IF YOU'RE THINKING OF FLORIDA
Tunis, John R.
other course may cost $3,000 to join— if you can—with yearly dues of $1,500. "Careful zoning require ments" is a generality. It probably forbids a night club next door. Or the city...
...But if you don't, you'll miss a golden opportunity...
...Friends of mine bought land and found the concern bankrupt the next summer, and potholes two feet deep along the street they lived on...
...The ocean and your pool are disagreeable in summer...
...he takes advantage of the prevailing winds...
...If you have a colored maid, you take her home in your car at night...
...But thoughtful realtors feel there is far too much undeveloped land bought purely for speculation...
...It is also based on unrestrained avarice...
...If you buy in a development, be sure the sewers are in, the street assessments paid, the company promoters reliable...
...other course may cost $3,000 to join— if you can—with yearly dues of $1,500...
...Often as the newcomer pays his contractor's bills for overtime, he learns the hard way the meaning of the roadside signs: "Keep Florida green...
...You may save several thousand dollars by choosing the cheaper man...
...Then have a local lawyer inspect your contract...
...When you decide to build, don't pick a plan from House ir Garden that would be suited to Minneapolis or Detroit...
...Not at all...
...Today, fifteen years later, Amalfi has been discovered, with amazing results...
...But he has seen fortunes made by Northern quick-buck speculators on his land in his home town under his eyes...
...In Florida, as elsewhere in the South, drinking fountains are still labeled White and Colored...
...Examine them...
...One should differentiate between the Northerner who comes down each winter for fishing, who has money to escape in summer to the Adirondacks or the Great Smokies, and the man who lives on a margin and must stay put...
...For some time purchasers in southern Florida have been taken for plane rides over the Everglades, and shown mangrove swamps that are completely inaccessible...
...Waterfront property is expensive to maintain...
...Must be something wrong with a town where so many want to sell and leave," he reported...
...If you needed a tooth filled, a fender repaired, or a check cashed, you went to the county seat, 35 miles distant...
...An architect in Florida, like a lawyer, earns his money...
...So look hard before you leap...
...Perhaps my experience may help you...
...In 1958, money bet on Florida's horse, dog and jai-alai sports equalled $74.25 per person...
...Land bought at $30 to $50 an acre has been sold by mail as lots for $3,000 or more an acre...
...There was no city water, no hospital, no bank, no public library, and only two police...
...At times it seems as if the whole state could be bought for a price...
...Is there not hatred, segregation, and discrimination of various kinds in the North...
...Although Amalfi is 450 miles farther south than Cairo, Egypt, hoses in the garden have been known to freeze solid in winter, and orange groves get nipped despite the smudge pots...
...If you sfee it you won't buy it...
...His land was all sold in six months...
...A majority of Northerners who come South soon develop an attitude toward the "nigras" that is far more bitter than that of crackers who have lived there a lifetime...
...If a mason's job is done, a colored man mixes the plaster, trundles the heavy wheelbarrow up the planks, where a white man leisurely wields a trowel...
...But the usual winter climate is superb, much better than the overrated French and Italian Riviera...
...But the boosters neglect to mention the ever-present humidity, the verdigris on your shoes and clothes in the closets, the bugs that eat the pictures on the wall and the books on your shelves...
...It probably forbids a night club next door...
...Get a contractor who is there to stay...
...The vice-president of a large national mortgage company recently came down from Chicago to visit Amalfi, but returned without opening a branch as planned...
...You would expect to pay extra for these privileges, and you will, plenty—unless you ascertain how deep the channel is, and who pays to re-dredge it after a winter blow...
...Many of the worst profiteers in the South today are recently down from Ohio and New York...
...Contractors, realtors, shop keepers, and motel owners are as often as not recent escapees from Indianapolis and Milwaukee...
...Others stay because they like it...
...It hurts...
...Assuredly there is, plenty...
...In Florida one often senses the hate in the atmosphere...
...Or the city council may vote to change the zoning laws, and your picture window will face a new motel...
...Or else the poison and the hatred are too disturbing, and you cannot take it any more...
...They try to transport Chicago to the tropics, and this is an impossibility...
...Hire a man with a good reputation...
...Many will buy elsewhere in Florida if they do sell...
...He knows how to align your house to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer...
...Step outdoors and fish...
...Nobody cares to swim when the water is 87 degrees...
...They drive differently, they drink differently, they act differently...
...This pays off in the end...
...Find an honest contractor...
...The seeds of greed are as present in Florida real estate as in quiz shows and other aspects of American life today...
...The heat in Tampa and Miami may, as claimed, be less than that of New York and Chicago...
...Most Negroes live in slums on the wrong side of the tracks, and cannot leave there after dark...
...For all these reasons, many people want to rent or sell...
...When you do buy, be sure to get land with pine trees...
...Amalfi in those days was a fishing town with fewer than a thousand persons, a gorgeous climate, a few shrimpers tied up at the docks, a nine-hole golf course with an Addison Mizner clubhouse, both falling rapidly to pieces...
...In Florida this is not a colored problem but a white problem...
...The postal receipts total $500,000 annually, and the assessed valuation of the town at 14 mills is $50,000,000 a year...
...Does this mean Floridians are less honest than Northerners...
...Given our present economic system, there are few of us, Northern or Southern, who do not fall victim to its alluring appeal...
...As the unwary tourist approaches at this time of year, the realtors creep out from under the cinder blocks, consummating deals a businessman in New Jersey would laugh at...
...Florida is first in number of luxury hotels per square mile, and 37th in people served by public libraries...
...This is true, but the selling is assisted by some 85 realtors' offices staffed by some 300 harriers, men and women, retired colonels and admirals, and former go-getters from Kentucky and Wisconsin...
...but more likely he has gone to Miami, bought an orange grove at Lake Placid, or flown to Pennsylvania, leaving a packet of uncollectible bills due his sub-contractors...
...True, many of these people merely want a quick buck and are asking absurd prices...
...This haven of rest and repose in the sun has become Utica with winter bathing...
...Amalfi Sells Itself," the local boosters shout...
...Cypress trees mean the land is or has been or will be a swamp...
...Like so many Florida towns, Amalfi is busting out all over...
...You can see a plethora of westerns at an open air movie, bowl all night, or sit in one of a dozen bars and taverns, while a new dog track up the road will take your spare money every evening and twice on Sunday...
...If there were any land around for sale, it would go at $15,000 an acre or more...
...As one fast worker advertised: "We sell it by the gallon or the acre...
...Another item which disturbs a few transplanted Northerners is the prevalent belief that all snowbirds are millionaires, ready to be taken...
...These people throw their weight around and deserve what they get...
...These are real estate slogans...
...the feelings expressed and unexpressed seep into the newcomer...
...Many transplanted snowbirds who were vice-presidents of General Gum-bat, Inc., and tycoons in Hinsdale and Chestnut Hills, don't see why the quiet-voiced members of the City Council pay no attention to their request for a change in the zoning laws to permit the erection of a guest house that will rent for $2,500 a winter...
...On navigable waterway with access to the ocean...
...There was a Baptist church, a Saratoga-type hotel, a few stores, and a single school containing all grades...
...But the pattern is being broken all the time...
...The cheap contractor may still be around...
...If your roof leaks next July you want to find the man responsible...
...One local expressed it: "Lots of people leave their morals north when they come to Florida...
...Moor your boat in your own backyard...
...A concrete retaining wall of 100 feet will add anything from $3,000 up to the cost of your new lot...
...Some people escape...
...Public library expenditures were 85 cents per person...
...Summers, however, can be difficult for the person born and bred in the North...
...The colored people sit in the heat or the cold outside the doctor's office until all white patients inside have been seen...
...One bad northeaster in winter and you've had it...
...After renting for a season, we bought three acres for $4,500, out in the brush, two miles from town, with not a house in sight...
...Fifteen years ago we went South to make a winter home...
...On the other hand, you can buy a lot on the ocean for $400 or more a front foot which you probably can't afford...
...Where we once had a glimpse of blue ocean through waving palm trees, our home is now surrounded on three sides by the garbage cans of our neighbors...
...The white man drives the garbage trucks in Amalfi, but three colored men stand on the running boards and toss up the cans...
...Today the growth of Florida is based on many sound values: outdoor living the y6ar round, new industries, fine homes in happy communities, health-giving sunshine, the grace of the pelican soaring over sandy beaches, beautiful highways giving easy access to ocean and golf courses, fine fishing from the municipal pier...
...It is 30th in income per person spent on libraries, and one-third of the state has no library service whatever...
...In Florida contractors come and go faster than the summer storms...
...He will make doors and windows to seal against storms...
...The unsullied beach which once stretched white and gleaming into the distance, empty and solitary, where you could walk alone in peace for miles, is now jammed with homes, villas, motels, hotels, and people who wish you'd kindly pass along or at least stay away from their doors...
...He will prevent your building a cheap house on an expensive lot, and the other way round...
...You may also pay twice that in subsequent bills and end up with an unsatisfactory home...
...Many return to the realtor's office and sign immediately for 200 acres, without checking, investigating, or really knowing where their property is...
...My experience over 15 years is that the native Floridian is as decent, honest, friendly, and soft-spoken as anyone, and perhaps more so than most...
...Employ a local architect who lives in town and will be there next winter...
...Some Northerners also find it hard to adjust to segregation...
...There is now a radio station dispensing commercials, canned music, and news, 17 temples of various sects and denominations, paved streets and avenues, good city water, four or five new schools, a large police force in prowl cars, a hospital staffed by a dozen medics, an airport with 5,000 foot runways and planes in and out daily...
...In Amalfi there is a small housing development for Negroes, but at a price the majority cannot afford because it must return a high profit to the white investors who put up the money...
...The boosters tell you Florida has a better summer climate than Manhattan or Pittsburgh...
...A good deal of real estate is priced out of line...
...A few Northerners also miss certain amenities to which they are accustomed...
...Amalfi today is a bustling city where you can get available building lots for $20 a front foot, only they are beside the Seaboard tracks where you wouldn't care to live...
...He has watched his state invaded, acres snapped up at fancy prices, and sold six months later at fantastic ones...
...Ask exactly what the minimum and maxi mum lot is in the vicinity...
...Cigarette spending was $33 per person...
...Not to mention three banks and a half a dozen loan sharks...
...What was originally lush verdure and palmettos is now streets and avenues lined with the stately homes of tycoons complete with swimming pools and mortgages...
...It just lasts longer...
...The endless summer, with its varieties of bugs, insects, and mosquitoes, should be endured before a snowbird builds or buys...
...The realtor recommends them to the newcomer, and gets a cut on the price of your house...
...But a good many are stuck and wish they weren't...
...Pay him to represent you at the closing and protect your interests, no matter how smart you think you are in real estate law...
...Some Florida builders have a deal with realtors...
...No matter what lies ahead, it is hardly likely Florida land values will continue at the high rate of the past decade...
...Otherwise some morning your bedroom will be ten feet from somebody's new house...
...Granted, though neither is exactly a summer resort...
...Talk to people round town, visit the local banks, and ask questions...
Vol. 24 • February 1960 • No. 2
