The Swamp Peddlers

Approx. 272 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 26 halftones, 4 maps, notes, index

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-6333-3
Published: June 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6315-9
Published: June 2021

Paperback Available June 2021, but pre-order your copy today!

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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.

About the Author

Jason Vuic is the author of The Yucks!: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History and The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.
For more information about Jason Vuic, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"A marvelously written, dramatic account of the dark side of real estate development in Florida. Vuic's chronicle is engrossing, moving, and full of dark humor."--David Farber, author of Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed

"An excellent history of the interstate land sales industry--well researched, thorough in coverage, and written with compelling style."--Hubert B. Stroud, author of The Promise of Paradise: Recreational and Retirement Communities in the United States since 1950

"Jason Vuic's The Swamp Peddlers is a skillful and entertaining recreation of a colorful era of unscrupulous Florida land sales. It brings to life an astonishing rogues gallery of crooks and hustlers, each one of them a Florida Man seemingly sprung from the pages of a Carl Hiaasen thriller. This book's insights into what happened back then go a long way toward explaining what has made Florida such a mess today."--Craig Pittman, author of Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther

"Jason Vuic's book crackles with colorful characters who bought land by the acre and sold it by the foot to Americans in search of second acts and the Florida Dream. The Swamp Peddlers provides a cautionary tale: actions have profound consequences. What will our grandchildren think of our hubris?"--Gary R. Mormino, author of Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida