Florida homes: Will luxury real estate ever rise again?
The boom of the 1920s came to an end in 1926. Henry S. Villard, reported what he saw two years later:
Dead subdivisions line the highway, their pompous names half-obliterated on crumbling stucco gates. Lonely white-way lights stand guard over miles of cement side-walks, where grass and palmetto take the place of homes that were to be… Whole sections of outlying subdivisions are composed of unoccupied houses, past which one speeds on broad thoroughfares as if traversing a city in the grip of death.
For three years, Florida’s property market died, even as the rest of the nation danced the charleston. It did not recover until after WWII – 20 years later. And now, it is out of season once more in Florida. The subject of today’s note is why it may never be high season again.
There are no houses for sale here. A house is a tangible thing. Its paint peels. Its roof leaks. Its a/c needs to be replaced. But a home is an agreeable abstraction. So great is the local realtor’s distaste for tangibility, that houses have all been replaced by mansions, estates, compounds, retreats, and most importantly, by ‘homes.’ We find, for example, a “spectacular Palm Beach Estate Home,” with a separate 2-bedroom oxymoron – a “guest home.” It must be a house for guests who refuse to go home. Or perhaps a home for people who refuse to be guests. And if we looked for a home in the country, we would probably find one with a dog home in the back yard.