Kissimmee Lady Bird Deed Attorney: The County Where Half the Homes Are Not Homestead
A Kissimmee lady bird deed attorney spends more time on non-homestead property than one working almost anywhere else in Florida, because roughly half the residential parcels in this county carry no homestead exemption at all. At Lorenzo Law I handle these across Osceola. Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Florida Bar No. 107002.
| Osceola County | Where |
|---|---|
| Deeds and probate | Clerk of the Circuit Court & County Comptroller, 2 Courthouse Square, 2nd floor, Kissimmee |
| Counter hours | Weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., recording and payments until 4.30 p.m. · (407) 742-3500 |
| Homestead and parcel data | Property Appraiser, 2505 E. Irlo Bronson Memorial Hwy., Kissimmee |
| Judicial circuit | Ninth — shared with Orange County |
| Recording, page one | $10.00, then $8.50 each later page |
| Documentary stamps | $0.70 per $100 — the standard rate |
| Lorenzo Law flat fee | $675, recording included |
| Call | (305) 224-6811 |
Where do I record a deed in Osceola County?
Second floor, 2 Courthouse Square, Kissimmee. Recording and probate share that floor, in a single combined office that is both Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller.
The counter is open from eight until five on weekdays, but recording and payments stop at half past four — half an hour earlier than the building, and the sort of detail that turns a lunchtime errand into a second trip. There is one office. Despite the county’s size, no branch in St. Cloud, Celebration or Poinciana takes recordings.
Having both functions on one floor is the tidy arrangement, and it is not universal. Orange County, immediately north and sharing the same judicial circuit, splits them: deeds go to the Comptroller on East Church Street in Orlando, while probate is filed with a separate Clerk of Courts on North Orange Avenue. Cross from Kissimmee into Orlando and the same two errands become two buildings.
The Clerk here also publishes what it wants on the face of a deed, and the list is worth reading before drafting: the grantor’s signature notarised, printed names and post-office addresses beneath every signature including both witnesses, a complete legal description, the grantee’s mailing address, and the preparer’s first and last name and address. Two individual subscribing witnesses, as § 689.01 requires.
Why does half the county have no homestead exemption?
Because a great many of these homes are not anybody’s permanent residence. On the Property Appraiser’s 2018 certified roll, 60,927 homestead exemptions sat against 117,944 residential parcels — 51.7%.
| Osceola County, 2018 certified tax roll | Count |
|---|---|
| Total parcels and accounts | 194,919 |
| Residential parcels | 117,944 |
| Homestead exemption parcels | 60,927 |
| Senior exemption parcels | 4,801 |
| Timeshares | 530 |
| Vacant parcels | 30,018 |
Two caveats before that number gets quoted back at anyone. It is the 2018 roll, which is the most recent year the Property Appraiser publishes summary statistics — later certified rolls exist as raw data files but not as tables. And homestead parcels are being compared against all residential parcels, so the ratio is a fair proxy rather than an exact measurement.
Even allowing for both, the picture is unambiguous, and it is the whole reason this page reads differently from the others in this series. Around Highway 192, in Championsgate, Reunion, Celebration and dozens of other communities, the typical property is a holiday home, a rental, or a house belonging to somebody whose permanent residence is in another state or another country. The county maintains a short-term rental overlay in its land development code and publishes a list of 249 approved subdivisions. That is not a footnote to the housing market here. It is a large part of it.
Does that make the deed simpler or harder?
Simpler in one respect and riskier in another. Florida’s constitutional homestead restrictions attach to the home a person actually lives in, so on a genuine holiday home they do not bite.
§ 732.4015 prevents a homestead being devised away from a surviving spouse or minor child, and § 732.401 dictates how it descends when it is not. Neither reaches a property the owner does not occupy as a permanent residence. Nor does the requirement that a married owner’s spouse join in the conveyance. On a true second home the drafting gets shorter and the family conversation gets easier.
The risk sits on the tax side, and it is real. A property without the exemption has no Save Our Homes cap. Instead it falls under § 193.1554, which limits annual assessment growth on non-homestead residential property to 10% — and resets that protection to full just value in the year after a change of ownership or control. The statute defines that trigger to include a transfer of “legal title or beneficial title in equity,” and lists a handful of exceptions that say nothing about enhanced life estate deeds.
Nobody has resolved whether recording one of these deeds trips that reset. No Florida court, Department of Revenue rule or Property Appraiser bulletin addresses it that I have been able to find. On a homesteaded house the question rarely matters. On an Osceola holiday home that has quietly accumulated years of capped assessment, it is the first question to ask and the last one anyone should answer with confidence.
Which cuts against a habit worth naming. It is tempting to reason from the tax roll — no exemption showing, therefore no homestead, therefore no restrictions. Do not. The exemption is a tax benefit somebody has to apply for. Constitutional homestead is a status that follows where the family actually lives, whether or not anyone ever filed a form.
What happens to the CDD assessment when I die?
It stays with the land, and the person who inherits inherits it. Osceola has 50 registered community development districts, and their assessments ride on the property tax bill.
If your community is Celebration, Championsgate, Reunion, Harmony, Bellalago, Tohoqua, Storey Creek, Kindred, Remington or one of forty others, there is a district levying assessments against your parcel under § 190.022. Those assessments are collected through the uniform method in § 197.3632, which puts them on the combined tax notice alongside the ad valorem taxes and subjects them to the same collection machinery — including tax certificates and, eventually, tax deeds. The statute is explicit that such an assessment can lien even a homestead.
The consequence for a lady bird deed is straightforward and frequently missed. Capital assessments under § 190.022 can be made payable in up to thirty yearly instalments. A district that issued bonds a decade ago may have twenty years left to run. The remainder beneficiary who takes the house at your death takes those instalments too, on a schedule that can outlive the person who signed the deed by decades.
That is not an argument against anything. It is an argument for finding out the number. A beneficiary who understands they are inheriting a house plus a twenty-year obligation makes a different decision from one who discovers it on the first November tax bill.
What does recording cost here?
Ten dollars for page one and $8.50 for each page after. Names past the first four are indexed at a dollar each; a certified copy costs two dollars.
| Charge | Amount |
|---|---|
| First page | $10.00 |
| Each later page | $8.50 |
| Each name indexed beyond the first four | $1.00 |
| Copy from Official Records | $1.00 per page |
| Plat copy | $5.00 per page |
| Certification | $2.00 |
| Documentary stamps on the deed | $0.70 per $100 |
| Documentary stamps on a note | $0.35 per $100 |
Osceola charges nothing per legal description, which some counties do. The recording is the small number. The stamp tax is the one worth calculating in advance, because § 201.02 treats a mortgage outstanding at the moment of transfer as consideration, whether or not anyone assumes the debt — so a holiday home still carrying $280,000 attracts $1,960 at the counter on a transfer where no money changes hands at all. Investment and second-home properties are more likely to be mortgaged than a paid-off retirement house, which is precisely why this matters more in Osceola than in a county full of permanent residents.
The firm’s $675 covers the recording charges. It does not cover the stamp tax, which is a state tax the Clerk collects on the state’s behalf.
Can the deed be recorded electronically?
Yes, through four approved vendors. Simplifile, CSC eRecording Solutions, Indecomm Global Services and eRecording Partners Network all submit to this Clerk.
The office is careful to say it has not discussed, agreed or suggested pricing with any of them, which is the correct posture and also a hint about how these arrangements work. Vendor accounts are set up by firms and title companies that submit regularly, not by individuals with a single document.
What the electronic route validates is formatting: page dimensions, margins, legibility, whether the fees tendered match the fees due. It does not validate whether the person signing had power to convey what the deed purports to convey, whether the legal description matches the chain of title, or whether the retained powers that make this a lady bird deed are actually present in the text. A clean acceptance means the document was formatted correctly. It has never meant the document works.
Which court would hear the probate?
The Ninth Judicial Circuit, shared with Orange County. § 26.021 composes the Ninth of Orange and Osceola, and probate is filed on that same second floor in Kissimmee.
Sharing a circuit with a much larger neighbour has an ordinary consequence: administrative orders, judicial assignments and local practice are set for both counties together, and Orange is where most of the volume is. Compare Broward, whose Seventeenth Circuit is that county and nothing else, or Seminole, which shares the Eighteenth with Brevard sixty miles east.
None of that changes the arithmetic of avoiding probate. An estate that opens here still needs a personal representative, an inventory and a creditor period, and the file is public. A deed that does its job keeps the property out of the whole process, which is the entire point of the exercise.
What should I bring to the first appointment?
The recorded deed, the parcel number, the mortgage statement, and last year’s tax bill. That fourth item matters more here than anywhere else in this series.
The tax bill is where the community development district assessment appears, and it is the quickest way to find out whether one exists and what it is costing. Bring the association documents too if the property is in a managed community, and anything the district has sent about bonds or a capital assessment.
If the property is genuinely a second home, bring proof of where you actually live — a driving licence, a voter registration, a tax return from the other state. That single fact decides which half of this page applies to you, and it is not a question a downloaded form knows how to ask. Our preparation checklist covers the rest of it.
How do I find a Kissimmee lady bird deed attorney?
Call (305) 224-6811. A standard matter is $675 with the recording charges included, quoted once the title has been read and before drafting starts.
That covers Kissimmee, St. Cloud, Celebration, Poinciana, Buenaventura Lakes, Harmony and the rest of Osceola County.
Related reading: the statewide lady bird deed attorney page sets out the fee and what it buys, the Orlando page covers the other half of this circuit and the different offices it uses, the Miami page covers the only Florida county with a different stamp tax rate, and the Broward County page covers a county where the recorder is not a court officer at all.
A free template will produce something that records. It will not tell you what the district assessment is, whether the ten per cent cap resets, or whether the house you think is a holiday home is legally your homestead. Those three questions are why a Kissimmee lady bird deed attorney reads the documents before quoting a price.
Last updated: 7 August 2026.
What changed: new page. Clerk and Property Appraiser addresses, hours and fees taken from those offices’ own pages; parcel and exemption counts from the 2018 certified tax roll, labelled as such because no later summary is published; the community development district count and the short-term rental subdivision list from the county’s own documents; the § 193.1554 reset question flagged as unresolved rather than answered; statutes cited to the 2025 Florida Statutes, the current published edition. No branch recording counter is claimed, because the Clerk lists none.
Written and reviewed by Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., attorney, Florida Bar No. 107002.
This page is general information about Florida law and does not constitute legal advice for any particular situation. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.