Skilled and expensive real-estate auctioneers are imported from California and New York—auctioneers capable of selling refrigerating machines to inhabitants of the Arctic Circle. People are lured to the auctions by free lunches, by distribution of souvenirs, by the giving away of automobiles. “We give away,” advertises one subdivision owner, “a new Ford car each Monday or its equivalent in cash, and other valuable gifts daily for the duration of the sale. And we will entertain those who attend the sales with Any Amusements We Are Able To Provide.” The exact meaning of the last phrase is shrouded in mystery, but it makes its appeal to those who read between the lines.
“Remember,” shouts another firm, “Remember, We Are Giving Away Absolutely Gratis a Sedan to the Person Holding the Lucky Number—Get Your Free Ticket Now.” “Auction! Auction! Auction!” bawls another. “Beautiful and useful souvenirs and prizes to be given away.” “Come ride in our busses and win our free prizes,” coaxes another.
Early in 1922 the real-estate firms which disposed of their land by auction were vociferating passionately that their auctions were bona fide, that they were “legitimate and sound,” that they were “without reserve,” that they were absolute. “Absolute auctions” was the watchword of the hour. The inference was, of course, that a number of auction sales had been held that were not absolute. “One Thousand Dollars Reward,” stated one firm in a dignified but bean-spilling manner, “will be paid for the proof of any buy-bidder at any of our sales. The opportunity of opportunities to buy a piece of the richest garden and fruit land in southern Florida. Remember, you make the price and every lot put up will positively be sold to the highest and best bidder without limit or reserve.”
This was what had been happening: Real-estate firms had advertised auctions, put up lots for sale, and, when those in attendance languidly refused to bid more than six or seven dollars for a lot, used professional buyers to make phony bids in order either to run up the price or get the lots off the market. It is possible that such a thing will never happen again, now that real-estate firms have the habit of advertising absolute auctions—possible, but scarcely probable. With five or six auctions being held each day, and with large numbers of unattractive lots being offered to stolid middle-westerners who have come more for the free lunch and the automobile ride than for the real-estate, it is inevitable that some lots will go for about one dollar and seventy-five cents if everything is left in the hands of the legitimate prospects. Common sense tells us that no real-estate dealer could stand such a blow without emitting raucous shrieks of pain, no matter how persuasively and convincingly he may chatter about absolute auctions.
Some of the real-estate dealers allow customers to buy land on terms that would attract even Trotsky, who doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. Four-hundred-dollar lots in one subdivision can be had for twenty dollars cash and ten dollars a month, with no interest or taxes for a year. In another subdivision, one-thousand-two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar lots sell for one hundred dollars cash and twenty-five dollars a month until twenty per cent. of the principal has been paid, after which the buyer can sink back and refrain from paying any more on his principal for seven and a half years. A firm advertises island water-front lots at five thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars a lot, the terms being “seven hundred and fifty cash; balance five hundred every six months; no interest first year; no taxes till spring 1925.”
CHAPTER VI
OF SUBDIVISIONS, WISE AND OTHERWISE—OF LANDSCAPE ATROCITIES—OF SMALL FARMS AND FARMERS—AND OF FASCINATING STRAWBERRY AND TOMATO STATISTICS
Subdivisions extend out of Miami in all directions—up the coast and down the coast and inland and out into the bay in the shape of islands. Palm Beach is seventy-five miles north of Miami; and there are almost enough subdivisions along that seventy-five mile stretch to provide homes for a million people.
Some of the subdivisions are beautiful and some of them are horrible. Some have been thoroughly cleared of the tangled jungle of palmettos and other scrub that makes a total mess of all undeveloped Florida land; and flawless roads and pavements have been constructed, water mains put in, and gas, water and electricity provided. Restrictions are imposed in some of the good ones: homes costing less than four thousand can not be built on certain lots, while on other lots they must cost at least fifteen thousand.
Other subdivisions are laid out purely and simply, as the saying goes, for the purpose of separating the sucker from his money. The streets are half-laid, the location is vile, and the shacks that are run up on the crowded lots are little better than the marshhuts of Revere Beach and Coney Island to which poverty-stricken city dwellers of Boston and New York frequently repaired during the heated terms of the early; ’eighties.