CRE Bridge in Orlando

Hospitality-adjacent assets along I-Drive and the 192 corridor, plus mixed-use in the metro's growth corridors. Leisure and hospitality employed 305,500 people in the Orlando metro in June 2026, up 3.7 percent year over year and roughly one job in five, anchored by Walt Disney World and by Universal's fourth park, Epic Universe, which opened May 22, 2025 on a 750-acre site south of Sand Lake Road. That demand base is what puts hotels, retail and flex space in the I-Drive and 192 corridors in play for a bridge. The other cluster is growth-corridor commercial and mixed-use around Horizon West and Winter Garden, the metro's highest-value submarket, and Clermont in Lake County, both riding the population growth (37,690 net new residents in the year to July 2025). We do not have published Orlando office, industrial, retail or multifamily vacancy, absorption or cap rate data to hand you, so we underwrite the asset's actual rent roll and leases rather than a market average. See the CRE bridge program for structure.

Yes, the same way it does everywhere in Florida: every foreclosure, commercial included, runs through the circuit court. That remedy timeline is priced into the terms. Florida is a judicial foreclosure state statewide, materially slower than a non-judicial state like Texas. Separately, on the legal-friction side, Florida's insurance regulator's own claims-litigation table shows the four-county Orlando region (Seminole, Orange, Lake, Osceola: 959,900 property policies in force) had 14.01 percent of closed property claims litigated as of mid-2026, versus 27.27 percent in the Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade region and 8.16 percent everywhere else in the state. That is a mid-pack litigation environment, about half South Florida's rate, and it is one more reason Orlando underwrites differently than the southeast coast even though both sit under the same state foreclosure statute.

Insurance costs less here than on either coast, but CDD assessments in the master-planned corridors are a real add-on. County-level average homeowners premiums including wind, as of March 2026, ran $2,650 in Lake County to $3,610 in Orange County, against $4,063 in coastal Pinellas and $6,136 in Broward. That table is residential, not commercial, so read it as the direction of the inland advantage rather than as a quote on your asset, and get an actual commercial premium before you underwrite the carry. On the other side of the ledger, Community Development Districts under Florida Statutes chapter 190 can levy ad valorem and non-ad valorem assessments that get collected on the same county tax bill as regular property taxes, and they're common in master-planned communities across Osceola, Lake and the Davenport corridor, plus Horizon West-adjacent Orange County. That assessment does not disappear at closing, so read the actual tax bill, not just the seller's marketing, before you size the deal. Documentary stamp tax and intangible tax apply statewide on top of that.

Not from us, and be skeptical of anyone who hands you one. We do not have a sourced, published figure for Orlando office, industrial, retail or multifamily vacancy, absorption, rent growth or cap rates as of this writing, and we're not going to invent one to make a pro forma look better. What we will underwrite is the specific asset in front of us: the actual rent roll, tenant credit, lease terms and your business plan for stabilizing it. If a broker quotes you a metro cap rate for an Orlando deal, ask for the source. Talk to us about the specific property.

Because the metro is moving fast enough that a bank's timeline doesn't match the deal's. Orlando added 37,690 residents in the year to July 2025, a 10.3 percent gain since the 2020 Census, and total nonfarm employment was up 1.4 percent year over year through June 2026. That growth is uneven by submarket, from Winter Garden's $569,557 mid-tier home value down to Poinciana's $282,132 (Zillow ZHVI, June 2026), and the fastest price softening is concentrated in the Osceola and Polk short-term-rental corridor (Kissimmee, Davenport, Poinciana, down 4 to 5 percent year over year). A partner buyout, lease-up or repositioning play in a metro moving unevenly like that needs a lender who can close on the deal's schedule, not the bank's underwriting queue, and who can carry the asset through stabilization before handing it to permanent debt.

A quarter of the value stays in your equity. Commercial bridge runs up to $10M at up to 75% LTV, interest-only. On a $4,000,000 Orlando asset that is $3,000,000 from us and $1,000,000 of your own equity or cash (4,000,000 x 75% = 3,000,000). Because we do not have published Orlando office, industrial, retail, or multifamily cap rate data to lean on, that value comes from the asset's actual rent roll and leases, not a metro average, which is what decides where inside the range a specific deal lands. Subject to underwriting.

No minimum score on this program. We run credit, but a bridge is an asset-based loan and credit carries far less weight than it would at a bank. The file turns on the property, the equity, and your plan to stabilize or exit. Weaker credit is normally offset with lower leverage rather than a decline, so a borrower who would be an automatic no at a bank often still gets a term sheet, just below the 75% cap. There is no hard credit pull to start. Subject to underwriting.

Up to 24 to 36 months, interest-only. That is the stretch a lease-up, a repositioning, or a partner buyout usually needs before permanent debt will look at the asset. It matters in this metro because the demand base is real but slow to show up in a rent roll: leisure and hospitality employed 305,500 people in metro Orlando in June 2026, up 3.7 percent year over year, and a hospitality-adjacent asset along I-Drive or the 192 corridor takes time to stabilize into that. Interest-only keeps the carry manageable while it does. Subject to underwriting.