orlando’s interior location—about 50 miles from the cooling breezes of the Atlantic coast—gives it some of Florida’s hottest summer temperatures. Daytime temperatures in the summer are in the lower 90°s and are accompanied by high humidity and frequent afternoon thunderstorms. The city’s annual precipitation is about 48 inches, and the months with the most rain are June through September.

Orlando proper is rather modest in size, with a land area of 67.2 square miles, its metropolitan region sprawls across Orange, Lake, Osceola, and Seminole counties, with a land area of 3,490.9 square miles. Contained in the region are a number of prominent municipalities: Kissimmee has a huge motel complex serving nearby Disney World; Sanford is a departure point for Amtrak’s Auto Train to the Washington, D.C., area; and Winter Park is known for its 19th-century mansions where the wealthy escaped northern winters.

The boundary of Orlando has three fingerlike protrusions that extend toward the northeast, southwest, and southeast. Two of these follow the corridor of Interstate 4, central Florida’s major cross-state freeway that links Tampa to the southwest on the Gulf of Mexico to Daytona Beach to the northeast on the Atlantic Ocean. The interstate connects downtown Orlando with Walt Disney World, about 18 miiles to the southwest at the edge of the urbanized region. In the other direction, Interstate 4 passes from central Orlando through a densely-developed suburban zone for about 9 miles and then turns northeast toward Sanford and Daytona Beach; among the many new urban communities that are rapidly growing in this sector are Maitland, Altamonte Springs, Longwood, Heathrow, and Lake Mary.

The city is named for Orlando Reeves, a soldier who was killed during the second of the Seminole Wars (1835-1842).