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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (81509)	3/16/2001 12:36:03 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

Yeah, the Florida real estate bubble was a classic one. Bank clearings in Miami went from over $1 billion in 1925 to $142 million in 1929. >>During the 1920’s Florida experienced a land boom and the bursting of a classic bubble. It was The Great Florida Land Boom and Bust. In 1925 Florida’s population was 75,000 and there were said to be 25,000 real estate agents and 2,000 real estate offices. Talk about busting at the gills Miami’s population was growing so fast that railroads had been forced to place an embargo on imperishable freight in order to avert the danger of famine, building materials were imported by water, fresh vegetables were a rarity, and public utilities were hard pressed to keep up with the demand for electricity, gas, and phone service. There were frequent ice shortages. And everybody was getting rich from buying and selling and speculating in real estate. A lot in the Business center of Miami Beach sold for $800 in the early days of the development resold for $150,000 in 1924. A New York developer who owned a strip of land in Palm Beach was offered $240,000 some eight to ten years earlier before finally accepted $800,000 in 1923 and in 1924 it was subdivided and the aggregate price of the lots sold for $1.5 million. A woman who bought a piece of land near Miami for $25 in 1896 sold it for $125,000 in 1925. Real estate advertising in the Miami Daily News one day in 1925 swelled the paper to 504 pages--the largest in newspaper history. Subdivisions sold out the first day lots were offered to the public. Speculators would buy lots on credit and flip them for profits in less than 30 days without ever having to make the first payment. Miami was known as “The Wonder City,” “The Fair White Goddess of Cities,” “The World’s Playground,” and “The City Invincible.” Fort Lauderdale was “The Tropical Wonderland.” Orlando was “The City Beautiful.” The mayors of Miami, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, and Hialeah proclaimed their county as “The most Richly Blessed Community of the most Bountifully Endowed State of the most Highly Enterprising People of the Universe.” A slave stood behind the conqueror... whispering in his ear “all glory is fleeting” ...Closing monologue from Patton. On September 18, 1926 a famous and devastating hurricane lay waste to much of south Florida killing 400, injuring 6,300, and leaving 5,000 homeless. The Great land boom already in decline was finished off by the Great Hurricane. One man had sold acreage in 1925 for $12 an acre which was later sold for $17 then $30 then $60 an acre and then saw the entire series of subsequent purchases fall into default and his only redress to recover the money still due him was to take possession of the land back again. By 1927 most of the elaborate real-estate offices in Miami were closed or were practically empty and dead subdivisions which were never completed lined highways. In 1928 there were 31 bank failures in Florida and in 1929 there were 57. Bank clearings on property in Miami fell from over a billion dollars in 1925 to $142 million in 1929. In 1930 26 Florida cities were in default on their bonds. From: Frederick Lewis Allen Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s<< financiallinks.uk.com