Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT) are designed to overcome some of the limitations of offshore bottom-fixed ones. The development of computational models to simulate the behavior of the structure and the turbine is key to understanding the wind energy system and demonstrating its feasibility. In this work, a general methodology for the identification of reduced dynamic models of barge-type FOWTs is presented. The method is described together with an example of the development of a dynamic model of a 5 MW floating offshore wind turbine. The novelty of the proposed identification methodology lies in the iterative loop relationship between the identification and validation processes. Diversified data sets are used to select the best-fitting identified parameters by cross evaluation of every set among all validating conditions. The data set is generated for different initial FOWT operating conditions. Indeed, an optimal initial condition for platform pitch was found to be far enough from the system at rest to allow the dynamics to be well characterized but not so far that the unmodeled system nonlinearities were so large that they affected significantly the accuracy of the model. The model has been successfully applied to structural control research to reduce fatigue on a barge-type FOWT.