Selling now near Quincy, FL
The Grove
34 lots in unincorporated Gadsden County
There is no fire assessment, no solid waste assessment and no district charge of any kind anywhere in this county, and no debt millage either. Its flood map has never been revised in any of its seven communities since 2009, and more than half its paid flood claims came from outside the hazard area. The whole carrying cost is below.
- Area
- Quincy, FL
- Platted lots
- 34
- Standing homes
- 22
- Tax rate
- 14.4088 mills
At a glance
The Grove fast facts
Every figure below is read from the certified roll, the county's published rate table, its audited financial statements and budget hearing documents, the federal flood and claim files or the state corporate registry. Where a number is not published we say so.
- Area
- Near Quincy, Gadsden County, unincorporated
- Size
- 34 platted lots, 39 parcels in all
- Standing homes
- 22, half of them in the last three years
- Vacant lots
- 16, three of them builder-held
- Tax rate here
- 14.4088 mills
- Inside the county seat instead
- 20.8125, or 44 percent more
- Non-ad-valorem charges
- None, anywhere in this county
- Debt millage
- Zero, county and school both
- Flood map vintage
- 2009, never revised, in any community
- Paid flood claims outside the hazard area
- More than half
- Published school zones
- None, and there is one high school
- Published wind data
- None, at any vintage
- Association dues
- Ask before you contract
- Current pricing and lots left
- Ask before you contract
Not published yet
Not published yet
Location: see The Grove on the map. Figures carry the dates shown and are subject to change.
What this actually costs
A genuinely clean tax bill, and the one cost that is hidden entirely
We have gone through more than a hundred Florida communities and this is one of the very few where the bill is exactly what the millage says. There is no fire assessment, no solid waste assessment, no street lighting district, no municipal service unit, no community development district and no water control district anywhere in this county. We tested that three ways: the tax collector's published material, the county's audited financial statements fund by fund, and the budget hearing documents. None of them names a single assessment, because none exists.
The ad valorem side is equally plain. The total is 14.4088 mills: the county commission at 9.0000, two school levies at 5.3870 between them, and a water management district at about 0.02. Debt millage is zero on both the county and the school side, so the whole thing is operating. On the median house at about $191,194 that is roughly $2,169 a year homesteaded, or about $181 a month in escrow, which is among the lowest all-in figures on this site.
Now the cost that is invisible, and it is the one to chase. This subdivision's stormwater tract is owned by the homeowners association and carries a land value of zero on the roll. The entire cost of the drainage infrastructure sits in association dues that never appear on a tax bill. Every online estimator will show a correct tax figure and a blank where that cost should be. In a county with no assessment mechanism at all, the association is the assessment mechanism. Knowing what it actually charges is how you buy here without leaving money on the table. Get pricing on what is left.
The county rate is close to its ceiling, which is worth understanding for the next decade. The commission's 9.0000 mills is about 90 per cent of the way to the constitutional cap for county operating purposes, and the most recent adoption was about 8.7 per cent above the rolled-back rate. County ad valorem revenue rose from about $14.85 million to about $18.16 million in a single year. There is roughly one mill of headroom left before this county has to find money somewhere other than property tax, and it currently has no assessment machinery built.
The municipality comparison runs the usual direction and the magnitude is unusual. The county seat's own municipal levy of 6.4037 mills is larger than the entire school levy for the county, and being inside it would take the total to 20.8125, about 44 per cent more than this address. The two small towns at three mills would add about 21 per cent. A builder holding a lot at the roll's $16,500 pays about $237.75 a year out here and would pay about $343.41 inside the county seat.
Holding cost is close to nothing here, which shapes the negotiation. The builder's three vacant lots cost about $713 a year in total to hold, and there is no flat charge of any kind on a vacant lot in this county. So there is no carrying-cost pressure working in a buyer's favour. What there is instead is a small local corporation with three lots left and an obvious interest in finishing the subdivision.
One correction on the exemption, because the round number is wrong here too. The $50,000 homestead saves about $585.75 a year on the median house, not the $720.44 the headline rate implies, a gap of about 23 per cent. The difference is exactly the second $25,000 applied against the school levy it cannot reach. At this price point that $135 is real money in an escrow calculation.
So ask four things in writing before you contract: the association's dues, its budget and its reserve position, since the drainage cost lives there and nowhere else; whether the stormwater tract has actually been conveyed to it; a flood determination on the specific lot, because the creek corridor runs along one edge of this subdivision; and the school assignment confirmed with the district, since no boundary geometry exists anywhere.
What almost nobody checks
The county's parcel layer publishes every parcel twice, and the two copies disagree
This is the strangest published dataset we have worked with in Florida. The county parcel layer returns 34,690 records for 17,345 actual parcels. Every parcel is in there twice, and the two copies do not agree with each other on use code, on district, or on geometry. One symptom: 17,343 records carry a commission district and 17,347 carry none, on what should be the same set of parcels.
The duplication hides a second problem underneath it. All 34,690 records carry exactly one distinct taxing district value, and it is the county. The county's own mapping records zero parcels as paying any of the six municipal millages its tax collector publishes. So if you use the county's map to work out whether an address is in a town, the answer is always no, for every address in the county, including the ones that plainly are.
We found a case where that matters in money. A nearby subdivision measures as inside a town by five separate tests, its centre point, its envelope, the town's own land use map, the county's land use map, and streets owned by the town, and it pays zero of that town's 5.1653 mills. Whether that is an annexation the roll has not caught up with or a mapping error, no published document explains. It is a good reason to get any municipality question answered by the city clerk rather than by a map.
The flood picture has a headline number that inverts the truth. Of this county's 2,238 mapped flood polygons, 2,040, or 91.2 per cent, are flagged as special flood hazard. That sounds like almost the whole county. It is not. The entire non-hazard portion of the county is one single polygon of about 109,000 vertices, while the hazard area is shattered into 2,040 small creek-corridor pieces. The 91 per cent is a count of polygons, not a share of land.
What the hazard mapping does not contain is elevations. About 1,953 of the 2,040 hazard polygons, or 95.7 per cent, are the approximate category with no base flood elevation ever determined. The mapped floodplain in this county is substantially unstudied, which is part of why the map has never been revised. Preliminary replacement panels exist and have not been adopted, so construction here is permitted against a 2009 map that has already been superseded in draft.
The claim record argues strongly for buying cover you are not required to buy. Of the 24 paid federal flood claims in this county's history, 13, or 54.2 per cent, were rated outside the hazard area. Counting the three with no zone recorded, it is 16 of 24. The largest payout in the county's history, about $117,041 on a 2024 loss, was on a policy rated outside the hazard area entirely. In this county the mandated zone is where the minority of the paid losses happened.
Two data curiosities worth a sentence, because they tell you how much to trust the file. The federal claim file rates three claims in this county as coastal velocity zones, in a landlocked county about 45 miles from the Gulf, and one record carries a construction date of 1492. None of that changes the risk here. It does change how much weight any single record in that file deserves.
The practical version: the three flood measurement methods disagree for this subdivision because the creek corridor runs along one edge of it, and that edge is the association's stormwater tract. A lot on that side and a lot on the other side are different purchases. Order a determination and an elevation certificate on the specific parcel, price flood cover regardless of what it says, and ask about pad elevation against the crown of the road.
Get the association budget, not just the dues
In a county with no assessments, the association is the assessment.
The record
Half these houses went up in three years, and the builder appears under three different names
The build history is the clearest signal on the roll that this is a live community. Twenty-two houses are standing and eleven of them, exactly half, were finished in the three most recent years of the certified roll. The rest go back to 2010. Deed activity in the legal descriptions runs into current recording, so lots are still moving. Just values on the standing houses run from about $147,397 to about $374,148, with a median of about $191,194.
Ownership is about as unconcentrated as a Florida subdivision gets. Thirty-nine parcels carry 30 distinct owner names. The builder holds three, the association holds the common tract, 26 are individuals or households, and only two parcels are held by any other kind of entity. No non-builder owner holds more than one parcel. There is no concentration story here at all, which in a low-price market is itself worth noting.
County-wide the institutional picture is a hard zero, and it is a checked one. Across about 5,582 single-family parcels in this county, corporate ownership of any kind is about 0.97 per cent and branded institutional rental ownership is zero. We verified the screen works by running the same query shape for entity names and local holders and getting 54, 60 and 4 back, so the zero is real. The largest local holders are small development companies, not rental operators.
Now the roll hygiene, because it decides whether any of this is checkable by a buyer. The builder appears on the roll under three different name strings, none of which matches its registered corporate name exactly, and the appraiser's own notice warns that a recent system migration may have transposed current owner information. So an ownership search here is a starting point and not an answer, and a search on the registered name alone returns nothing.
Subdivision codes are similarly unreliable. Two subdivision codes carrying eleven recently built houses between them exist in the state certified roll and return zero features in the county's own parcel layer, while a third code returns 78. So new construction in this county can be entirely invisible in county mapping while being fully present in the state file. Anyone building a picture of recent activity here from one source alone will get a badly wrong answer.
And a note on what the builder is. It is an active Tallahassee corporation that has been building in this subdivision since the late 2000s, and none of the ten largest national homebuilders owns a parcel in it. Fifteen years in one subdivision is a different track record from a national's regional division, and it cuts both ways: more continuity, less institutional backing behind the warranty. Ask for the corporate registry record and read it.
What to ask for that is not published: the association's dues, budget and reserves, and whether the stormwater tract was conveyed; which side of the creek corridor the specific lot is on, from a determination rather than a map; the school assignment from the district office; the sealed plan's design wind speed; and the builder's warranty terms and who administers them.
The area
Seven thousand storm registrations produced twenty-two serious inspections
This county took the inland core of the 2018 hurricane, and the record shows it. That one storm produced about 6,938 federal assistance registrations here, which is about 94.7 per cent of every registration in the county's entire history. The postcode covering this subdivision accounts for about 2,964 of the county's 7,325 lifetime registrations.
The inspected damage behind those registrations is far smaller than the numbers suggest. Of 7,325 registrations, about 2,550 had any federally verified damage to the house at all, and exactly 22 were inspected above $30,000. That is 0.30 per cent. About 4,775, or 65.2 per cent, produced no verified real-property loss whatsoever. All 22 of the serious inspections came from the 2018 storm.
The 2023 hurricane is a zero here, and the reason is administrative rather than physical. This county is a designated area under that declaration, but the individual assistance programme was never opened for it. Not one household in the county could register, and not one did. So a search of the federal file for that storm returns nothing for this county, which looks like the storm missed it. It did not.
Flood is a very small part of the picture here. Across every federal disaster in this county's history, 38 households reported flood damage. Across 46 years, 39 federal flood insurance claims have been filed. Those are essentially the same number, and both are tiny against 7,325 registrations. The damage mechanism in this county is wind and tree fall, and the paid flood claims that do exist are more than half outside the mandated zone.
On schools the answer is short because of how the district is built. No school attendance boundary layer exists at any vintage, and it is structurally impossible for a high school boundary to exist, because the district operates one comprehensive high school for the whole 516-square-mile county. There are four elementary schools and two middle schools, and their zone lines are a district-office answer. We assert no school assignment on this page.
On wind there is nothing published either. The county's building department publishes its office hours, its permit portal and a fee for one specific permit type, and no design wind speed, no exposure category and no wind-borne debris statement at all. No wind layer appears in any of the 26 mapping services across the county's and the regional council's servers. Get the number from the sealed plans.
On geography, this is the western edge of the Tallahassee commuter shed. The county seat is about forty minutes from the state capital, the rolling shade-tobacco country north of it runs up to the Georgia line, and the median house in this subdivision carries an all-in annual tax of about $2,169. For a house within commuting distance of a state capital and a major university, with no district debt, no assessment of any kind and a stable local builder, that is the trade this address represents.
What you need to know
Buying new construction with someone on your side
Representation costs you nothing and the timing is the catch: your agent generally has to be with you or named at your first contact for the registration to stand. Sort it out before you walk a lot, not after.
Here the single highest-value thing an agent can do is get the association's paperwork. In a county with no fire, solid waste, lighting, district or water control assessment of any kind, the association carries the entire cost of the drainage infrastructure, and the tract it sits on is valued at zero on the roll. Dues, budget, reserves and the conveyance status of that tract are the four numbers that decide what this house actually costs, and none of them is in a public record.
The second is the creek. The three flood measurement methods disagree about this subdivision because a mapped hazard corridor runs along one of its edges. That is not a reason to walk away, it is a reason to know which lot you are buying. A determination and an elevation certificate on the specific parcel settles it, and in this county they are the only reliable flood document that exists.
The third is the builder itself. Ask who administers the warranty, whether it is a third-party policy or the corporation's own promise, and whether it transfers on resale. The corporation here has a fifteen-year record in this one subdivision, which is a real asset, and it is also the entire backing behind the warranty. 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.
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. Since neither the county nor the regional council publishes any wind data, ask the builder in writing what design wind speed and opening protection the plans are sealed to, and ask your insurer what the mitigation credit is worth. Given that more than half this county's paid flood claims came from outside the mandated zone, price flood cover rather than skipping it. Read the limited warranty booklet before you sign.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Chief Cornerstone Construction, any homebuilder, any developer of The Grove, or Gadsden 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
The Grove FAQ
What is The Grove?
It is a 34-lot subdivision in unincorporated Gadsden County, just outside Quincy and about forty minutes west of Tallahassee. The roll carries 39 parcels under it once the adjoining minor subdivision and the stormwater tract are counted. Twenty-two houses are standing, sixteen lots are vacant and three of those are held by the builder, a Tallahassee corporation that has been building here since the late 2000s. Eleven of the 22 houses went up in the three most recent years of the certified roll, so this is an active build rather than a legacy plat.
What does it cost to own here each year?
On the median house, about $191,194 of just value with homestead granted, roughly $2,169 a year, and every dollar of it is property tax. Without homestead the same house runs about $2,755. There is no fire assessment, no solid waste assessment, no street lighting district, no municipal service unit, no community development district and no water control district anywhere in this county, so the non-ad-valorem line is zero. On the ad valorem side the debt millage is also zero: the county and the school board both levy operating millage only.
Is it cheaper here than inside a town?
Yes, and the gap is large because the county rate is already near the cap. The total here is 14.4088 mills. The nearest small towns would add three mills, the county seat would add about 6.4037 for a total of 20.8125, or about 44 per cent more. That county seat's own municipal levy is larger than the entire school levy for the county. The county commission's 9.0000 mills sits about 90 per cent of the way to the constitutional cap for county operating purposes.
So where does the drainage money go if there is no district?
Into association dues that never appear on a tax bill. The stormwater tract in this subdivision is owned by the homeowners association and carries a land value of zero on the roll. Every online tax estimator a buyer uses will therefore show a complete and correct picture of the tax and a completely blank picture of the actual cost of the drainage infrastructure. Ask for the association's dues and its budget in writing before you contract, because in this county that is the number no public record holds.
Is it in a flood zone?
The three measurement methods disagree, which is itself the answer. Counting any overlap at all, the subdivision touches a mapped high-hazard polygon: the creek corridor along its edge, which is the same ground as the association-owned stormwater tract. Counting the centre of the subdivision or the majority of its area, it is entirely outside. There is no 0.2 per cent annual chance band here by any method. What that means practically is that a lot on the creek side and a lot on the far side of this subdivision are not the same purchase, and only a lot-specific determination will tell you which you are buying.
How old is the flood map?
Seventeen and a half years, and it has never been revised. All seven federal flood insurance communities in this county have an initial map date and a current effective date that are the same day in 2009. Preliminary replacement panels exist and have not been adopted, so houses here are being permitted against a map FEMA has already superseded in draft. Separately, about 95.7 per cent of the mapped high-hazard polygons in this county are the approximate category with no base flood elevation ever determined, so even where the map says hazard, it does not say how high.
Before you commit to a lot
Get your inside track on The Grove
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 contact with the builder, and who will get you the answers this page could not: the association's dues, budget and reserves, whether the stormwater tract was conveyed, which side of the creek corridor the lot sits on, the school assignment confirmed with the district, the sealed plan's design wind speed, and what the builder will actually give on the lots it has left.
It costs nothing, creates no brokerage relationship by itself, and does not obligate you to anything.