The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream

Written by:
Jason Vuic
Narrated by:
Mike Chamberlain

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
3
Narrator
1
Release Date
June 2021
Duration
9 hours 35 minutes
Summary
Florida has long beckoned retirees seeking to spend their golden years in the sun, but, for many, the American dream of owning a home there was financially impossible. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called 'installment land sales industry' appeared out of nowhere to hawk billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners. For only $10 down and $10 a month, working-class pensioners could buy a piece of the Florida dream: a graded homesite that would be waiting for them in a planned community when they were ready to build. The result created Cape Coral, Port St. Lucie, Deltona, Port Charlotte, Palm Coast, and Spring Hill, among many others-sprawling exurban communities with no downtowns and little industry but millions of residential lots.

As Jason Vuic recounts in this raucous history, these communities allowed generations of northerners to move to Florida cheaply, but at a price: high-pressure sales tactics begat fraud; poor urban planning begat sprawl; developers cleared forests, drained wetlands, and built thousands of miles of roads in grid-like subdivisions, which, fifty years later, played an inordinate role in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
Reviews
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Stephen J.

As a 35 year resident of Florida now retired to Tennessee it was very interesting learning the history of some of the largest land developments. I have worked with several of the current owners of these properties and in retrospect it is clear as to how some of the problems I ran into came into being. I only wish this book was available to me years ago. Great book!

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