The Swamp Peddlers cover art

The Swamp Peddlers

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

Preview

Try for $0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Swamp Peddlers

Written by: Jason Vuic
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $22.26

Buy Now for $22.26

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

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
Public Policy Sociology United States City Florida Dream Mortgage
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about The Swamp Peddlers

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.