Florida Commercial Real Estate by County: The Landed Cost Report, 2026

The inaugural cross-county comparison from Florida Commercial Real Estate News — because the number everyone publishes is the number that varies least, and the numbers that vary most are published nowhere.

By Brian French | Florida Commercial Real Estate News | Florida Authority Network
Published: August 7, 2026 · Last reviewed: August 6, 2026 · Next release: 2027

Answer in Brief

Commercial rent across Florida varies by perhaps two or three times between the cheapest and most expensive markets. Impact fees, on the one published Florida cross-county comparison we could find, varied by roughly fourteen times — and that comparison was built for backyard cottages, not commercial buildings, because nobody has built the commercial one. Hurricane-zone construction reportedly adds $8 to $22 per square foot to envelope cost in two counties and nothing in the other sixty-five. Insurance varies by multiples. Rent is the most published Florida CRE variable and one of the least differentiating. This report exists to fix that.

Key Takeaways

The Variance Inversion: what gets published (rent) varies least. What varies most (fees, insurance, code premiums, entitlement duration) is published nowhere comparably.
The one cross-county Florida fee comparison we found covers ADUs across nine Central Florida counties — $2,000 in Marion to $28,000+ in Osceola for the same square footage.
HVHZ construction premium: reportedly $8–$22/SF of envelope cost, primarily Miami-Dade and Broward. Zero elsewhere.
The Basis Problem: published Florida office analyses have used 25,000 SF and 50,000 SF property thresholds for the same city. Those are not comparable figures.
Timing varies as much as amount. Charlotte County reportedly allows commercial and industrial impact fees to be deferred ten years or paid over five. Hillsborough reassesses at current rates if a permit lapses.
Several major variables are now statewide constants — commercial rent tax (repealed), Live Local, SIRS, SB 264 — which is analytically useful: constants drop out of the comparison.
This edition is deliberately incomplete. Unpopulated cells say PENDING with sourcing instructions. We do not estimate.

Why This Report Exists

Suppose you are deciding where in Florida to place a 60,000 square foot industrial building, a medical office portfolio, or a retail development. You want to compare counties.

Try it.

You will find brokerage market reports for roughly a dozen Florida metros, produced by different firms, using different definitions, covering different property size thresholds, with different submarket boundaries. You will find sixty-seven county websites, each publishing its own impact fee schedule in its own format. You will find no comparison of insurance cost by county. You will find no comparison of entitlement duration. You will find no comparison of anything, assembled on a consistent basis, anywhere.

What you will find plenty of is rent.

The Variance Inversion

Definition: The Variance Inversion is the condition in which the most widely published metric for a market varies least between locations, while the metrics that vary most are published nowhere in comparable form.

Variable	Approximate variation across Florida	Published comparably?
Lease rate	Roughly 2–3x between markets	Extensively — for ~12 metros
Impact fees	~14x on the one available comparison (residential ADU)	No — 67 separate county schedules
Property insurance	Coastal versus inland differentials reported as substantial multiples	No
Construction code premium	$8–$22/SF envelope in HVHZ; $0 elsewhere	No
Entitlement duration	Reported permit timelines vary widely by jurisdiction	No
Property tax millage	Varies by county and taxing district	By county, not comparably
Discretionary sales surtax	Varies by county	Partially

Variation estimates in the first column are characterizations drawn from the sources cited in this report, not measurements. Establishing them properly is the purpose of the series.

Read the color coding. One green row, heavily published. Four red rows, published nowhere comparably — and every red row appears to vary more than the green one.

Brian’s Take

There is a name for what produces the Variance Inversion, and it is not a criticism of anyone in the brokerage business.

We measure what is easy to measure, and then we manage what we measured.

In investment management this was constant and I participated in it. Performance was measured relentlessly, to the basis point, daily, because performance is easy to measure — it falls out of the accounting system. Things that were harder to measure got measured less and therefore mattered less in practice, regardless of how much they mattered in reality.

Client behavior was the classic case. Whether a client would stay invested through a drawdown determined their realized return far more than manager selection did, and everybody in the business knew it. It was nearly impossible to quantify in advance, so it appeared in essentially no report, and firms optimized for the number on the statement instead.

Not because anyone was foolish. Because the measurable variable crowds out the important one, quietly, over decades.

Florida commercial real estate has done the same thing with rent. Rent is easy to observe — it is in listings, in leases, in comps. So it gets published, tracked, compared, and quoted, and a whole industry conversation organizes around it.

Meanwhile impact fees, insurance, code premiums, and entitlement duration are scattered across sixty-seven county websites, private quotes, engineering estimates, and institutional memory. Hard to gather. Therefore not gathered. Therefore absent from the comparison.

And on the evidence available, every one of them varies more between Florida counties than rent does.

That is not a small analytical failure. It means the industry’s standard comparison is built on the least differentiating variable available, and a developer choosing between two Florida counties on rent alone is choosing on the input least likely to determine the outcome.

— Brian French

The Landed Cost

Definition: The Landed Cost is the total cost of occupying or developing commercial real estate at a specific location — rent or land basis, insurance, impact and permit fees, property tax millage, construction code premiums, utility cost, and the carrying cost of entitlement duration.

The term is borrowed from international trade, where landed cost means the full delivered cost of goods including freight, duties, insurance, and handling — as distinct from the invoice price. No competent importer compares suppliers on invoice price alone, because the invoice price is the component least likely to determine which supplier is actually cheapest.

Florida commercial real estate compares on the invoice price.

The components

Component	Applies to	County-variable?
Base rent or land basis	Both	Moderately
Property insurance	Both	Highly
Impact and mobility fees	Development	Highly
Permit and plan review fees	Development	Highly
Construction code premium (wind zone)	Development	Highly
Property tax millage	Both	Moderately
Utility cost and reliability	Both	Moderately
Entitlement duration (carrying cost)	Development	Highly
Discretionary sales surtax	Operations	Moderately
Sales tax on commercial rent	Occupancy	No — repealed statewide

What Is Now Constant Statewide

Before comparing counties, establish what does not vary — because constants drop out of the analysis and their absence simplifies everything else.

Item	Status
Sales tax on commercial rent	Repealed statewide effective October 1, 2025 (HB 7031), including local surtaxes on commercial leases. Formerly a differentiator only against other states — now zero everywhere in Florida.
Live Local Act preemptions	Statewide statute (HB 1389 effective July 1, 2026). But the height entitlement is derived from the highest permitted within one mile, so its practical effect is intensely local.
Milestone inspection and SIRS	Statewide requirements for qualifying condominium and cooperative buildings, though local enforcement agency practice varies.
SB 264 foreign ownership restrictions	Statewide statute, subject to ongoing litigation. But the 10-mile proximity restriction makes eligibility parcel-specific.
Florida Building Code	Statewide, currently reported as the 8th Edition (2023). But wind speed zones and HVHZ designation vary within it, producing large cost differentials.
State sales tax	6% statewide; county discretionary surtaxes vary.
Impact fee enabling law	§ 163.31801, Fla. Stat. governs statewide, requiring fees to be fairly calculated and reasonably connected to the need for capital facilities and the benefits accruing to the new development. The framework is uniform; the schedules are not.

Notice the pattern in the italics. Four of these “statewide” items contain a locally variable element — the Mile Rule, the 10-mile proximity restriction, wind zone designation, and local enforcement practice. Florida legislates uniformly and applies locally, which is precisely why a county-level report is necessary even for statewide law.

The Basis Problem

Before presenting any county data, a warning about the data that already exists.

Definition: The Basis Problem is the incomparability of commercial real estate market data across markets caused by differing provider definitions, property size thresholds, submarket boundaries, and class designations.

This is not theoretical. In assembling this report we encountered, for a single Florida city, two published office analyses from the same data provider family:

Analysis	Property threshold	Reported result
Office market trends	Properties ≥ 25,000 SF	$21.38/SF average, 18.02% vacancy (2024)
Office space listings	Properties > 50,000 SF	$27/SF average, 7.4M SF market (2026)

Same city. Different thresholds. Roughly 26% apart on the headline rate. Neither is wrong. They are answers to different questions, published under similar headings.

Now extend that across providers, across metros, across asset classes. Comparing a CBRE figure for one Florida metro against a Cushman figure for another is not a comparison of markets. It is a comparison of methodologies.

The five questions to ask of any Florida market figure

What size threshold? 25,000 SF and 50,000 SF produce materially different answers.
Asking or effective? Asking rates exclude concessions, free rent, and TI. Effective rates are the real number and are rarely published.
What lease structure? A gross rate and a NNN rate are not comparable without the operating expense load.
Whose class definition? Class A is a provider judgment, not a standard.
What geography? “Tampa” may mean the city, the MSA, or a submarket set, and MSA boundaries frequently span multiple counties.

And a specific caution. In compiling this report we encountered two national listing platforms publishing Florida commercial averages exceeding $1,300 per square foot per year — self-evident unit errors rather than market data. We excluded them. A reader assembling their own comparison will encounter them and should recognize them for what they are.

Brian’s Take

The Basis Problem is the reason index construction is a real profession, and it is worth explaining why, because the parallel tells you exactly what is missing in Florida.

You cannot compare two numbers unless someone has defined them identically.

That sounds obvious and it is one of the hardest things to actually accomplish. In investment management we spent enormous effort on it. What counts as a mid-cap? Measured when, and rebalanced how often? Is a return gross or net, and net of what? Time-weighted or dollar-weighted? Two managers reporting “eleven percent” could have produced quite different outcomes for an actual client.

The response was the development of standards — performance presentation standards, index methodologies, defined universes — and the reason those standards exist is that without them, comparison is not merely imprecise. It is meaningless. An imprecise comparison is still directionally useful. A comparison of differently defined things is noise that looks like signal, which is worse than nothing because people act on it.

Florida commercial real estate has abundant data and, so far as I can determine, no comparison standard.

Every brokerage produces good work within its own methodology. The problem appears at the seams — the moment someone lifts a figure from a Jacksonville report and sets it beside a figure from a Sarasota report to decide where to build. Those two numbers were never constructed to sit next to each other, and nothing on either page warns you.

I would treat this as the central methodological problem of this entire report series, and it dictates a specific discipline: where we cannot obtain figures on a consistent basis across counties, we will say so and leave the cell empty rather than filling it with a number sourced differently from its neighbor.

An empty cell is honest. A cell filled from an incompatible source is a comparison that will be quoted, forwarded, and eventually acted on by someone who does not know it was never a comparison at all.

— Brian French

Section 1: Lease Rates and Vacancy by Market

Consistent-basis county comparison is the objective of this series. This edition publishes what we could verify with the basis stated, and marks the rest.

Market / County	Reported figures	Basis
Tallahassee / Leon	Office $21.34–$21.38/SF; Class A $34.94; retail $21–$21.85; industrial $10.19; all-commercial $22.85; range $6–$55.75. Office vacancy 18.02% (submarkets 3.27%–32.74%). Class mix A 23.14% / B 74.94% / C 1.92%	Asking; aggregator; 25,000 SF and 50,000 SF thresholds vary by report; 2024–2026 vintages
Naples / Collier	Office average $27.80/SF (2026). Fifth Avenue South retail ~$30–$32/SF base plus $6.00–$9.43 CAM, NNN. Industrial asking ~$20–$22/SF coastal versus ~$11.50/SF Immokalee. Industrial ~20% of commercial inventory versus ~24% national	Asking; mixed sources; corridor-specific
PENDING Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Orange, Duval, Lee, Sarasota, Polk, Brevard, Volusia, Alachua, EscambiaSOURCE: Build on a single consistent basis. Options: (1) subscribe to one provider covering all target markets and use that provider only, disclosing it; (2) conduct an original attributed broker survey per county with a published methodology — the option that makes the data proprietary; (3) use listing aggregator data uniformly, disclosing the threshold. DO NOT mix providers across counties.	PENDING	Must be identical across all rows

Section 2: Development Cost Differentials

The section where the county differences are largest and the published data is thinnest.

Item	Reported figure
HVHZ envelope premium	Wind load and hurricane-resistant standards — impact-rated glazing, reinforced roofing assemblies, engineered connections — reportedly add $8–$22 per square foot to commercial envelope cost in High-Velocity Hurricane Zones, primarily Miami-Dade and Broward
Central Florida tilt-wall industrial shell	Reported benchmark $85–$130/SF for shell construction excluding site work (Orange, Osceola, Polk)
Miami-Dade commercial permit base fee	Reported as potentially exceeding $5,000 before plan review surcharges
Building code edition	Florida Building Code, reported as 8th Edition (2023), mandating structural, wind, and flood-resistance requirements that vary by zone
PENDING Commercial shell construction cost by regionSOURCE: Attributed survey of general contractors by region and product type, or licensed construction cost data. Publish product type, whether site work is included, and the date — the omissions that make published construction figures unusable.	PENDING
PENDING Wind speed zone by countySOURCE: Florida Building Code wind speed maps and HVHZ designation. This is publicly available, mappable, and produces a clean county-level table. HIGH PRIORITY — it is the cleanest county differentiator available.	PENDING

Section 3: Impact and Permit Fees

The largest documented variation in this report, and the one with no commercial comparison published anywhere.

The only Florida cross-county fee comparison we could locate covers accessory dwelling units across nine Central Florida counties and three cities. Its finding:

“A project that costs $2,000 in permit and impact fees in Marion County can cost $28,000+ in the same square footage in Osceola County.”

That comparison also reported Seminole County permit timelines of 10–16 weeks as mid-range for the region, and noted a Clermont ordinance effective January 13, 2026 reducing city-collected ADU impact fees to 25% of the standard rate — making the city’s cost profile meaningfully better than the surrounding unincorporated county for parcels inside city limits.

Read that last point carefully, because it generalizes. Municipal and unincorporated fee schedules within the same county can differ materially, which means a county-level comparison is itself a simplification.

Structural differences beyond the amount

County	Reported practice
Charlotte	Impact Fee Payment Program established to help stabilize costs for commercial and industrial projects — payments reportedly may be deferred for ten years or paid by installment over five years, with an enrollment fee. Fees assessed at permit review, payable prior to final inspection scheduling, and may be spread over time at no charge
Hillsborough	Mobility/impact fees assessed prior to building permit issuance; assessment valid for the life of the permit; reassessed at current rates if the permit expires
Brevard	Impact fees described as typically collected prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy during the building permit process

Three counties, three different timing regimes. A fee of identical size assessed at permit issuance, at certificate of occupancy, or deferred ten years has materially different economics — and none of that appears in any comparison.

PENDING Commercial impact fee schedules, all target countiesSOURCE: Each county’s community development or planning department publishes a current schedule. Build on a standard hypothetical: e.g., a 50,000 SF industrial building and a 10,000 SF retail building, both on a 3-acre site. Report total fees by category (roads/mobility, water, sewer, fire, parks, schools where applicable), the assessment trigger, the payment timing, and any deferral program. NOTE: municipal schedules within a county may differ — state which you used.	PENDING
PENDING Commercial building permit and plan review feesSOURCE: County building department fee schedules. Note whether valuation-based or flat-fee, and include state surcharges, technology fees, and re-inspection fee exposure.	PENDING
PENDING Entitlement and permit durationSOURCE: Direct inquiry to each county’s development services department for current expected review timelines by application type. THE HARDEST AND MOST VALUABLE ITEM IN THIS REPORT — no published Florida comparison exists, and carrying cost during entitlement is frequently larger than the fees themselves.	PENDING

Brian’s Take

The Charlotte County deferral program deserves more attention than it will get, because it illustrates something the entire fee conversation misses.

The timing of a payment is a separate variable from its size, and it is frequently the larger one.

This was fixed income arithmetic and every bond analyst knew it cold. A dollar due in ten years is not a dollar. Discounted at any plausible rate, it is meaningfully less, and the difference is not a rounding item — over a decade at ordinary discount rates a deferred obligation can be worth substantially less than its face amount.

Now consider two Florida counties with identical commercial impact fee schedules. One collects at permit issuance. The other permits deferral over ten years.

Those are not the same fee. The first is cash out the door at the moment a project has maximum capital need and zero income. The second is an obligation paid out of stabilized operations. For a developer whose binding constraint is equity at closing rather than lifetime project cost — which describes a great many developers — the second county may be decisively better even at a somewhat higher face amount.

And I want to note who this helps most. A well-capitalized institutional developer can write the check either way; the deferral is a modest present-value benefit. A smaller local developer may find the deferral is the difference between the project happening and not happening at all, because their constraint is not the total cost but the cash at a single moment.

That is a genuine economic development instrument and I suspect it is under-marketed by the counties that offer it and under-considered by the developers who could use it.

Which is precisely why this report will publish payment timing and deferral availability alongside the amounts. A fee schedule that reports only the number has told you the smaller half of the story.

— Brian French

Section 4: Insurance, Tax, and Operating Cost

Item	Status
Statewide insurance market direction, 2026	Citizens personal lines multiperil −8.8%; Citizens commercial lines reportedly filing +10.4%; surplus lines commercial property counts +39% with average premiums −39%; commercial windstorm and hail reported −47%; 17 new insurers since reform with $574M+ new surplus; Citizens policy count 336,000, down 76% from a 1.41M peak
PENDING Commercial property insurance cost by countySOURCE: No public series exists. Options: (1) attributed survey of commercial insurance brokers using a standard hypothetical risk — e.g., a 50,000 SF masonry warehouse, 2010 vintage, $8M insured value, in each county; (2) anonymized premium-to-EGI contributions from owners. THE SINGLE MOST VALUABLE MISSING DATASET IN FLORIDA CRE. See our Insurance Load framework.	PENDING
PENDING Commercial millage rate by countySOURCE: Florida Department of Revenue property tax data book and county property appraisers. Publicly available and cleanly comparable — a straightforward early win for this series.	PENDING
PENDING Discretionary sales surtax by countySOURCE: Florida Department of Revenue publishes current county surtax rates. Note Leon County reported at 7.5% combined (6% state + 1.5% county), described as higher than 97% of Florida counties.	PENDING
PENDING Commercial electric rate and reliability by utility territorySOURCE: Utility commercial rate schedules and reliability statistics. NOTE: territory does not follow county lines — Leon County alone is served by both a municipal utility and a cooperative with materially different reported outage frequency (1.72/yr vs 3.2/yr). Report by territory, mapped to counties.	PENDING

Section 5: Demographic and Market Context

County	Reported figures
Leon	Population ~299,384 (2026 est.), +0.11%/yr; median age 32.0; median household income $66,287; bachelor’s or higher 48.9%
Collier	~208 people per square mile; median age 52.9; Naples city median age 67.3, median household income $153,182
Pinellas	~963,000 population; ~3,348 people per square mile — most dense county in Florida; St. Petersburg median age 43.1, median household income $75,192
PENDING All target counties: population, growth rate, median age, median household income, educational attainment, densitySOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau ACS and Population Estimates; University of Florida BEBR for Florida’s official county estimates and projections. Straightforward, comparable, and the easiest section to complete — do this one first.	PENDING
PENDING Employment by sector and average weekly wageSOURCE: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, county-level by NAICS supersector. Comparable across all 67 counties by construction.	PENDING
PENDING Building permits and construction valueSOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey publishes county-level residential permits monthly; commercial requires county-level collection.	PENDING
PENDING County GDPSOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis county GDP series.	PENDING

Build Order: How This Series Should Be Completed

For transparency, and because other markets may wish to replicate it, here is the order in which we intend to populate this report — easiest and most comparable first.

Demographics — Census and BEBR. Comparable by construction. Complete first.
Wind speed zone and HVHZ designation by county — public, mappable, and the cleanest cost differentiator available.
Millage and discretionary surtax — Florida Department of Revenue. Public and comparable.
Employment and wages — BLS QCEW. Comparable by construction.
Impact and permit fees on a standard hypothetical — laborious but entirely obtainable, and where the largest differentials live.
Lease rates on a single consistent basis — requires either one provider across all markets or an original survey.
Insurance cost on a standard hypothetical risk — requires an original broker survey. Highest value.
Entitlement duration — requires direct inquiry to each jurisdiction. Hardest, and possibly the most valuable of all.

Items 5 through 8 do not exist anywhere in published form for Florida commercial property. That is the opportunity and the obligation of this series.

Methodology, Sources, and Limitations

What this report is. The inaugural edition of an annual county-level comparison framework for Florida commercial real estate, published with an explicit basis disclosure for every figure. The analytical contribution is the framework — the Landed Cost, the Variance Inversion, and the Basis Problem — not a proprietary dataset, which does not yet exist.

What this report is not. It is not a forecast, a ranking, a recommendation of any county, or investment, tax, legal, insurance, or development advice. It does not currently contain a complete county comparison, and it says so.

Our estimation policy, stated once. This publication does not estimate. Where a figure could not be obtained on a stated basis, the cell says PENDING and names the source. An empty cell is honest; a cell filled from a source incompatible with its neighbors is a comparison that was never a comparison.

The central limitation of this edition. The figures published in Sections 1 and 5 are not on a consistent basis with one another. Tallahassee and Naples figures come from different sources, different vintages, and in some cases different property size thresholds. They are published as available data points, not as a comparison, and drawing a conclusion about Leon versus Collier from them would be exactly the error this report exists to correct. We include them because they are the verified starting inventory, not because they are comparable.

On the ADU impact fee finding. The $2,000-to-$28,000+ range is from a published comparison of accessory dwelling units across nine Central Florida counties, not commercial property. Commercial impact fee variation may be larger, smaller, or differently distributed. We cite it because it is the only Florida cross-county fee comparison we could locate and because it demonstrates that the variation is real and large — not as a proxy for commercial fees.

On construction cost and permit figures. The HVHZ premium, tilt-wall benchmark, and Miami-Dade permit fee are reported by a commercial construction data source. They are single-source, undated in part, and provider-interested. Treat them as orders of magnitude pending survey work.

On excluded data. Two national listing platforms publish Florida commercial averages exceeding $1,300 per square foot annually. These are unit errors and are excluded. We note them so readers recognize them independently.

A structural caution about county-level analysis. Municipal schedules within a county can differ materially from unincorporated county schedules — the Clermont example, where city-collected ADU impact fees were reduced to 25% of standard, making the city meaningfully cheaper than surrounding unincorporated Lake County. Utility service territories likewise do not follow county lines. A county-level comparison is a useful simplification and remains a simplification.

An open invitation, and a specific one. Four datasets in this report do not exist in published form anywhere for Florida commercial property, and each would be a genuine contribution:

Commercial impact fees on a standard hypothetical, all counties, with assessment trigger and payment timing.
Commercial property insurance cost on a standard hypothetical risk, by county.
Entitlement and permit duration by jurisdiction and application type.
Lease rates on one consistent basis across all major Florida markets.

Florida Commercial Real Estate News invites brokerages, insurance brokers, general contractors, civil engineers, county economic development offices, and owners to contribute. Contributors are credited. Florida generates all four of these datasets continuously and aggregates none of them.

Corrections. Contact Brian@FlAuthorityNetwork.com. Corrections are noted at the top with date and description.

Reuse. Journalists, analysts, brokers, developers, and economic development professionals are welcome to cite figures with attribution to Florida Commercial Real Estate News and to the underlying source named in the relevant row.

Brian’s Take

Let me close by explaining why I think this report is worth years of tedious work, and the argument comes from watching a specific kind of business succeed for four decades.

The organization that defines the measure ends up owning the conversation.

Consider who actually holds durable positions in financial markets. Not, for the most part, the firms with the best forecasts — forecasts are wrong and forgotten. It is the ones that built the yardsticks.

Someone had to decide what constitutes a benchmark index and how it is constructed. Someone had to define how private real estate returns are calculated so that two funds could be compared. Someone had to standardize how investment performance is presented. Those organizations do not predict anything. They simply established the definition everyone else was obliged to adopt, and forty years later the entire industry speaks their vocabulary and cites their numbers.

That position is extraordinarily durable, and the reason is straightforward: once a market adopts a measure, changing it is enormously costly, because every historical comparison depends on continuity.

Florida commercial real estate has no such measure. Sixty-seven counties, roughly a dozen metros with published research on incompatible bases, and the components that differ most between locations published nowhere at all. Everybody quotes rent because rent is what exists, and everybody knows rent is not the answer.

Somebody is going to build the Landed Cost comparison for this state. The data is public or obtainable, the methodology is not complicated, and the need is obvious to anyone who has tried to make the comparison.

The work required is tedious rather than difficult — sixty-seven fee schedules, a broker survey, a set of phone calls to development services departments, repeated annually with the definitions held constant. Which is precisely why it has not been done, and precisely why it is worth doing.

Tedium is the most reliable barrier to entry there is. It cannot be bought, it cannot be automated away entirely, and it compounds — because the tenth annual edition is worth far more than the first, and the first is the only one anyone has to start with.

— Brian French

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I compare Florida commercial real estate costs by county?

No comprehensive published comparison appears to exist. Brokerage research covers roughly a dozen Florida metros using differing definitions, size thresholds, and submarket boundaries, making cross-market comparison unreliable even where data exists. Impact fees, permit fees, insurance, construction code premiums, and entitlement durations are published by individual counties in their own formats and aggregated nowhere for commercial property. This report exists to build that comparison and marks unpopulated fields PENDING rather than estimating them.

What is the Landed Cost of a Florida commercial property?

The total cost of occupying or developing at a specific location — rent or land basis, property insurance, impact and permit fees, property tax millage, construction code premiums, utility cost, and the carrying cost of entitlement duration. The term is borrowed from trade, where landed cost means the full delivered cost rather than the invoice price. In Florida CRE the published rent figure is the invoice price, and several components that differ most between counties never appear in it.

How much do impact fees vary between Florida counties?

Enormously, though the only published Florida cross-county comparison we could locate covers accessory dwelling units rather than commercial property. That analysis of nine Central Florida counties found the same square footage costing roughly $2,000 in permit and impact fees in Marion County and more than $28,000 in Osceola County. Impact fees are governed by § 163.31801, Florida Statutes, requiring them to be fairly calculated and reasonably connected to the need for capital facilities. Commercial variation may be larger, smaller, or differently distributed — no equivalent commercial comparison appears to be published.

Which Florida commercial real estate costs are the same in every county?

Sales tax on commercial rent was eliminated statewide effective October 1, 2025, including local surtaxes. The Florida Building Code applies statewide, currently reported as the 8th Edition (2023), though wind zones vary within it. The Live Local Act, milestone inspection and SIRS requirements, and SB 264 are all statewide statutes. State sales tax is uniform at 6% though county surtaxes vary. Note that four of these “statewide” items contain locally variable elements — the Live Local Mile Rule, SB 264’s 10-mile proximity restriction, wind zone designation, and local enforcement practice. Florida legislates uniformly and applies locally.

Why is Florida commercial market data hard to compare across counties?

Because providers measure differently. In compiling this report we found two published office analyses for the same Florida city using 25,000 SF and 50,000 SF property thresholds, reporting averages roughly 26% apart. Class A, B, and C are provider judgments rather than standards; submarket boundaries differ between firms; asking rates are not effective rates; and “Tampa” may mean the city, the MSA, or a submarket set. Comparing one provider’s figure for one metro against another provider’s figure for a second metro compares methodologies, not markets.

What does hurricane-resistant construction add to Florida commercial building costs?

Reported guidance indicates Florida wind load and hurricane-resistant standards — impact-rated glazing, reinforced roofing assemblies, engineered connections — add roughly $8 to $22 per square foot to commercial envelope cost in High-Velocity Hurricane Zones, primarily Miami-Dade and Broward counties. This is a location-driven differential that appears in no lease rate comparison and ranges from a substantial premium to zero depending on county. Treat as an order of magnitude from a single provider-interested source pending survey work.

Do Florida counties differ in when impact fees are collected?

Yes, and timing affects carrying cost independently of amount. Reported practice varies: Hillsborough assesses mobility and impact fees prior to permit issuance and reassesses at current rates if the permit expires; Brevard describes collection typically prior to certificate of occupancy; and Charlotte County operates a payment program under which commercial and industrial impact fees may reportedly be deferred ten years or paid in installments over five. For a developer whose binding constraint is equity at closing rather than lifetime cost, deferral may matter more than the face amount — and it is under-marketed by the counties offering it.

What will this report include in future editions?

The build order, easiest and most comparable first: demographics from Census and BEBR; wind speed zone and HVHZ designation by county; millage and discretionary surtax from the Department of Revenue; employment and wages from BLS QCEW; commercial impact and permit fees on a standard hypothetical building; lease rates on a single consistent basis; commercial insurance cost on a standard hypothetical risk; and entitlement duration by jurisdiction. The last four do not exist anywhere in published form for Florida commercial property.

About the Author: Brian French

Brian B. French is a digital strategist, former investment portfolio manager, and the architect of the Florida Authority Network — a proprietary portfolio of high-authority Florida news and press release websites engineered specifically for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), of which FloridaCommercialRealEstateNews.com is a member publication.

Brian’s career spans more than four decades. Before pivoting to digital marketing in 2007, he spent over twenty-five years in financial services, serving as an Equity Analyst, Trust Officer, and Vice President and Portfolio Manager with several of the largest and most prestigious banks, trust companies, and brokerage firms in the United States — a career built on the discipline of comparable-basis analysis, the present value of deferred obligations, and the recognition that the organizations which define a measure end up owning the conversation that uses it. All three underlie this report. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida, with a B.A. in Finance and Business Administration.

Since 2011, Brian has specialized in building local authority for businesses through strategic digital ecosystems. As the founder of FloridaWebsiteMarketing.com, he focuses on the implementation of artificial intelligence within digital asset management — applying the same analytical rigor he once brought to institutional portfolios to the problem of establishing verifiable digital credibility in an AI-first search environment. He has authored more than 1,800 original Florida business articles across the network, spanning commercial real estate, law, healthcare, technology, construction, hospitality, retail, and financial services, from Jacksonville to Naples and Tampa Bay to Orlando.

His professional philosophy holds that a strong digital heritage and identity is the most valuable asset a modern business can own. Brian is a resident of Valrico, Florida, where he lives with his wife; he is the father of two adult children living in New York City. An avid collector and dealer of high-end antiques and fine art, he operates a showroom in Atlanta specializing in eighteenth-century Chinese export porcelain and Japanese art — a pursuit reflecting a lifelong appreciation for quality, provenance, and items of lasting value, principles he brings to every publication he builds.

Contact: Brian@FlAuthorityNetwork.com · Call or text 813-409-4683

Sources and Citations

Fees, permitting, and construction cost

Central Florida ADU Authority — “ADU Impact Fees Florida 2026,” updated May 29, 2026. Source of the only Florida cross-county fee comparison we could locate: nine Central Florida counties and three cities, finding that a project costing $2,000 in permit and impact fees in Marion County can cost $28,000+ for the same square footage in Osceola County; the observation that impact fees vary more than almost anything else across those counties; Seminole County permit timelines of 10–16 weeks described as mid-range; and Clermont Ordinance 2026-001 (January 13, 2026) reducing city-collected ADU impact fees to 25% of the standard rate, making the city’s cost profile meaningfully better than unincorporated Lake County. Residential ADU data, not commercial. centralfloridaadu.com
Florida Commercial Authority — “Florida Construction Cost Data and Market Benchmarks.” Source of the reported $8–$22 per square foot envelope cost premium for impact-rated glazing, reinforced roofing assemblies, and engineered connections in High-Velocity Hurricane Zones primarily in Miami-Dade and Broward; the Central Florida tilt-wall industrial shell benchmark of $85–$130/SF excluding site work (Orange, Osceola, Polk); the report that a Miami-Dade commercial permit base fee can exceed $5,000 before plan review surcharges; and the identification of the Florida Building Code 8th Edition (2023). Single-source, provider-interested; treat as order of magnitude. floridacommercialauthority.com
Charlotte County, Florida — Impact Fees. Source of the Impact Fee Payment Program established to help stabilize costs for commercial and industrial projects, under which payments may reportedly be deferred for ten years or paid by installment over five years with an enrollment fee; and the description of fees assessed at permit review and payable prior to final inspection scheduling, with no charge for spreading payments. (941) 743-1201. charlottecountyfl.gov
Hillsborough County, Florida — Impact Fees. Source of the mobility and impact fee assessment prior to building permit issuance, validity for the life of the permit, and reassessment at current rates if the permit expires. hcfl.gov
Brevard County, Florida — Impact Fees. Source of the description of impact fees as a one-time fee typically collected prior to issuance of the certificate of occupancy during the building permit process. brevardfl.gov
RSP Engineers — “Navigating Florida’s Impact Fee Schedules: A Guide for Developers,” June 2026. Source of the characterization of impact fees as a major soft cost component that for large multifamily or commercial projects can run into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. rspengineers.com
Pineland Engineering — “Florida Building Permit Fee Guide 2026.” Source of the statutory framework citation to Florida Statute 163.31801 requiring impact fees to be “fairly calculated and reasonably connected to the need for capital facilities and the benefits accruing to the new development”; the note that fees can vary wildly between jurisdictions; and the enumeration of fee components including state surcharges, technology fees, plan review fees, and re-inspection fees. pinelandengineering.com

Market data cited, with basis

CommercialCafe — Tallahassee office market trends (properties ≥ 25,000 SF, 2024 values): $21.38/SF average, 18.02% vacancy, submarket range 3.27%–32.74%. Tallahassee office space (Yardi Research Data, properties > 50,000 SF, 2026): $27/SF average, 7.4M SF market, Class A $34.94/SF, class mix 23.14/74.94/1.92. Tallahassee commercial: $22.85/SF all-commercial, office $21.34, industrial $10.19, range $6–$55.75. commercialcafe.com
CommercialSearch and CityFeet — Tallahassee retail asking rates of $21.85/SF and $21/SF respectively; NNN as the most common structure. commercialsearch.com
PropertyShark — Tallahassee office and commercial inventory. propertyshark.com
Naples and Collier County figures as reported in Florida Authority Network coverage: Naples office average $27.80/SF (2026); Fifth Avenue South retail ~$30–$32/SF base plus $6.00–$9.43/SF CAM under NNN; coastal industrial asking ~$20–$22/SF against ~$11.50/SF in Immokalee; ~601,456 SF industrial for sale countywide across 47 properties; industrial ~20% of commercial inventory versus ~24% nationally.

Insurance, tax, and statewide law

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (citizensfla.com), Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (floir.com), Florida Surplus Lines Service Office (fslso.com) — 2026 rate filings and market data as detailed in this publication’s insurance analysis.
Florida Department of Revenue — discretionary sales surtax rates by county, property tax data, and commercial rent tax repeal guidance. floridarevenue.com
Florida House Bill 7031 (2025) — repeal of § 212.031, Fla. Stat., effective October 1, 2025.
Florida Building Code — wind speed maps, HVHZ designation, and current edition. floridabuilding.org
Florida Statutes § 163.31801 — impact fee enabling and limitation. flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes

Demographic and economic sources for future editions

U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey, Population Estimates, Building Permits Survey, County Business Patterns. census.gov
University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) — Florida’s official county population estimates and projections. bebr.ufl.edu
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, county-level. bls.gov
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — county GDP. bea.gov
Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research — county area profiles. edr.state.fl.us
County property appraisers and community development departments — the primary sources for millage, taxable value, fee schedules, and permitting timelines in all 67 counties.

Companion coverage and author

Florida Commercial Real Estate News — “Florida Commercial Property Insurance and How It Changed Underwriting” (the Zero Position and the Insurance Load); “The Live Local Act and Your Commercial Land” (the Statutory Option and the Mile Rule); “Milestone Inspections, SIRS, and the Recognition Event”; “Florida Repealed the Only Commercial Rent Tax in America” (the Incidence Window); “Florida SB 264 and the Counterparty Turn.”
Brian French — Professional Biography, Florida Authority Network. flpressrelease.com/about-brian-french
Florida Authority Network. Brian@FlAuthorityNetwork.com

All external sources accessed and verified as of August 6, 2026. Figures are as reported by the cited source on its stated date and are subject to revision. Fee schedules, millage rates, permit timelines, insurance conditions, and lease rates change continuously.

This report is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute investment, real estate, tax, legal, insurance, or development advice, and is not a ranking or recommendation of any county. The figures published in this edition are not on a consistent basis with one another and should not be used to compare counties — establishing a consistent basis is the purpose of the series, not its current state. The impact fee variation cited is from a residential accessory dwelling unit comparison, not commercial property. Construction cost and permit figures are single-source and provider-interested. County-level analysis is a simplification: municipal schedules within a county and utility service territories may differ materially. Verify every figure with the primary source before relying on it for any decision.