The Villages by County

Property tax rate

~1.0% unincorporated · ~1.29% inside the City of Wildwood

Sumter County covers the majority of The Villages — the whole central area and all of the southern area. But Sumter is not a single-rate county. Homes in unincorporated Sumter County (the Villages Fire District) pay about 1.0% of assessed value — the lowest rate in the community, and the rate most Sumter villages pay by count, concentrated in the central area.

The second Sumter rate applies inside the City of Wildwood. Twenty-seven named villages sit inside Wildwood's city limits and pay an added municipal millage that brings the effective rate to about 1.29% — and that includes every Sumter village in the southern area (below SR 44), such as Fenney and Marsh Bend, plus a few in the central area. It's still Sumter County — the difference is the municipal line, not the county line. Because the boundary runs between villages, confirm which rate applies to a specific home by its parcel's City Code (1001V unincorporated vs 2002V Wildwood).

Property tax rate

~1.6%

Lake County is the most spread-out of the three. It turns up in three separate places across The Villages. In the far north, Lake County covers the original Spanish Springs / Lady Lake corridor — Orange Blossom Gardens (the very first neighborhood), Del Mar, El Cortez, and their neighbors. In the central area, inside the City of Fruitland Park, sit Pine Hills and Pine Ridge — the Fruitland Park section. Then, more than ten miles away at the deep-south end below SR 44, Lake County picks up again with the District 14 cluster: Dabney, Lake Denham, and Newell.

That's a grouping the area map can't show you: these villages sit in the north, the central area, and the south, but they share a county — and a tax rate of about 1.6%, the highest of the three counties. Within Lake County the exact rate varies a little by city (Lady Lake, Fruitland Park, or Leesburg), so verify any specific home by address.