What This Video Covers
This is the fourth episode of the neighborhood buyer series. Each one takes a single neighborhood, pulls the real MLS data, and puts the four numbers a buyer actually needs on the screen: what is for sale, what it costs a month, what you have to earn, and what credit score gets you in.
Grove Park is in Orange Park, Clay County, just west of the St. Johns River. It is about five minutes to NAS Jacksonville and roughly thirty to the airport. Because it is Clay and not Duval, the tax rate is lower: 15.347 mills against Duval’s 17.86.
This is VA country, and that changes the entry price
7 of the 20 closings here were VA loans, tied with conventional for the most common financing in the neighborhood and nearly double the FHA count. That is what sitting next to a naval air station does to a housing market.
A VA loan requires nothing down. So for an eligible buyer, the down payment figures below are not the barrier. The cash that matters becomes closing costs and prepaids, and in this neighborhood sellers are covering most of that already.
What a military income actually reaches
Taking published 2026 pay tables and the NAS Jacksonville housing allowance, with dependents, and applying no gross-up:
- An E-4 over four years earns about $68,454 a year in base pay plus allowance. The entry home needs $68,220.
- An O-1 on day one is at about $76,154, which clears the neighborhood with room.
- O-3 is the first grade that reaches the $397,000 top of the market.
⚠️ Two things change those figures. They are with dependents rates, and a single E-4 receives a smaller allowance and does not clear. And because the housing allowance is not taxable, most lenders gross it up by 15 to 25 percent, which only helps. The figures above leave that out so they stay true whichever lender you use. None of this is a pre-approval.
What is actually for sale
Seven single-family homes are available, from $289,000 to $397,000. The median home that closed in the last twelve months sold for $314,950. There is no CDD and no HOA on a single one of the 56 records in this pull, and the housing stock was built between 1974 and 1991, with a median year of 1977.
This is a steady market, not a distressed one, and that is worth saying plainly because it differs from other neighborhoods in this series. The closing pace was flat at about 1.7 a month across both halves of the year. Only one of the seven homes for sale has cut its price. Eleven listings failed to sell over the period, which is a normal share rather than an alarming one. Homes here close at a median of 98.0% of asking.
⟶ So sellers in Grove Park are not competing on price. They are competing on credits, and generously: 14 of the 20 closings (70%) carried a seller concession, at a median of $9,594. That is the highest rate of any neighborhood covered in this series, and it is very nearly the size of the FHA down payment on the cheapest home.
⚠️ A seller credit cannot pay your down payment. It covers closing costs, prepaid items, discount points and the upfront mortgage insurance premium only. What it does here is erase almost all of the other cash at the table.
What it costs a month, and what you need to earn
On an FHA loan at 3.5% down and 6.95%, taxes and insurance included, payments run from $2,558 to $3,446. Income needed runs from $68,200 to $91,900 with no other monthly debt, and six of the seven homes clear the typical Clay County household income of $87,820.
Those taxes are modelled on the purchase price, not on the seller’s bill. Florida resets a property’s assessment to market when it changes hands, so a long-held homesteaded owner’s figure on the MLS sheet understates what a buyer will pay.
All seven homes accept FHA financing, which has not been true in any previous episode of this series.
Credit score
580 is the FHA floor at 3.5% down, and 500 to 579 requires 10% down instead. Most lenders overlay above that and want 620, so ask rather than assume. The VA program sets no minimum score of its own, though individual VA lenders do.
About the house in the video
The home shown is 1731 Horton Drive, listed at $315,000 by Kady Rose Andreoli of Momentum Realty. It is not Bryce’s listing. Three bedrooms, two baths, 1,666 square feet, built 1974, on about a quarter acre, and completely renovated.
It is called priced perfectly in the video for one specific reason: it is listed at $315,000 and the median home in the neighborhood sold for $314,950, a difference of fifty dollars. It has been on the market nine days with no price reduction.
Every figure on this page comes from one realMLS export pulled November 12, 2026, covering 56 single-family records in Grove Park, Orange Park 32073. These are generalities for a neighborhood, not an approval for a person.
- Why VA loans, which require nothing down, were 7 of the last 20 closings five minutes from NAS Jacksonville
- The military pay grades that reach the entry home, the neighborhood, and the top of the market
- Seven homes for sale from $289,000 to $397,000, with a median sold price of $314,950
- Monthly payments of $2,558 to $3,446 and household income of $68,200 to $91,900
- A median seller credit of $9,594 on 70% of closings, the highest rate in this series
- Why this is a steady market rather than a distressed one, and what that changes for a buyer
- No CDD, no HOA, and a Clay County tax rate below Duval's
