The Florida land boom of the 1920s was a speculative phenomenon that took place in Florida in the early years of that decade and whose explosion took place in 1925, leaving behind it complete cities emerged from nothing. Its history offers many parallels with the recent housing bubble, including factors such as the existence of external speculators, buyers' access to easy credit and a rapid increase in real estate prices.
By the early 1920s, Florida's economic prosperity had set the conditions for a housing bubble. Miami enjoyed an image of a tropical paradise and foreign investors from all over the US began to take interest in their lands. Real estate prices rose rapidly and a speculative and construction boom broke out.
By January 1925, investors began to see negative news about investments in Florida. Forbes magazine warned its readers that land prices in Florida were based only on the expectation of finding a buyer and not on tangible realities. New York banks and the IRS government agency began to consider the real estate boom in Florida as a gigantic illusion. Speculators who benefited from buying and reselling properties with huge profits began to have trouble finding buyers. The inevitable explosion of the bubble had begun.
On January 10, 1926, the gigantic ship Prinz Valdemar capsized at the mouth of the port of Miami. The old ship was headed there to be turned into a floating hotel. Its wreck blocked access to the port of Miami for weeks, damaging the buoyant image of the city and increasing the difficulties in the communication routes of Florida with the exterior.
Railroad companies, which were already under heavy pressure from increased traffic in construction materials, increased their rates. In October 1925, with the railway networks threatened with collapse, they refused to transport other merchandise to Florida than food, which led to a spectacular increase in the cost of living in that state. New buyers did not arrive, and escalating prices and accelerated property transactions (which were acquired and sold again up to ten times a day) that sustained the bubble deflated. Â
The following year (1926) a hurricane devastated the area, leading to bankruptcy to urban projects such as Isola di Lolando. Another hurricane in 1928 and the Stock Market Crack of 1929 deepened the recessionary trend, which merged with the Great Depression that would soon take over the entire country. The state's economy would not recover until World War II.
