In the game
Jason lives in the Leonida Keys, and Trailer 2 and the official screenshots show where: a modest house raised above the ground by the water, a boat on a lift behind it, palms, a dock, a porch and the general air of a place where sand gets into everything. It’s not a mansion. It’s the home of someone who works on the water and likes it.
Fans have matched it to the canal neighborhoods of Key Largo and Islamorada, and the match rests on the details rather than on one address: the concrete-block construction, the elevated ground floor that hurricane rules require, the canal out back with a seawall, the boat lift and the flat, treeless view out to the bay. There’s no single real house behind it, or if there is, Rockstar hasn’t said. The game has recreated a type of home, and the type is everywhere down here.
The real place
Most of the residential Keys were built between the 1950s and 1970s by dredging canals into the limestone and piling the spoil up into dry lots, so every house could have a boat behind it. That’s why, from the air, the Upper Keys look like a comb: straight canals, straight streets, a dock per house. Newer homes are built high on stilts because the county requires the living floor above the flood line; older ones are ground-level block houses with a hurricane story to tell.
Walking the streets today is quiet and a little nosy. The canals are private, the lawns are private, but the roads are public, and you’ll see the whole range from tin-roofed 1960s cottages to glassy rebuilds. Everyone has a boat. The detail a GTA fan will recognize is the boat lift: two posts with a cradle, holding a center-console or a flats skiff a couple of feet out of the water, exactly like the one behind Jason’s place.
Go there
The best way to see canal homes is from the water, because that’s the side they’re built to face. Rent a kayak or paddleboard from one of the outfitters along US-1 in Key Largo (John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park at MM 102.5 rents them inside the park) and ask where to launch for a residential paddle. Go at dawn, when the water is glass and the manatees sometimes come in. Say good morning; people are friendly if you’re not on their dock.
Islamorada’s Venetian Shores, at the north end of town, is a good canal neighborhood to drive through, and the Key Largo side streets between MM 95 and 103 are the classic mid-century version. For lunch, Mrs. Mac’s Kitchen (MM 99.4) is a Key Largo institution with license plates on the walls and a line at noon.
One honest warning: these are people’s homes. Don’t walk down docks, don’t photograph into windows, and don’t fly a drone over the canals. Look from the road or the water, then move on.
Nearby
- The mangrove backcountry: the canals open onto Florida Bay, and the boats out back are for exactly this.
- Islamorada’s bayside tiki bars: where the boat owners go at 5pm.
- Card Sound Road and Alabama Jack’s: the back road in, ten minutes from the top of Key Largo.
Updated September 12, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.