Selling now in Newberry, FL
Avalon Woods
559 lots in the City of Newberry, Alachua County
There is no community development district here, and we proved it four ways rather than repeating a sales line. What makes that worth something is the control: this city created three districts in a fifteen-week window, once this community was already three-quarters built, and one of them opens about a mile and a half away next month under a builder already working inside these streets. The whole carrying cost, including the four-mill gap to the next small city over, is below.
- Area
- Alachua County, FL
- Lots
- 559
- District
- None
- Tax rate
- About 21.19 mills
At a glance
Avalon Woods fast facts
Every figure here comes from the county appraiser's certified rate sheet, parcel roll, sales records and permit file, the state cadastral file, the school district's own boundary service, the state insurance regulator's published county series, and federal and state mapping queried directly with controls in both directions. Where two official sources disagree, we publish the disagreement rather than picking one.
- Area
- City of Newberry, Alachua County
- Jurisdiction
- Inside the city, not the county
- Size
- 559 platted lots, about 95 acres
- Stage
- Selling in the final phase
- Community development district
- None, checked four ways
- Total tax rate
- About 21.19 mills
- Unincorporated county rate
- About 18.76 mills
- The nearest small city
- About 25.19 mills
- What that gap is
- A county levy this city does not pay
- First bill to second bill
- A step of about $5,700 to $6,000
- County insurance average
- About $2,525, ninth lowest of 67
- Flood
- Minimal hazard on every parcel
- Homeowner association dues
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
- Current pricing and lots left
- Ask before you contractGet pricing
Figures come from the county property appraiser's preliminary rate table and parcel roll, its recorded sales and permit extracts, the state cadastral file, the state insurance regulator's published county premium series as of the first quarter of this year, the school district's published attendance-zone service, and federal flood and state environmental and emergency mapping, all as of September 2026. Rates shown are preliminary and final certification follows the autumn hearings. Recorded declarations, association dues, the plats, the city's utility tariffs and the city's own impact and connection fees could not be obtained and none is published here. All details are subject to change without notice.
The mailing address is not the jurisdiction, and here that is provable.
We tested all 470 parcel centroids on the roll at the time of the pull against the federal incorporated-place boundary and got 470 of 470 inside the city, with ten known city halls returning their correct cities and five known unincorporated points returning nothing. The trap is real: the same builder runs another community with the identical mailing city that is not in any city at all and is zoned to three different schools. Even the street name here exists in two separate municipalities twelve miles apart.
Where it is
Western Alachua County, on the state road that runs from Gainesville out toward the Gulf side, in a small city of roughly eight thousand people with its own police, fire and utilities. Gainesville and the university are about half an hour east and the spring runs on the river are twenty minutes north. Walk the older streets as well as the new ones, because both sit inside the same city limits and pay the same rate.
How to buy in Avalon Woods 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 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
No district here, in a city that built three of them the moment this one was finished
Every builder in Florida says "no CDD fees" when it is true, and a fair number say it when it is not quite, so the phrase has stopped carrying information. Here is the version with work behind it, checked four ways. The county appraiser's complete enumeration of ad valorem taxing authorities, for the entire county, contains no community development district, no dependent district, and no drainage or lighting district of any kind. Every one of the 559 parcels carries the plain municipal taxing code in the state cadastral file, the same code the 1990s subdivision across the road carries. The chronology rules it out anyway: this place was platted and permitted in 2021 and the city adopted its first district ordinance three years later. And the builder makes the claim itself.
What turns that from an absence into a finding is the control, and it is a good one. This city of roughly eight thousand people established three community development districts in a fifteen-week window, covering several hundred acres and roughly twelve hundred homes between them. One has a registered district manager, a statutory website and a scheduled board meeting. It covers about 350 homes, sits about a mile and a half from here, opens next month, and is being built by one of the two builders already working inside these streets. The very same searches that surface those districts surface nothing on these parcels. That is the difference between "we could not find one" and "there is not one".
It is also a difference worth real money. Districts in this county that publish their numbers levy a couple of hundred dollars a unit for operations and then stack debt service on top, series by series, so a district bill of two to three thousand dollars a year on top of the property tax, for twenty or thirty years, is ordinary. None of that applies here.
One warning that belongs on any page in this county. A district assessment does not necessarily appear on the tax bill at all. The mature district we examined in this county collects its entire operating levy off the tax roll, billing owners directly, and its own budget documents do not state the collection method for the debt service. A buyer who pulls a tax bill to check for a district and sees nothing has not proved anything, in a community that has one.
And here is our own honest limit, stated where you can see it rather than buried. We could not obtain an actual tax bill for a parcel here: the county collector's public search sits behind a challenge page that refuses automated access, the appraiser's parcel viewer refused us as well, and the state's official register of special districts refused every request we made to it. So the conclusion rests on the county's own enumeration, the taxing code carried by every parcel, the chronology and the working control, which between them are strong. It does not rest on a document reading zero. Ask your agent to pull a real bill for a closed comparable before you write anyway.
So ask three things in writing before you contract: a full tax bill for a finished house on this street showing every ad valorem and non-ad-valorem line; the association's recorded declaration, its current dues and any capital contribution due at closing; and the city's connection and impact fees for the specific plan, which in a town that owns its own utilities is very likely the biggest one-time number nobody quotes you up front.
Get a real tax bill before you compare this to anywhere else
A district bill on a comparable house in this county runs into the thousands a year, and it does not always show up where a buyer thinks to look.
The record
Four mills below the next small city, and 89 per cent of that gap has nothing to do with either city
The total rate here is about 21.19 mills, and it sums exactly from seven named components: the county's operating levy of about 7.21, the library district at about 0.94, the children's services levy at 0.45, the water management district at about 0.27, the two school levies at about 3.25 and about 3.08, and the city's own 6.00. Add those and you get the published total to four decimal places. We ran the same build-up for every jurisdiction in the county and every one of them reconciles to the decimal, which is what lets us say the next part as arithmetic rather than as opinion.
The small city twelve miles south sits at about 25.19 mills, exactly four mills above this one. Only about four hundredths of a mill of that is the difference in what the two cities levy. The other 3.57 mills, about 89 per cent of the gap, is a county law enforcement levy that residents of three of the county's small cities pay on top of their city millage, and that residents of this city and five others do not. That term is required to make those three towns reconcile and forbidden to make the other six reconcile, so it is not a guess. On $350,000 of taxable value the four-mill gap is about $1,400 a year, of which about $1,249 is that one levy. Two small rural cities the same distance from the same highway, and one has a structural advantage that appears in no listing and no builder disclosure.
Against the unincorporated county the city does cost more, but less than the folklore says: about 2.43 mills, or about $851 a year on $350,000, and for that you get municipal police, fire, water, sewer and electric rather than county service. The county also funds unincorporated fire through a flat assessment rather than millage, so the millage comparison understates what the county costs.
Now the counterweight, and we are publishing it as a question rather than as a finding, because that is what the evidence supports. This city runs its own electric utility, and at a thousand kilowatt hours a month it bills about $165.51 against about $123.12 for the neighbouring city's utility and about $119.00 for the rural co-op before its fuel adjustment. If a house here is on the city system, that is roughly $509 a year more than the neighbouring city and about $558 more than the co-op, which is about 60 per cent of the entire city property tax premium, arriving on a utility bill where no tax comparison will ever catch it. The catch is that the city utility covers only about five square miles of a considerably larger city, and we could not confirm from any source we could reach which utility serves these streets. If it is the co-op, the whole finding flips sign and becomes an advantage. Ask to see an actual electric bill for a finished house here. It is a five-minute question with a five-hundred-dollar answer.
One more piece of arithmetic that catches nearly every new-construction buyer in this state, and it is unusually sharp here. The appraiser carried developer-held lots in the recent phases at a just value of exactly $45,000, which is about 68 per cent of the roughly $66,000 the builder paid for a finished lot in its most recent takedown. At this rate a $45,000 vacant lot bills about $954 for the year. The same lot with a typical finished house on it bills roughly $6,600 to $6,900. So the step between your first tax bill and your second is on the order of $5,700 to $6,000, and it is the mechanism rather than anybody's mistake. Escrow against the finished number from the start.
For context on how fast the ground under this is moving: finished lot cost to the builder went from about $57,100 to about $66,100 in twenty-two months, while a raw platted tract of ninety lots transferred at under $7,000 a lot, an entitlement spread of around $59,000 a lot inside one subdivision. We also checked the agricultural roll-off story that applies in a lot of rural Florida subdivisions and it does not apply here: not one parcel in this community carried an agricultural classification in the years the value history covers. We would rather tell you that than manufacture a finding.
What to ask for that is not published: the city's water, sewer and electric connection fees and any impact fee for the specific plan; which electric utility serves the lot; the association's recorded declaration, dues and closing contribution; a full tax bill for a finished comparable on this street; whether the house is on city sewer or septic, which matters here for reasons in the next section; and the city fire department's staffing model and protection rating, which we could not obtain and which your insurer will price.
The area
A flood map so clean it was never printed, a springs zone stricter than the town named for a spring, and a county the state does not model
We tested all 559 parcel centroids against the federal flood layer. Every one returns an area of minimal flood hazard, and not one is in a special flood hazard area. They all sit on a single panel that was classified as not printed, because the agency determined it contains no special flood hazard area at all. Our controls discriminate three ways, returning special flood hazard on two river crossings, the reduced-risk band on a floodway fringe and minimal hazard on uplands, so the clean answer here is a finding rather than a gap.
Two caveats to hold alongside that. The governing panel became effective twenty years ago and has never been revised, while the comparable community twelve miles east sits on a panel fifteen years newer. And there is not one federal map amendment on record attributed to this city, the nearest being more than six miles away. Read that as a quiet map rather than one that has been actively maintained.
The environmental constraint that actually bites here is not flood, it is water. This community sits inside the river basin management plan and inside a springs priority focus area at the primary protection level. The control that makes the point better than any explanation: the town on the river itself, the one literally named for a spring, is inside the plan area and outside any priority focus area. Anyone here who tells you "we are in the same basin plan as everybody else" has it backwards. The primary focus area is the layer that carries the statutory consequences for onsite sewage treatment and for fertiliser, which is why we said above to confirm whether the house is on city sewer or on septic. The whole area is also inside a designated water resource caution area.
On sinkholes, the honest version. The county carries 81 incident records in the state database, of which about 95 per cent are coded unverified and fewer than half are located precisely enough to place on a parcel at all. There are none inside this community. The nearest is about 1.14 miles away, is unverified, has no recorded event date, and is located only to a section, which is roughly a square mile of ground. That framing is more useful to you than either "no sinkholes here" or "sinkhole country", and both of those things get said about this part of Florida.
On hurricane evacuation, be careful what the data actually says. This county is absent from the state's evacuation zone layer entirely - 44 of Florida's 67 counties are in it and this one is not. Our controls work: four coastal points returned zones and four inland points correctly returned none. So the right reading is that the state does not model surge for a county fifty miles from the Gulf, not that this community was assessed and cleared. We could not run a surge query at all, because the state's queryable surge services turn out to hold a single county's features despite their statewide names.
On insurance we do have a real regulatory number, and we are going to give you the rank rather than an adjective. The county's average homeowners premium including wind is about $2,525, which is the ninth lowest of Florida's 67 counties, about 13 per cent below the statewide median and about 25 per cent below the mean, as reported to the regulator through the first quarter of this year. That is genuinely cheap, though nothing like the coastal spread. One trap worth carrying with you: two counties in Florida, both nearby, publish an excluding-wind average that is higher than their including-wind average, and one of them is otherwise about the fourth cheapest county in the state. Their books are thin enough that a handful of policies move the mean. Pick the wrong column and a cheap county reads expensive. Get a quote on the actual house.
On schools we do have names, from the district's own published boundary service, with three in-county control points each returning a different and correct school and an out-of-county point returning nothing. Currently: Newberry Elementary, Oak View Middle and Newberry High. Two things the brochure will not tell you. The high school is running at about 111 per cent of its permanent capacity, 841 students against 756 places, and every rezoning draft shrinks its zone. And all three of this year's rezoning drafts move this community out of its current elementary school and into a proposed kindergarten-through-eighth campus. There is no draft under consideration in which it stays where it is. Middle and high are unchanged in all three. Two things also do not reconcile and we are not picking a winner: the builder's page states the elementary grade span one way and the district's own descriptor field states it another, and one layer of the district's own service reports the high school's permanent capacity as 56 where two other layers in the same publication report 756. Run the exact address through the district before you rely on any of 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 more than usual here for a reason specific to this community: almost every number that will decide what this house costs you to hold is a number the sales desk does not quote. The connection and impact fees in a town that owns its own utilities. Which electric utility the meter is on, which is worth about $500 a year. The step between the first tax bill and the second. The association's dues. None of those are on a price sheet and all of them are obtainable before you write an offer.
The second reason is comparison shopping. This community has no district and the ones opening around it are being built with them, so when you compare this house against one a mile and a half away next month, the sticker prices will look similar and the carrying costs will not. Compare full annual carrying cost, not price per square foot, and make the other community produce the same tax bill you are going to make this one produce.
On builders, we name only what a primary record supports, and here the record is the county appraiser's own permit file rather than anybody's marketing. D.R. Horton is named on 82 of the permits issued on these parcels and a second national builder is named on 23 more; the rest are recorded generically. We are not naming entities. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean. If that matters to you, ask and we will have it pulled properly rather than repeat a rumour.
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. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign, and read what the purchase agreement says about completion timing, price changes before closing, and dispute resolution.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by D.R. Horton, any homebuilder, any developer of Avalon Woods, the City of Newberry, or Alachua 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 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
Avalon Woods FAQ
What is Avalon Woods?
It is a community of 559 platted lots on about 95 acres inside the City of Newberry, in western Alachua County, about half an hour west of Gainesville. It has been building since 2021 across six phases, with two national builders working in it, and it is well past three-quarters finished. It is selling now, in the last phase, and the county's own permit file records more than sixty permits issued here so far this year.
Does it have a community development district?
No, and we did not take the builder's word for it. Four independent checks agree. The county appraiser's complete list of ad valorem taxing authorities for the whole county contains no district of any kind. Every one of the 559 parcels carries the plain municipal taxing code, the same one the 1990s subdivision across the road carries. The chronology makes it impossible, because this place was platted and permitted in 2021 and the city adopted its first district ordinance three years later. And the builder says so itself. What makes that a proof rather than an absence is the control: the same city created three districts in a fifteen-week window, one of them opens about a mile and a half from here next month under a builder already working inside this community, and all of them are findable. The honest limit is that we could not obtain an actual tax bill showing a zero non-ad-valorem line.
Is the city address more expensive than the county?
Modestly, and far less than people assume. The rate here is about 21.19 mills against about 18.76 in the unincorporated county, so about 2.43 mills more, and for that you get municipal police, municipal fire, and city water, sewer and electric. The comparison that surprises people is the other direction. The small city twelve miles south sits at about 25.19 mills, exactly four mills above this one, and only about four hundredths of a mill of that gap is the difference in what the two cities levy. The rest is a county law enforcement levy charged in some jurisdictions and not others. On $350,000 of taxable value the whole four-mill gap is about $1,400 a year.
Why is my second tax bill so much bigger than my first?
Because your first one is on a vacant lot. The appraiser carried developer-held lots in the recent phases at a just value of exactly $45,000, which is about 68 per cent of what the builder paid for the finished lot. At this rate a $45,000 lot bills about $954. The same lot with a typical finished house bills roughly $6,600 to $6,900, so the step between the first bill and the second is about $5,700 to $6,000. It is not an escrow error. It is how Florida assesses a house that did not exist on the first of January. Escrow against the finished value and the shock disappears.
What about flood and sinkholes?
Flood is about as clean an answer as Florida gives. Every one of the 559 parcels returns an area of minimal flood hazard, none is in a special flood hazard area, and the single federal panel covering them was never physically printed because the agency determined the panel contains no special flood hazard area at all. Two caveats worth knowing: that panel became effective twenty years ago and has never been revised, and there is not a single federal map amendment on record anywhere inside this city, with the nearest more than six miles away. On sinkholes, the county carries 81 records in the state database, about 95 per cent of them unverified and fewer than half located precisely enough to put on a parcel. There are none inside this community, and the nearest is about 1.14 miles away, unverified and located only to a section, which is roughly a square mile.
What should I check that this page could not?
Three things, in order. Which utility serves the house, because the city runs its own electric utility over roughly five square miles of a larger city and the gap to the co-op is worth about $500 a year, and we could not confirm which one these streets are on. The city's own connection and impact fees, very likely the largest one-time item in a municipal-utility town with no district. And the association's recorded declaration and dues, which we did not get and are not going to guess at. Separately, all three current school rezoning drafts move this community out of its present elementary school, so run the exact address through the district rather than trusting a brochure.
Before you walk into a sales office
Get your inside track on Avalon Woods
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: a real tax bill for a finished house on this street showing every line, the city's connection and impact fees for your plan, which electric utility serves the lot, the association's recorded documents and dues, whether the house is on city sewer, 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.