Where to stay for a weekend at the Valerie Theatre

If your group is coming to Inverness for a show at the Valerie Theatre, an Art Walk at the co-op on Apopka Avenue, or one of the November weekends when the Festival of the Arts and the Grand Prix take over Courthouse Square, you will be staying in a pool house a short drive out, not in an apartment above a shop. That's the honest shape of this town. The arts live downtown around the old courthouse; the houses live in the quiet neighbourhoods of oaks and palms that ring it. Our homes are single-family villas across Inverness and Citrus County, all with parking in the driveway and a pool out back, which means the day ends in the water rather than in a hotel corridor.

For a group of four to eight, that's a better trade than it sounds. You drive in, park near the square, see the thing you came for, eat downtown, and drive home to a kitchen you can actually cook breakfast in.

Six of you, three bedrooms, and a pool to come home to

Most small groups land on a three-bedroom. Three of ours sleep six and they are genuinely different houses.

Villa Ciska gives each bedroom its own en-suite bathroom. If your six are three couples, or friends who don't want to negotiate a shared bathroom before a 7pm curtain, that single fact settles the booking. Nobody queues.

Villa Eckhardt runs to more than 2,000 square feet of open living space and has a proper coffee maker and kettle, a dishwasher and an oven, plus a desk if someone in the group is half-working. It's the house for a group that wants room to scatter between breakfast and the evening's plans.

The outlier is the Wedding Venue View Apartment, a top-floor three-bedroom with a balcony and an open kitchen, suited to two to six guests. No pool, and a flight of stairs, but if your trip is built around the square and your evenings are spent out rather than on a pool deck, a bright apartment with beds made up and towels out does the job without the acreage.

Eight people, and the case for a fourth bedroom

Four-bedroom houses are the deep end of this portfolio. There are eight of them sleeping eight, which is unusual for a town this size, and it means a group of seven or eight has real choice rather than one option and a compromise.

• Villa Kamp has a pool and a hot tub surrounded by live oaks draped in Spanish moss, plus a dedicated workspace. The yard is the reason to book it.
• Villa 4727 backs onto a pond. You eat on the lanai, watch whatever wading bird is working the shallows, and the two-car garage means your third car isn't blocking anyone in.
• Villa Warren sits on a cul-de-sac lot with over 2,000 square feet and a screened pool, which in a Florida summer is the difference between swimming at dusk and feeding the mosquitoes.
• Villa Grandjean seats eight at the dining table and has a large covered area off the pool with lounge chairs. If the group eats together every night, that's the one detail worth checking, and here it's confirmed.
• Villa Lovie splits as one king, two queens and two twins across four bedrooms, with a pool and hot tub. Useful when the group is a family of mixed ages rather than four matched couples.
• Villa Ilse is in a newer, quiet neighbourhood with a smart TV in the living room and a pool deck facing the sunset.
• Villa Pearl has a private pool and hot tub under palms and old oaks, and sits on the Ocala side.
• Oasis has an open-plan living room big enough that eight people aren't sitting on each other, and a heated hot tub for an extra $35 a day.

When the group is ten

Villa S&G is the five-bedroom: a king in the primary with its own bathroom, three queens, and a fourth guest room with two full beds, which is how you get to ten without anyone on a sofa. It sits among pastures in a neighbourhood of palms and old oaks, with a private pool, and it's one of the homes where dogs are welcome. The pool can be heated for $25 a day on a two-night minimum, worth knowing if you're coming in January for a show and still want people in the water.

The constraint to plan around: three cars per reservation. Ten people usually arrive in three vehicles anyway, but if your group is splitting from different cities, sort the carpool before you book rather than after.

What's actually on downtown while you're here

The Valerie Theatre on Courthouse Square reopened in 2015 and runs live music, comedy and special events; the box office is open Wednesday to Sunday, noon to five, and for an hour before each performance. The Inverness Art Gallery, the artists' co-op on Apopka Avenue, sells original work across several mediums, teaches classes, and hosts a regular Art Walk. The Old Courthouse Heritage Museum is a few steps away. Everything downtown sits within the Courthouse Square area, so once you've parked, you walk.

The city has a designated Downtown Entertainment District, which means patrons of downtown restaurants, bars and pubs can carry a drink outside the premises. Small Town Saturday Night is free, held on the square, with tribute acts and local bands. Market at the Depot runs the first and third Saturday of the month. Both big annual events, the Festival of the Arts and the Inverness Grand Prix & Motorsports Festival, fall in November, which is also when accommodation here moves fastest.

Liberty Park and Wallace Brooks Park sit on the edge of Lake Henderson right at the downtown edge, with playgrounds and walking paths, and the Withlacoochee State Trail's Inverness trailhead is by the Red Caboose, a couple of hundred yards north of the old courthouse. The trail runs behind the businesses and through the corridor between the lakes, so a morning ride into town for coffee before an afternoon show is a real plan, not a brochure line. Villa Boer and Villa Havelaar both sit close to the trail if that's how you want to spend the mornings.

The things worth deciding before you pick a house

In order of how much they change the answer:

• Bathrooms, not bedrooms. Six people getting ready for an evening downtown is a bathroom problem. Villa Ciska's three en-suites solve it outright.
• Your dog. Some of our homes take pets and some are kept strictly pet-free, which matters as much to the allergy sufferer in your group as to the dog owner. Villa S&G accepts pets.
• Heated water. Where a house offers pool or spa heating it's an add-on with its own terms, so flag it when you book rather than on arrival. A Florida pool in December is bracing otherwise.
• November. If the festival weekend is the reason for the trip, book earlier than feels necessary.

Every house comes with the beds made, towels out and a kitchen you can cook in: pots, pans, dishes, a coffee maker, detergent pods under the sink. Our team is local, so when something needs sorting out mid-stay, you're talking to someone who lives here rather than a call centre. That's most of the reason people take a villa in Inverness over a room: you get the square in the evening and your own kitchen in the morning.