Volusia County, FL
Subdividing Land in Volusia County, Florida
Much of Deltona's land was laid out decades before it was ever a functioning city -- platted, subdivided, and sold lot by lot to buyers who often never set foot on the property. That history still shapes how subdivision, lot-of-record status, and small legacy lots work in this part of Volusia County today.
This page covers what's specific to Volusia County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.
How Deltona came to be platted before it was a city
Starting in 1962, General Development Corporation -- the company built by the Mackle brothers, who also developed communities like Port Charlotte and Port St. Lucie elsewhere in Florida -- began platting and marketing what would become Deltona as one of the era's large installment-land subdivisions. Lots were laid out on paper in a dense residential grid and sold largely to out-of-state buyers, often sight-unseen, well before the roads, utilities, or any real community infrastructure existed on the ground. Deltona itself didn't incorporate as an actual city until 1995, more than three decades after its lots first went on the market.
This pattern -- known broadly as Florida's mid-20th-century "paper subdivision" phenomenon -- was common enough across the state that Deltona is frequently cited as one of the larger, better-documented examples of it, alongside a handful of other Florida communities built the same way. The practical result today is a landscape with an unusually large number of small, individually platted residential lots relative to actual built development, many still vacant or held by owners with no direct connection to the original 1960s-era purchase.
What this means for buying or subdividing land here today
If you're looking at an older platted lot in or near Deltona, a few issues come up more often here than in areas that grew organically: some legacy lots are smaller than current zoning minimum lot size requirements, meaning a single old platted lot may not be independently buildable without a variance, a lot-of-record determination, or combination with an adjacent parcel. Confirm a specific lot's buildability status directly with Volusia County Growth and Resource Management before assuming a platted lot from this era is automatically a buildable homesite under today's code.
Title issues can also surface more often on decades-old, small, originally mail-order-sold lots -- unresolved liens, unpaid decades-old assessments from the original development company, or unclear chain of title through multiple absentee owners. A title search and survey are worth doing carefully on any older Deltona-area lot rather than assuming a clean, simple transaction. On the other hand, if your goal is assembling several adjacent legacy lots into one larger buildable parcel, Volusia County's platting and lot-combination process is the mechanism to use -- ask the county directly what that process requires for lots specifically originating from this era's subdivision plats.
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- Volusia County Government — Volusia County, Florida (accessed 2026-09)
Last reviewed 2026-09