Finley Reserve, Gainesville, Florida

At a glance

Lots in the first phase

102 single-family lots

Tract size

About 279 acres

City

Gainesville, Alachua County

ZIP

32608

Streets addressed

SW 67th Avenue, SW 68th Place, SW 69th Road, SW 66th Lane, SW 50th Street

Site work permit

Issued, running to 2031

Plat

Not yet recorded on the records available

Water and sewer

City utility mains within 500 feet

Flood mapping

All 102 lots mapped outside the special flood hazard area

Homebuilder

Not yet announced Get notified

Pricing

Not yet released Get notified

Floor plans

Not yet released Get notified

Lot dimensions

Not yet released Get notified

Homeowners association dues

Not yet established Get notified

Amenities

Not yet announced Get notified

First deliveries

Not yet announced Get notified

Details on this page are compiled from public entitlement records and are targets, not commitments. Pricing, floor plans, lot sizes, amenities and timing have not been released and are subject to change without notice.

What is approved, and what is not

There is a real, issued approval behind this project, and it is worth being precise about what it covers. A state environmental resource permit for Finley Reserve Phase 1A was issued in May 2026 and runs to 2031. It is an individual permit rather than a general one, which is the heavier of the two review paths, and it has moved into its compliance stage. In plain terms that means the review is finished, the approval was granted, and the file is now being administered against its conditions rather than argued over.

That permit is a stormwater and wetland-impact approval: it governs how the site is graded, where water goes and what happens at the edges of the property. It is the most informative document that exists about this land right now, and it is not a permit to build houses. A second sequence covering a Phase 1B area has been applied for and is still pending.

The other thing to understand is who signs off next. Because the land is inside the Gainesville city limits, the authority for platting and for construction permitting is the city, not Alachua County. That matters practically: search the county's unincorporated permitting system for this project and you will find nothing, and the nothing will mean nothing. The records that matter next sit with the city.

City land use on the addressed lots is a low-density residential designation under the city's urban classification, consistent with detached single-family housing. One scoping note: the wider tract is large and its outer edges touch other, more intense city designations, so nothing here is a promise that the whole 279 acres is single-family. This page is scoped to the phase that has actually been addressed.

The 102 lots and the five streets

In July 2026, addresses were assigned to 102 single-family lots, numbered without gaps, across five streets. SW 67th Avenue carries 52 of them and is plainly the spine of the first phase. SW 68th Place takes 24. SW 69th Road takes 12. SW 66th Lane takes 10, and SW 50th Street takes 4. House numbers start in the 4700s.

That shape tells you something about the layout before any site plan is public. A street carrying half the phase is almost always the collector you enter on, with shorter runs branching off it, and four lots on SW 50th Street is the count you get where a subdivision meets an existing road rather than building a new interior block. A 102-lot phase on a tract this size also means the first phase occupies a fraction of the land.

Use those street names, but hold them loosely. These are addresses assigned to an unplatted tract. Assignment is how a jurisdiction prepares for a subdivision and it normally survives to the recorded plat, but names and numbering can change at plat. Set a navigation app to any of them today and it will not take you to a street, because the streets are not built.

One practical consequence: on a 102-lot phase the first release of homesites is usually a fraction of the total, often a dozen or two, and it is where the lots that back onto something other than another house tend to sit.

Finley Reserve is not Finley Woods, and the names matter

Search either name in Gainesville and you will land on both, so here is the distinction plainly. Finley Woods is an established neighbourhood immediately next door: platted, selling for years, more than one homebuilder inside it, an association, and its own community development district levying assessments on its homeowners. It is a mature, buyable community today.

Finley Reserve is something else entirely: different land, a different owner, a different approval, no plat, and no builder. It is not a phase of Finley Woods, it is not a continuation of Finley Woods under a new name, and it is not a phase of any community currently selling in Gainesville. The names rhyme and the properties adjoin, and that is the whole of the relationship.

This is not pedantry. If you read a dues figure, an assessment amount, an amenity list or a price range for the neighbour and carry it across to this project, every one of those numbers will be wrong, and the assessment one could be wrong by a meaningful amount every year for decades. In the records this project also appears as Finley Reserve Phase 1A, which is the first-phase name on the approval rather than a separate development, and none of these names should be treated as a final marketing name: nothing has been branded yet.

What buying next to an active permit actually means

No plat has recorded on the records available. We phrase it that way deliberately, because it is what several independent records agree on rather than one definitive reading: the property appraiser carries no subdivision name and no plat reference, the county's subdivision mapping has no polygon for it, the parent parcel has not broken into the hundred-odd child parcels a recorded plat creates, and the addressing still carries generic lot labels. The local index that would settle it outright only reaches back so far online.

Here is why that is the single most useful fact on this page. Until a plat records, your future lot does not legally exist as a lot. There is no legal description to attach to a contract, no lot to be assessed for taxes, no address a lender can lend against and no deed anyone can convey. Everything between now and then is a sequence: finish or continue the permitted site work, record the plat, get city construction permitting, bring in a vertical builder, open a model, publish prices.

For an early buyer that means the lots in a community like this are typically committed well before there is anything public to look at. Nobody is selling you a lot here this week. The useful thing to do now is be a known name with a stated preference, so that when a first release happens you are not reading about it on a listing portal after the better homesites are gone.

Water, drainage and Paynes Prairie

Checked lot by lot against the current county flood mapping, all 102 addressed lots are mapped outside the special flood hazard area, in an area of minimal hazard. That is the good news and it is specific: not the tract on average, but every one of the 102 points. Parts of the wider tract surrounding them are mapped inside the special flood hazard area, in the category of mapped area where no base flood elevation has been determined, and the parcel also carries a wetland code. The permitted drainage for the site discharges toward Alachua Lake. All of that is consistent: a high, dry developable plateau with lower, wetter ground around its edges.

The caveat is about timing rather than geography. Lender flood-insurance requirements follow the final platted lot and its legal description, not the parent tract, so confirm the mapping on your specific lot once it has one. Mapped outside the special flood hazard area means no federally mandated flood policy, which is a real saving, but it does not mean water cannot reach a house, and on a site draining toward a prairie basin an elevation certificate is worth the conversation.

There is a better question hidden in the same facts: which of the 102 lots back onto the lower, mapped-hazard ground, and will those rear boundaries be left as permanent conservation buffer or fenced to the lot line? Some of these lots will abut land that cannot be built on, which is a permanent privacy premium. That is set by the permit's conservation conditions and by the plat, not by a sales office, and it is the largest lot-premium question here.

Assessments, taxes and the neighbour's district

Florida buyers learn fast to ask about community development districts, because a district assessment is a separate annual line on your tax bill that can run into four figures and last for decades, and it is not a homeowners association fee.

For Finley Reserve, no community development district has been established to date. We will not turn that into a flat promise, for two reasons. The land has not platted, and districts are commonly established around the time a large project plats. And the statewide non-ad-valorem reporting we can see gives Alachua County as a single county-wide total with no breakout by district, so there is no published levying list to clear this name against.

What is certain and directly relevant: the adjoining Finley Woods community does have a community development district of its own. That is the neighbour's district and it does not reach this land, but it is exactly why you should ask the question here rather than assume. Before you sign anything, confirm the non-ad-valorem schedule for your specific lot with the Alachua County Tax Collector. That is a five-minute call that can change what a house costs you every year you own it.

On ordinary property tax there is no per-lot figure to quote yet, because the land is one undivided parcel and nothing has been assessed as a homesite. Two things are worth knowing. The parcel is taxed inside the City of Gainesville rather than as unincorporated county, so the bill carries a city line a house a short distance away in the county will not. And as of the 2025 tax year the whole undivided tract was assessed at roughly 787,000 dollars with no tax amount posted against it, which is a raw-ground valuation rather than a guide to what a finished home will be assessed at. Florida's homestead exemption, set statewide by Florida law rather than by any county, applies to a primary residence here as anywhere in the state.

Utilities, and one surprise

City water and sewer mains run within 500 feet of the tract, so expect connected municipal service rather than a well and a septic tank. In this part of Alachua County that is not a given: plenty of older homes nearby are still on wells and septic systems.

The surprise is electricity. The electric service territory covering this pocket is a member-owned cooperative rather than the city-owned utility that supplies most of Gainesville. That is unusual for land inside the city limits and it catches people out, because almost everyone who moves to Gainesville assumes one provider for everything. It is not a problem, but it is a different bill with a different rate structure, so if you are comparing monthly carrying costs against a house elsewhere in town, check the provider before you compare the numbers.

Where this sits, and what living here would actually be like

These distances are straight-line rather than drive-time, so treat them as a map reading rather than a commute promise. Archer Road at SW 63rd Boulevard is about 1.7 miles away. The interstate interchange at Archer Road is about 2.1 miles. Butler Plaza, which is the largest concentration of retail in the region, is about 2.4 miles, and Celebration Pointe with its cinema and restaurants is about 2.5 miles. The university hospital complex is about 4.6 miles, the main university campus about 5.2, and downtown Gainesville about 6.

Put together, that is a specific kind of Gainesville address. Not an exurban commuter location where you drive twenty-five minutes for groceries, but the southwest quadrant, where the hospitals, the retail and the newer housing stock all are and the county's two largest employers are a short drive. If you work in healthcare or at the university, this is the side of town people choose for that reason.

The honest tradeoff comes with every address in that quadrant: Archer Road is the busiest commercial corridor in the county and traffic around Butler Plaza is a known local complaint, especially either side of a semester starting. Being close to it is the amenity and the cost in one. Against that, the land backs onto low, undeveloped ground rather than more rooftops.

On schools, Alachua County Public Schools serves the whole county, so the district is not in question. The attendance zones are, and we would rather say so than guess: zones are assigned by address, these addresses were only assigned in the summer of 2026, and the streets do not physically exist yet. Once your lot has a real address, run it through the district's own school locator, and if you are buying for a specific school make it a written condition.

Insuring a house here, in plain terms

Florida insurance deserves its reputation, but that reputation is built on the coasts, and this is not a coastal site. Gainesville sits roughly sixty-five miles inland from either coast, far enough that the wind-borne-debris requirements and windstorm pricing that dominate Gulf and Atlantic premiums do not apply the same way. That is a real structural advantage of north-central Florida.

Being mapped outside the special flood hazard area matters concretely too: a lender cannot require a flood policy on a house outside it. You can still buy one voluntarily, and plenty of sensible buyers near a prairie basin would. Voluntary coverage outside the mapped area normally costs a fraction of a mandated policy inside it.

None of that exempts you from the statewide market, which has been volatile for years in inland counties as much as coastal ones, so budget for it as a real line item. Get a quote on the actual house, with its actual roof, before you are committed: on new construction the roof is new and the build standard is current, which usually prices better than an older house. We have not published a county average premium because we could not source a current, properly dated one for Alachua County, and a made-up figure is worse than none.

Buying new construction with someone on your side

The person at the sales desk in a builder's model home works for the builder. They are often genuinely helpful, and they are also paid to represent the party on the other side of your contract. You are entitled to your own representation, and on new construction it generally costs you nothing extra, because builders budget for a buyer's agent whether or not you bring one.

The part that catches people is timing. Most builders will only recognise your agent if that agent is named from your very first visit or registration. Walk into a model alone on a Saturday, give your details at the desk, and in many cases you have given away the right to representation for the rest of the transaction. If you want someone reading the contract and pushing for the incentives that are genuinely available, arrange it before you tour.

A pre-construction contract is also not a resale contract, and on a community this early that difference is the whole game. The deposit structure and whether your money is at risk, the specification allowances and what counts as an upgrade, what happens if the schedule slips, whether the price is locked or adjustable, what the warranty actually covers and for how long, and whether you can have your own inspector in before drywall are all negotiable and all worth reading closely. On a subdivision that has not platted, add one more: what happens to your contract if the plat, the lot numbering or the lot boundary changes between signing and closing. That clause is rarely in your favour by default.

Communities it is easy to confuse

Gainesville search results around this name are messy. The adjoining Finley Woods is a different community with its own builders, association and district assessment, and most of what you read online for the word Finley in Gainesville is about it rather than this project. In the records this project appears both as Finley Reserve and as Finley Reserve Phase 1A, the same thing at different scopes. Unrelated communities elsewhere also use a Finley name, so check the county and city before you trust a listing page.

The rule in this corridor: compare the assessments and the tax line as carefully as the square footage. Two houses a mile apart here can carry very different annual obligations depending on whether their subdivision has a district.

Questions