Selling now in LaBelle, FL
Caloosa Cove
144 lots inside the City of LaBelle
The city cut its tax rate three years running while its fire assessment rose about 456 percent in a single year, from about $57.81 a home to about $321.38. Not one of the 144 lots is in a flood zone by any method, and about 80 percent sit in the 500-year band no determination reports. The whole carrying cost is below.
- Area
- LaBelle, FL
- Platted lots
- 144
- Standing homes
- 52
- City assessments
- About $509
At a glance
Caloosa Cove fast facts
Every figure here comes from the state revenue department's own taxing authority tables for this county across three tax years, verified line by line against rendered tax bills including one for a parcel in this community, the county roll and parcel geometry tested against the dissolved city limits three ways with a county-wide control, the city's own adopted budgets and assessment rate schedules across three fiscal years, the county board's adopted budget across twenty-one assessment funds, water control district rates, federal disaster, assistance and flood-claim files, and federal flood mapping cross-checked against the county's own copy. Where two official sources disagree we publish the disagreement, and on this page that happens four separate times.
- Area
- City of LaBelle, Hendry County
- Size
- 144 lots in one recorded plat
- Standing homes
- 52, with 91 lots still builder-held
- Tax rate
- About 20.85 mills inside the city
- City assessments
- About $509 a year, fire, police, parks
- What fire did
- Up about 456 percent in one year
- City tax rate over the same period
- Cut three years running
- In a flood zone
- None of the 144, by any of three methods
- In the 500-year band
- About 80 percent of the lots
- Vacant lots
- Cheaper in the city than outside it
- District charges
- None, no district and no water control levy
- Published school zones
- None exist, at any vintage
- Association dues
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
- Current pricing and homes left
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
Figures come from the current roll and county map services, state taxing authority tables, the city's and county's own adopted budgets, and federal disaster and claim records, all as of September 2026. Every rate quoted here is the gross rate before the early-payment discount, for the reason given below. The city's residential refuse rate, association dues, regulator-published insurance premiums, wind design data and a school assignment could not be obtained, and none appears in any figure here. All details are subject to change without notice.
Two identical houses show different amounts for the same flat charge.
The county tax bill has a column headed Charged, and it is not the levy. It is the levy net of whatever early-payment discount that owner actually took that year, which runs from four percent in November down to nothing in March. So two identical homes in the same district in the same year print different dollar figures for a nominally flat per-parcel charge, differing by up to about 4.17 percent, purely because their owners paid in different months. Any comparison of bills here that does not correct for that is wrong. Every figure on this page is the gross rate.
Where it is
Deep interior south Florida, on the Caloosahatchee about 45 miles inland from the Gulf and 40 miles west of the lake, inside the city limits rather than in the surrounding county. One recorded plat, one builder, no phases and no district. The river's mapped floodplain does not reach the community, though most of it sits in the shaded band just outside that floodplain, so ask which lots back onto the low ground.
How to buy in Caloosa Cove without leaving money on the table
The person at the builder's sales desk works for the builder. You can have a Florida agent on your side instead, touring with you, reading the contract and the city's own adopted assessment resolutions line by line, and pushing for every incentive, upgrade and closing-cost credit the builder will give. It costs you nothing: on new construction the builder already budgets your agent's fee whether you bring one or not. The one catch is timing. You usually need your own agent from the very first visit, or the builder will not recognise them and you lose it. Start here and we will set it up.
Set up a tourWhat a local would tell you
The city cut its rate three years running and the fire charge went up 456 percent
Take the two movements together, because separately each one is misleading. The city's tax rate went 5.2500, then 5.1414, then 5.0000 mills. Over the same period its fire assessment per home went about $57.81, then about $57.81, then about $321.38. That is roughly 456 percent in a single year on the fire line, against three consecutive genuine rate cuts. The city's own budget corroborates it exactly: the fire revenue line went from about $216,878 to about $1,084,327, up 400 percent, in the same year the per-unit rate moved.
The reason it is invisible is structural rather than sneaky. A flat per-unit assessment is not a rate. It appears on no millage table, it does not fall when millage falls, and it does not scale with what your house is worth. The city's other three assessments, police at about $62.40, recreation at about $125.00 and street lighting at about $35.52 where the street is lit, have all been flat across the same three years and their budget lines confirm it. Fire is the one that moved, and it moved a long way.
So the whole picture on a median home, homesteaded, is about $4,026 of property tax plus about $509 of city assessments, so roughly $4,534 to $4,570 on the tax bill. There is no community development district here, no water control district levy, no county solid waste assessment and no association dues on the roll. Household refuse is billed on the city utility bill instead and its residential rate is published nowhere we could reach, so it appears in no figure on this page.
Now the comparison that everyone runs and gets partly right. For a finished house, being inside the city costs about $968 a year more, not the full five-mill difference of about $1,189, because an unincorporated parcel carries about $221 more in separately-billed charges: county solid waste, mosquito control, a county fire charge and a local benefit unit. Strip solid waste out of that comparison and the in-city parcel actually pays more in non-tax charges than the unincorporated one, despite already paying five extra mills.
And for a vacant lot the answer inverts outright. A vacant lot here costs about $262.65 a year to hold. A comparable vacant lot two miles away outside the city costs about $405.39, roughly 54 percent more, at five mills less. The break-even is around $44,000 of taxable value, and every unsold lot in this community sits well below it. That is why the builder is carrying 91 lots inside a city rather than outside one, and it saves it roughly $13,000 a year at current values. If you are buying a lot to hold rather than a house to live in, the usual Florida intuition is exactly backwards here.
One county-wide structure worth understanding before you shop the alternatives, because it is where the real money is. In the big interior subdivisions nearby, the non-tax charges rival or exceed the property tax itself. On one median lot the assessments come to about $610.05 against about $614.04 of tax, and the water control district that drives it went from $250 to $325 to $425 an acre in two years, up about 70 percent, with no vote of the general electorate and no line on any millage table. A buyer reading this county's published millage and computing a bill is off by roughly 100 percent in those communities. This one has none of that.
Finally, a naming trap that costs people money in this county. One large area shares a single postal name across two different tax districts. One of them pays a district levy of about 3.1454 mills, roughly $758 a year on a median home, and the other does not. That district is also the mirror image of what the phrase trains buyers to expect: it levies property tax rather than an assessment, and it carries no bonds and no debt service at all, with a rate that has swung from 4.3250 to 3.1454 mills in four years. And a mailing address in this town is not evidence of being in the town: more than a thousand parcels outside the city carry it.
So ask four things in writing before you contract: the city's fire, police and recreation assessments for the coming year rather than the current ones, given what fire just did; the city's residential refuse rate, which is on the utility bill and in no tax record; whether the specific lot is served by street lighting, which adds a line; and the association's dues and budget, since the common tracts here are still in the builder's name and no association appears as an owner.
Find out what the city will charge next year
The fire assessment moved about 456 percent in one step, and it is on no millage table.
The record
No single-family tax bill for this community exists yet, and the roll says 52 houses sold on the same day
The rate on a home here totals about 20.8461 mills and it sums from ten named authorities: the county at about 6.7700, the city at about 5.0000, a hospital authority at about 3.2800 with its own debt levy at about 0.2200, three school levies totalling about 5.3460, and three regional water management levies totalling about 0.2301. Unincorporated county in this area runs about 15.8461. The median home here is assessed at about $237,749, and the homestead exemption saves about $930.53 a year.
One mechanical note on that exemption, because it gets oversold. The indexed second tier moved the homestead benefit by about $10.68 from one year to the next. The indexation is real and automatic, and at this value it is worth about a tenth of one percent of the bill. For scale, the city's fire assessment moved by about $264 in the same period.
Now the thing that makes this community hard to price from public records, and it is worth knowing before you rely on any figure you are shown. No single-family tax bill for this community exists yet. Every parcel here was vacant on the assessment date, so every bill ever issued for a lot in this subdivision is a vacant-lot bill, and they were paid by the builder. The one we read came to about $262.65 gross. That means nobody, including us, can show you an actual finished-home bill from this address. The assembled figure above is built from the certified rates applied to the roll's own median, not read off a bill.
The roll has a second quirk that will mislead anyone building a sales series. It bulk-stamps about 52 houses here as having sold on a single day, which is a data artefact of how the transfer was recorded rather than a market event. Any sale-pace or price series for this community built from that field is meaningless.
On the county's own published mapping there is a gap worth naming. The county publishes 15 assessment unit polygons while its own budget funds 21. Missing from the map are solid waste, two fire districts, mosquito control, both recreation districts and all three water control districts, which between them account for most of the non-tax money in this county. The fire district appears in the mapping as two unattributed lines. None of it applies to this community, but it does mean that checking what a parcel elsewhere in this county is subject to, by looking at the county's map, returns a confidently incomplete answer.
And a permit note, since you may be shown one. The county's own permit-adjacent dataset contains zero records for this community, because the city runs its own building department and permits its own construction. That same county dataset does establish one useful piece of local context: about 19 percent of dwellings permitted in the county are mobile-home set-ups. Nothing on this page about construction pace comes from permits.
What to ask for that is not published: the city's residential refuse rate for the address; the coming year's fire, police and recreation assessments; the association's dues, budget and whether the common tracts have been conveyed; the school assignment confirmed with the district; and a complete November bill for a finished home in this city, since none exists for this subdivision.
The area
Thousands of storm claims, eleven houses ever inspected above thirty thousand dollars
The storm record here is the clearest example we have found of registrations and damage being two different things. This town's postcode has filed about 4,672 federal assistance registrations across every major storm since 2004, including about 2,041 after the 2017 hurricane alone. Across all of it, exactly eleven homes in this postcode have ever been inspected at more than $30,000 of damage. The mean inspected damage per storm has never once exceeded about $1,700 and has fallen in every event since 2005.
The two most recent big storms make the point sharply. The 2022 hurricane that destroyed the coast 45 miles west produced a mean inspected damage here of about $425.68. The 2024 storm produced about $140.89. People here register in large numbers and are found to have small losses. That is a real and useful pattern, and it says the risk profile is broad shallow wind and tree-fall rather than catastrophic structural damage.
On the flood side the whole county is small and the losses are concentrated elsewhere. This county has 132 federal flood insurance claims in the entire history of the programme, of which only 40 have ever been paid anything, about $741,700 in total. About 78 percent of them are in the lakeside town at the other end of the county. This town's own postcode has 21 claims and about $128,143 paid, ever, across half a century, against those 4,672 assistance registrations. The 2024 season produced eight claims county-wide that paid nothing at all.
For this community specifically the flood answer is unusually clean. Zero of the 144 lots are in a special flood hazard area, whether measured by any overlap, by the centre of the lot, or by majority of lot area, and the county's own layer and the live federal layer return the same zero. The spread between methods is exactly zero, which is rare enough that it is worth stating plainly. There is no surge exposure: the site is 45 miles inland from the Gulf and 40 miles west of the lake, well clear of the lake's dike. The mechanism that matters here is river flooding and rainfall ponding, and the river's mapped floodplain does not reach the community.
Here is the part a flood determination will not tell you. About 115 of the 144 lots, roughly 80 percent, sit in the 0.2 percent annual chance band, the shaded 500-year floodplain. That is not a special flood hazard area, it carries no lender mandate and no insurance requirement, and it will not appear on a standard determination as a flood zone. It is still a mapped hazard area on the effective map, adjoining the river's high-hazard zone. Flood cover outside a mandated zone is usually inexpensive, and it is worth pricing rather than assuming you do not need it.
One neighbourhood comparison that a determination certificate cannot show you. A community half a mile away in the same city is dry because it was filled and then removed from the map by two federal letters. This one is dry as originally mapped. On a lender's paperwork those two situations look identical. They are not: one depends on engineered fill and a federal determination, the other on the map as drawn. Worth knowing too that of the county's 80 map change determinations, five were denied, and three of those five are in this city, which filed only 24 in total. Roughly one in eight city filings failed.
Map activity here is also accelerating, which is worth watching. About 27 of the county's 80 determinations closed in the last two years against a long-run average of about two a year, a fourfold acceleration, and the first ever effective map revision on the county-wide map took effect earlier this year. The effective map itself dates from 2015, so it is eleven years old. No preliminary or proposed county-wide revision is published.
Two published-data gaps to know about. The county publishes 83 feature services and searches across all of them for wind speed, wind-borne debris, exposure category, storm and surge return nothing at all. And there is no school attendance boundary layer: the county publishes a single point layer of school locations, last edited four and a half years ago. The district also states that schools at the other end of the county are not zoned by home address at all. We therefore assert no design wind speed and no school assignment. Note that this city runs its own building department, so the wind figure is the city's determination rather than the county's, and neither publishes it.
What you need to know
Buying new construction with someone on your side
Representation is free and the timing is the catch, as above. It is worth having here because the numbers that move at this address are flat city assessments that appear on no millage table, and there is no finished-home tax bill in this subdivision for anyone to show you. Both are things an agent can get in writing from the city and the builder rather than inferred from published data.
On ownership, the screen most people run comes back clean and is genuinely clean at this address while being the wrong question for the county. Institutional single-family rental operators return zero parcels across this county, with a seventeen-county control returning nearly 1,800 for one operator, 378 for another and 269 for a third, so the screen works and the zero is real. But in the big interior subdivision nearby a single local holding company owns about 1,455 of roughly 7,393 vacant lots, close to 20 percent, the top 26 owners hold about 30 percent, about 30 percent of lots are owned from outside Florida and 212 are owned from outside the country. That is land banking, no brand screen can see it, and it is the single biggest variable in what this area looks like in a decade. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, developer, contractor or land-holding entity, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean.
A caution about the federal flood file if you check it yourself. All 132 claims in this county resolve to 14 distinct coordinate pairs, because the public file rounds locations coarsely. Anyone telling you which streets in this county flood, from that file, is reporting rounding rather than history. The postcode level is the finest resolution the data actually supports.
The rest is the same everywhere: hire your own independent inspector at pre-drywall, again at final walkthrough, and once more before the one-year warranty expires. Given that neither the county nor the city publishes wind data, ask the builder in writing what design wind speed and opening protection the plans are built to, and ask your insurer what the mitigation credit is worth. Since most of this community sits in the shaded band next to the river's hazard zone, price flood cover rather than skipping it, and ask about pad elevation against the crown of the street. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Centex Homes, any homebuilder, any developer of Caloosa Cove, the City of LaBelle, or Hendry County. The builder is identified here because it is a builder of this community, which is a statement of fact and not a representation of any relationship. Community names and marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. Subdiview is operated by a real estate broker licensed in Illinois. We are not your agent, we do not represent you, and we perform no real estate brokerage services in this state. No one at Subdiview is licensed in this state. If you join an interest list, your information is referred to a real estate professional licensed in the state where the property is located, who will contact you directly. We are compensated by that professional's brokerage, not by you. Pricing, plans, inventory, district, tax, flood and approval details on this page carry the dates shown, are as published, proposed or reported rather than committed, and are subject to change without notice.
Questions and answers
Caloosa Cove FAQ
What is Caloosa Cove?
It is a 144-lot community inside the City of LaBelle, in the Lake Okeechobee interior of Hendry County, with 52 homes standing and about 91 lots still held by the builder. It is entirely within the city limits, which we measured three separate ways with every one of the 144 parcels agreeing, and that matters here because in this county a LaBelle postal address is not evidence of being in the city at all. More than a thousand parcels a couple of miles away carry the same mailing address and are not in the city.
What does it cost to own here each year?
On the median home, with homestead granted, roughly $4,534 to $4,570 on the tax bill: about $4,026 of property tax at about 20.85 mills, plus about $509 of city assessments for fire, police and recreation. There is no community development district here, no water control district levy, no county solid waste assessment and no association dues on the roll. Household refuse is billed separately on the city utility bill and its rate is not published anywhere we could reach, so it is in no figure on this page. Without homestead the tax bill runs roughly $5,465 to $5,500.
The city keeps cutting its tax rate. Is the bill going down?
No, and this is the sharpest finding on the page. The city rate went from 5.2500 to 5.1414 to 5.0000 mills across three years, a genuine cut each time. Over the same period the city's fire assessment per home went from about $57.81 to about $57.81 to about $321.38, an increase of roughly 456 per cent in a single year. The city's own budget confirms it: the fire revenue line went from about $216,878 to about $1,084,327, up 400 per cent, while police, recreation and street lighting stayed essentially flat. A flat charge is not a rate, so it appears on no millage table and does not fall when millage falls.
Is it cheaper to buy outside the city?
For a finished house yes, by about $968 a year, which is less than the five-mill difference suggests because the unincorporated parcel carries about $221 more in separately-billed charges including county solid waste. For a vacant lot the answer flips completely: a lot here costs about $262.65 a year to hold and a comparable lot two miles outside the city costs about $405.39, roughly 54 per cent more, at five mills less. The break-even is around $44,000 of taxable value. Strip solid waste out of the comparison and the in-city parcel actually pays more in non-tax charges than the unincorporated one does, despite already paying five extra mills.
Is it in a flood zone?
No, and for once every method agrees. Zero of the 144 lots are in a special flood hazard area whether you count any overlap, the centre of the lot, or majority of lot area, and the county's own layer and the live federal layer return the same zero. That is genuinely unusual: in most communities we have looked at, the answer swings eightfold or twelvefold depending on the rule. What almost nobody will tell you is the next answer.
So what is the flood caveat?
About 115 of the 144 lots, roughly 80 per cent, sit in the 0.2 per cent annual chance band, the shaded 500-year floodplain. That is not a special flood hazard area, it triggers no lender mandate and no insurance requirement, and it will not show up on a standard flood determination as a flood zone at all. It is nonetheless a mapped hazard area on the effective map, adjoining the river's high-hazard zone. Worth knowing too that a neighbouring community half a mile away is dry because it was filled and then removed from the map by federal letter, while this one is dry as originally mapped. A lender's determination cannot tell those two situations apart.
Before you walk into a sales office
Get your inside track on Caloosa Cove
We will connect you with a real estate professional licensed in Florida who represents you rather than the seller, who can register you before your first visit, and who will get you the answers this page could not: the city's fire, police and recreation assessments for the coming year, its residential refuse rate, whether the specific lot is on a lit street, the association's dues and the conveyance status of the common tracts, the school assignment confirmed with the district, and what the builder will actually give on incentives at your price point.
It costs nothing, creates no brokerage relationship by itself, and does not obligate you to anything.