Lake Placid, Florida.
Typical home $236,774 (-1.4% in a year), asking rent $1,511 (+1.3%). Sebring-Avon Park, FL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$713 (+135%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $3,391 -1%
- $240,165$236,774 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $46,286 +24%
- $190,488$236,774 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Lake Placid$1,243
- Florida$1,970
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 16 years.
Typical home values in Lake Placid, FL fell 1.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Lake Placid, FL rose 1.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Lake Placid runs $127/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $266 in May 2024.
That is $1,638 a month against $1,511 rent: a $1,243 mortgage payment, plus $142 property tax and $253 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Lake Placid
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,638
- Renting$1,511
- Mortgage only$1,243
Property tax · $142/mo 0.72% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Highlands County, FL
Insurance & upkeep · $253/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Lake Placid, Highlands County, Florida
Lake Placid is a town of 2,360 people in Highlands County. Half its households earn more than $47,018 a year and half less, against $54,897 across Highlands County. Unemployment in Highlands County was 6.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in construction, then restaurants and hotels.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Lake Placid is a small town in Highlands County, Florida, built among lakes in the middle of the state. Household incomes here run below the county's, and typical home values and rents sit in a middle range for Florida. Winters are mild, with little or no snow, and summers are hot, with a good deal of rain across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in the building trades, in restaurants, hotels and entertainment, in farming, forestry and mining, and in a range of other services. Among the larger workplaces in town are Winn-dixie, the supermarket, and Heartland Metals, which makes machinery and equipment for rolling mills. Jobs across Highlands County have slipped slightly from the year before, and unemployment there has risen a little over the past year.
Things to do. Water is close at hand. Lake June in Winter Scrub State Park, a protected area, lies in or beside town, as do Lake Clay and Lake McCoy. Lake Istokpoga is a short drive away, and Sebring International Raceway, the race track, is a longer drive.
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- 1,009households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 9%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Highlands County had 28,704 jobs in 2025, 0.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 75° and lows near 48°; warmest in August, with highs near 93° and lows near 71°. About 54 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Archbold Bio Station weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lake Placid
- Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.Supermarket62
- Heartland MetalsRolling mill machinery and equipment, metalworking, manufacturing49
- Lake PlacidMail and parcel delivery42
- Southern Life Assisted Living & Memory Care CommunityAssisted-living facilities without on-site nursing care facilities38
- Wawa SiteConvenience store36
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 5 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 227 people in all. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Strong windVery high
- HurricanesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Lake Placid’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Highlands County and the Sebring-Avon Park, FL metro.
Lake Placid home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lake Placid$236,774
- Florida$375,361
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Lake Placid listings, and the typical home goes pending in 78 days — the market is roughly in balance.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Lake Placid24.26%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Lake Placid78
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Lake Placid251
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Lake Placid39
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Lake Placid$268,845
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Lake Placid95.03%
Zip codes with a Lake Placid address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lake Placid — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.