Airport Noise Zone Laws: The Jacksonville Disclosure Sellers Keep Missing

TL;DR: If a Jacksonville property sits in Noise Zone A or B or an Airport Notice Zone, you can’t sell, transfer, or lease it without giving the buyer or tenant a written Airport Notice Zone Acknowledgement at the time of contract. Sales require a fully executed and recorded acknowledgement. Leases longer than three months require one signed by two witnesses. You can check any parcel yourself: the city’s GIS tags affected parcels with a P10 suffix.

The short answers

Who has to give this disclosure?
Any person selling, transferring, leasing, or offering to sell or lease a structure or land within Noise Zones A and B and/or an Airport Notice Zone.

When does it have to happen?
In writing, at the time of the contract of sale, transfer, or lease.

Does it apply to rentals?
Yes, for leases greater than three months. It has to be included in the lease agreement.

What’s different between a sale and a lease?
Sales require a fully executed and recorded Airport Notice Zone Acknowledgement. Leases require one signed by two witnesses.

Which airports trigger it?
NAS Jacksonville, Naval Station Mayport, OLF Whitehouse, Cecil Airport, and Jacksonville International Airport.

How do I check if my parcel is affected?
On the city’s property and planning GIS, parcels partially or completely within the Notice Zone carry a P10 suffix.

Whose job is due diligence?
The code puts responsibility on the buyer or lessee to perform all reasonable due diligence before entering a contract. That doesn’t remove the seller’s disclosure obligation.

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Jacksonville has five active airfields inside or adjacent to the county, three of them military. A meaningful amount of residential property sits under or beside their flight operations.

If that includes your property, there’s a disclosure requirement most people have never heard of, and it’s in Chapter 656 Part 10 rather than anywhere you’d think to look.

For the county-wide frame, start with the Duval ordinance guide.

What the law actually requires

Under §656.1010, no person shall sell, transfer, lease, or offer to lease or sell a structure or land within Noise Zones A and B and/or an Airport Notice Zone unless the prospective buyer or tenant has been given an Airport Notice Zone Acknowledgement in writing at the time of the contract.

It has to be included in the contract of sale, transfer, or lease agreement for leases greater than three months.

It applies to non-residential property, existing residential, and newly constructed residential.

The execution requirements differ by transaction type:

Transaction	Requirement
Sale	Fully executed and recorded Airport Notice Zone Acknowledgement
Lease (over 3 months)	Acknowledgement signed by two witnesses

For sales, the original gets recorded in the official public records of Duval County. Copies go to the Jacksonville Planning and Development Department and to JAA or the US Navy, as appropriate.

The form itself is in the code, as Exhibit 1 to §656.1016. In it, the owner, seller, or lessor certifies awareness that the property is in an Airport Notice Zone and confirms they’ve been advised to consult Part 10 of Chapter 656.

How to check your parcel in about a minute

This is the most useful thing in this post, and it comes straight from the city’s own GIS documentation.

Parcels partially or completely within the Notice Zone are denoted with the suffix P10.

So you don’t need to interpret a noise contour map or guess based on how loud your street sounds. Pull your parcel on the city’s property or planning GIS and look for the P10 tag. Partial overlap counts, so a parcel that only clips the zone still carries it.

One thing to know about military airfields specifically. For military airports, the Airport Notice Zone also encompasses all lands within:

• Accident potential zones
• The lighting regulation zone, which applies to OLF Whitehouse only
• The 150-foot Height and Hazard Zone

So military-adjacent property can be captured by more than just noise contours. Accident potential zones and height/hazard zones extend the footprint.

Where the five airfields are

Geographically, the areas to check are the ones around:

1. NAS Jacksonville — on the St. Johns River on the Westside, south of Ortega
2. Naval Station Mayport — at the north end of the barrier island, near Mayport
3. OLF Whitehouse — the outlying landing field on the far Westside, and the only one with a lighting regulation zone
4. Cecil Airport — far Westside, the former Cecil Field
5. Jacksonville International Airport — on the Northside

I’m not going to publish a neighborhood-by-neighborhood list, because the zones follow flight operations and accident potential geometry rather than neighborhood boundaries, and a wrong entry on a list like that could cost somebody a transaction. The P10 check is parcel-accurate and takes a minute. Use that instead.

If you’re subdividing or developing

The requirements go further for new development.

Any proposed subdivision located all or partially within Noise Zones A and B or the Airport Notice Zone, where platting is required under Chapter 654, has to include a prominent statement on the plat noting that individual lots may be located in an Airport Environ Zone and/or Air Installation Compatible Use Zone and may be subject to increased noise or hazard levels from air traffic operations.

Beyond that:

• A separate note must indicate which specific lots fall in Noise Zone A, Noise Zone B, and/or the Airport Notice Zone
• Those lots must be annotated with a reference to the paragraph of the note identifying their zone
• The subdivision’s covenants and restrictions have to contain the statement as well

So it follows the property forward, into the plat and into the HOA documents.

One thing the ordinance does not do

There’s a claim circulating that failing to provide this disclosure lets a buyer rescind the sale. Read the code before you rely on that.

§656.1010 states that nothing in the section shall affect the validity or enforceability of any sale, transfer, or lease, or any contract for the sale, transfer, or lease of any interest in real property.

What the section does say is that any person who knowingly violates it is subject to an enforcement action by the City.

So the exposure is a city enforcement action, not automatic unwinding of the deal under this ordinance. That’s a meaningful distinction, and if you’re in a dispute about a missed disclosure it’s worth having actual counsel read the section rather than trusting a summary, including mine. I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice.

Buyers: this one’s partly on you

The code is explicit about it. It is the responsibility of the buyer or lessee to perform all reasonable due diligence prior to entering into any contract to purchase or lease property within a Noise or Airport Notice Zone.

That doesn’t erase the seller’s obligation to disclose. It does mean you can’t rely entirely on someone else flagging it.

Practically, if you’re buying anywhere in the general vicinity of those five airfields, check the P10 status yourself before you’re under contract, not after. Noise exposure and accident potential zones affect quality of life, insurability, resale, and in some cases what you’re allowed to build.

Quick win

Before you list, lease, or make an offer on property near any of the five airfields, do this one check.

Pull the parcel on the city’s GIS and look for the P10 suffix. If it’s there, the property is partially or completely within the Notice Zone and the Airport Notice Zone Acknowledgement applies to your transaction.

Then match the execution to the transaction type: recorded for a sale, two witnesses for a lease over three months. Getting that wrong is the most common way this requirement gets botched even by people who know it exists.

If you’re a landlord with month-to-month tenants, note the three-month threshold. Longer leases trigger the requirement.

Ordinances change and zone boundaries are updated. Confirm your parcel’s current status with the City of Jacksonville Planning and Development Department, and consult a real estate attorney for any transaction question.