The Swamp Peddlers

How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream

By: Jason Vuic

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

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, 50 years later, played an inordinate role in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.

©2021 The University of North Carolina Press (P)2021 Tantor

I got a piece of land for sale

A great story about the history of Florida land sales, and how it truly affect the growth of the state of Florida to what it is today and how it continues to grow regardless of all the history of scams that occurred during that time. Everybody wants to be in the sun, everyone. So no matter what people will come to Florida, regardless of housing cost. Cost of living or anything that would prevent them from coming here. Once here people will stay because this is a slice of paradise but the cost sometimes it’s a little more than people think. Be prepared financially if you’ve moved to Florida end of story anything can happen.

Fascinating w great narration

I had no idea of the greed vs conservation that the state of Florida has received for the last 100 years.

Florida Deserves Better

Jason did an excellent job in telling the story of the exploitation of Florida through an environmental and ecological lens. I appreciated the micro/ macro approach.

Interesting History

Good educated read on the development of Florida. Shows the pitfalls of early development which had lead to todays Florida