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Due North ▲ The Florida Landlord Brief — a weekly read on Florida rentals, from True North Managed · Orlando & Tampa.

Hi again — a quiet week in the Atlantic, which is exactly why I want to spend it on hurricane season.

Hillsborough County redrew its evacuation zones for 2026, and the county's own summary buries the part that matters: some areas that weren't in an evacuation zone at all are now in Zone E. Not a bump from one zone to a worse one — from no zone at all to a zone. Zone A expanded in some areas too, and a batch of parcels slid from Zone D up to Zone C. The county's write-up doesn't name neighborhoods; local reporting does. A large piece of New Tampa, which sat outside the zones entirely, is now in Zone E, and Apollo Beach and Town 'n' Country picked up more Zone A.

Nothing changed about the houses. NOAA refreshes its storm-surge model every few years, the county re-ran every parcel against the new data, and the map came out different. That's the part that gets people — owners re-check their zone when they buy or renovate. Almost nobody re-checks it because a modeler updated a dataset.

And read the county's reason for the Zone E additions, because it isn't the one you'd assume. It isn't that water is now modeled into the living room. It's that some of those neighborhoods hang off a couple of major roads, and if a big storm makes those roads impassable, search and rescue can't get in. It's an access problem, not an inundation problem — which changes when you leave, not whether you flood. Same order, different reason, and the reason is the part your tenant will ask about.

Which is why this lands hardest if you own from out of state. There is no notice for this. Nobody mails you a zone change, and your tenant isn't going to call you about it. If you're a thousand miles away and someone asked you today whether your rental sits in an evacuation zone, you'd tell them what was true when you bought it — and for some of you, that answer is now wrong.

The ten-minute version: pull up the county's evacuation lookup tool — it's called HEAT — and type in your property's address. Not your old zone from memory. The address. If the answer changed, you want to know that now, in the second week of July, while the Atlantic is empty and you have time to do something calm about it: tell your tenant, and put the zone in writing. On the obligation question — an evacuation order is aimed at the people in the building, not at you. You cannot make a tenant leave, and you shouldn't try. What you can do is tell them, in writing, before the season, which zone they're in and where the county posts orders. If you're buying, pull the zone before you write the offer; it takes five seconds and it moves your insurance math.

One thing the zone doesn't do: it is not your FEMA flood zone. Different map, different agency. A change to your evacuation zone will not move your flood premium and is not a reason to call your insurance agent. Evacuation is about when you go; flood zone is about what you pay.

NOAA is calling for a below-normal season this year, and there's nothing forming out there today. Use the quiet. August is when it stops being quiet.

If your properties are in Orlando, don't file this one under "Tampa problem." Your version is the flood map, not storm surge. And the FEMA number is the one to carry around: over the last decade, nearly a third of flood insurance claims — 29% — came from outside the high-risk zones. Being in Zone X has never meant "won't flood." It means "wasn't modeled to." Same ten minutes, different map: pull your address on FEMA's flood map service center and see what your parcel is actually rated.

While we're here, one thing that's easy to skip and expensive to skip. Since October of last year, Florida has required a flood disclosure on residential leases of a year or longer — statute 83.512. It has to be its own separate document, not a clause buried in the lease, and it asks you to say whether you've had flood damage during your ownership, whether you've filed a flood claim including with the NFIP, and whether you've taken federal flood assistance. Most owners treat it as one more piece of paper. It isn't. If you skip it and the tenant later takes a flood loss the statute counts as substantial — and it defines that narrowly, as damage running to half or more of the value of the tenant's own belongings — they can terminate the lease with written notice within 30 days of the loss, and you refund what they've paid in advance. A form you didn't hand over becomes an exit they didn't have. If you want the wider pre-season checklist, our guide to preparing a rental for hurricane season is the one I'd read alongside it.

Two numbers before I let you go. Citizens' 2026 personal-lines cuts have been in force since July 1 — an average 8.8% off homeowners multiperil and 5.5% off wind-only — so if your policy renews after that date, it reprices. Pull the declarations page and look, rather than assuming. That relief is on the personal-lines side; the commercial-residential market has not been moving the same direction, so don't read a headline about a rate cut as one that reaches every policy you hold. And the 30-year fixed sat at 6.49% on July 9, six basis points up from the week before and still below the 6.72% it carried a year ago.

If you own from out of state and the zone is really just one of a dozen things you can't check on from a thousand miles away, that's most of what we do. Reply and tell me where the property is. I'll tell you straight whether it needs someone local or whether you can keep handling it yourself.

Worth a read if you've got a few minutes: our July Orlando market update (Orlando is firming faster than Tampa — the reverse of what most people assume), a walk through DSCR loans for Florida rentals if you're financing from out of state and tired of documenting your personal income, and what's actually different about Pasco County if you own north of the Hillsborough line.

That's it for this week. Go look up your address.

— The True North Team

General info for Florida rental owners — not legal, tax, or insurance advice.