Pea do you have any pictures? There is a Laurel disease that is attacking them that fits your description. It also attacks mangoes. The Laurel disease crossed over from oaks about 10 years ago.

I will see if i can get some tomorrow. I hope its not cause i have a mango in my yard and my sister just gave me a baby avocado to plant.

At my last house I lost quite a few weather from seed are grafted. Never got 1 to fruit before they died.when I moved here I stepped up my game and got as many seeds from as many types as i could.some where in the high 60s . I got about 50 to grow amd potted them up.when they were 1 year old I exposed the to the Laurel disease and 1 servived it was Florida type. Thats the one I planted in the yard. Don't know how the fruit will be but it is 3 and still alive and doing well. how ever it's growing slowly.maybe it is a dwarf. guess I will see.

Here is a couple of photos taken over the fence.

Oh wow that bad, pea your in 10a right, I think it might be to late,that tree is going to die

Its so sad it had so many fruits on it the last few years, it took forever to start fruiting. The lady that planted it never even got to have an avocado from it tho her daughter that inherited the house did and they shared with me.

so will this, whatever it has kill my oaks or mango?

Laurel disease is bad and I don't believe there is a good treatment for it. Its really do damage all over the south.its also called sudden oak death. It is also taking out mangoes up here. I had to do some research on this last year it's really wiping out the oaks over by Orlando. I saw a 150year old oak die in a few months.the leaves in patches turn brown or black looks just like fire blight on peaches or apples. Then all the leave do it fallowed by death.cutting out the bad doesn't work like with fire blight and they go fast. So sorry for the bad news.

You can see from the photo that our neighborhood has a ton of oaks. I hope this is something else. I have two large oaks, the neighbor with the avocado has a large oak in the back yard, the house over from them has three large oaks, every house here has an oak or two of more. This could get bad. Do you think the extension office can i.d. If it is this laurel disease?

Thay can but it cost money for the lab work,also something you should know is it doesn't hit everything in a area. Don't know why but it skips somethings . For example my grandmother oak died but not the one across the street but 8 more died on her block plus avocado trees all over the block. Orange country extension office had no idea what it was.

We've had huge, old oaks dying all over the place here in Gainesivlle. Some of the oaks that fell during Irma were just black inside. It's amazing that they were still standing. We don't grow mangoes and avocados, so haven't seen any of those die.

Bringing my old thread back up for an update on the tree and any opinions y'all might have about it. Last week i have noticed new leaves on the tree, not on the thin dead looking branches but where the branches are closer to the trunk and thick and barky. So the thing isn't dead. Is there something that would cause the branches of an vocado to die all at once? Once it become plain where this new grow is going to grow should the old dead stuff be trimmed all at once or slowly as to not shock the tree? I'm glad the neighbor is lazy and did not cut the tree down but i sure wish i knew what happened. My sister gifted me with a small avocado tree hopefully mine won't do what ever this one did.

I'd go ahead and remove the dead stuff. All I can think of is that laurel wilt disease, but I'm glad it's coming back, so maybe it wasn't that. Good luck with it!