WEBVTT - This Is What Happened During The Great Florida Real Estate Bubble 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.720 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:18.160 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. So, Tracy, we're 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.840 in the middle of our series, our series about episodes 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.040 about bubbles, and of course last week we had the 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.600 awesome one about the history of stock market bubbles, and 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.640 now it's time to talk about some bubbles that aren't 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:37.080 directly maybe not as familiar to people. Oh okay, well, 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:42.760 I remember doing the catfish farming bubble, so I'm excited 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.640 about what this one could be, right, Like, that's the thing. 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:48.800 So obviously people know about like the Internet bubble and 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:51.680 a few um you know, maybe they think about the 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:53.760 tulip bubble, which will also be talking about in the 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.000 later episode. But as you pointed out, you know, several 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.720 weeks ago we talked about the bubble and catfish. It's 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.840 a good reminder that bubbles are all over the place 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:06.840 everywhere throughout history, and not typically in the sort of 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.679 major areas that we think of. Yeah, and uh, I'd 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:12.800 like the fact that we're actually doing this one because 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:17.160 it follows on from the stock market bubble one that 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.000 we did last week quite nicely. It's something that actually 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.840 happened I think in the nineteen twenties before everyone got 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:26.720 really into stocks. But people always talk about the stock 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:29.360 market bubble of the nineteen twenties. They kind of forgot 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.000 about this one, right exactly, So you're hinting at what 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:35.080 it is. So it's last week. We talked a lot 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.600 about the stock market bubble of nine, but a few 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:42.120 years earlier in that decade, in the twenties, there was 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:46.920 an extraordinary, fascinating bubble in Florida real estate. And of 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:51.480 course Florida has had numerous booms and busts throughout the years. 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.960 That's sort of part of what makes Florida Florida, including 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.920 recently in the financial crisis, Florida got built up and 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.320 then hit really hard. But this is definitely one of 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.000 my favorite bubbles, and uh, you know, I think there's 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.400 a lot of lessons for people even still today and 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:11.400 analyzing how this built up and how it eventually collapsed. 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:13.960 We're going to have to rank our favorite bubbles on 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.919 a one to ten basis. I think after we finished 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:18.799 that'll be let's do that at the end of the series. 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.680 Every al Right, Well, I'm looking forward to this one 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:24.280 because I think we have a really good guest for 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.000 it as well. Right, Joe, I'm very excited about our 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.280 guest today. Today we're going to be talking to are 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:33.799 A Moore Parks. She's a historian, she's an author, she's 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:39.360 a Florida preservationist, basically the perfect person. She knows Florida, 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.359 probably better than just about anywhere else. She knows this 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.880 story and probably the perfect person to glean some insight 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:50.560 into this extraordinary period of sort of financial and American history. Great, 0:02:50.760 --> 0:03:03.240 let's do it so without further Ado, let's bring in 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.799 Ava Areva. Thank you very much for joining us. Well, 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:07.880 thank you for inviting me. I look forward to it. 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.160 Before we just started with the uh you know, talking 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:16.160 about this period in Florida history. Tell us how you 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.160 your experience, How did it becoming a sort of preservationist 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:25.119 and historian with Florida's history? How did that become your 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:29.680 main interest? Okay, I was a school teacher, teaching history 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.160 at high school and in the faculty room there was 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:36.240 a notice of six credits toward a master's degree of 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:39.320 for teachers, and I applaud and was accepted and was 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.640 fortunate the doctor Charlton to both the major Florida historian 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.840 of the day got me interested in doing a master's 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.720 on the earliest community in South Florida, which was Cocoa Grove, 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:52.880 and that's where it all began. Uh, and I never 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.480 stopped researching after that. Are Joe knows that I like 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.080 to start um at the beginning of things whenever we 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.920 talk about certain historical events in our podcast. So when 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:08.200 we're talking about this real estate bubble in Florida in 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:13.360 the nineteen twenties, walk us through how it actually got started. Well, 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:16.159 we call it the boom in Florida. We don't call 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.520 it the bubble. It's so it's the great boom of 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:22.279 the nineteen twenties. And in many many ways, George America, 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.440 who have done my most recent work, UM moved into 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:29.400 what was then called the back country and started selling 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:33.640 lots and what he described as Miami's master suburb. And Uh, 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:38.440 he had the first sales in n and he expected 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:41.240 a couple of hundred or five thousand people showed up, 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.080 And in many ways that began the frenzy, I guess 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:48.920 we should say, of buying up of the back country, 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:54.320 buying up different areas of South Florida. UM, the Everglades 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.080 started at twenty seventh Avenue, which is hard for people 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:00.400 to believe today. North of the Miami River, all of 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:05.080 that had to be reclaimed everglades land, So there was 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:08.920 a lot of vacant land, and that made Miami area 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:13.120 the perfect candidate for this bubble or boom as yourn. 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:19.080 So you mentioned this character, George Merrick, who created this community, 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:23.880 Coral Gables, and he was a real estate development It 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:28.479 had way more interest from buyers than he anticipated. What 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:31.919 was it about his vision? What was it about his 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:36.240 salesmanship for buying up real estate in South Florida that 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:40.359 really attracted people at such an intense level. Well, he 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:44.600 was a master salesman and not an enormous amount of advertising. 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:50.719 As grandfather Think had become very wealthy manufacturing patent medicine 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.960 called Thinks Magic Oil, and he taught George, and he 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:55.840 was the one that convinced the Merricks to move to 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.960 South Florida after they were in Duxbury, Massachusetts, after the 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.200 terrible freeze. So they bought this land in the back 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:08.760 country and actually raised grapefruit, and George sold grapefruit from 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.840 a mule cart as a third jenior old boy. And 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.599 but he dreamed about what he might be able to 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:16.960 do with us a hundred and sixty acres the original 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:21.640 hundred sixty acres and his father had bought before moving on. 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.479 Just to touch on something you said, his father was 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.520 a salesman for sort of it was called Fink's Magic Oil. 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:31.240 That was his grandfather. And so when we think of 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:33.960 like in the old days, these sort of salesman with 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.000 their you know, now we call him snake oil salesman, 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:40.200 but the sort of cure all cure all tinctures and 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.640 cure all oils. One can imagine that these sort of 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:47.240 the salesmanship involved in selling those old oils may have 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.720 passed through to George to uh sell real sale real 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.360 estate in Florida as this sort of paradise. Plus the 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.760 grandfather think was a Methodist circuit riding minister prior to 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:01.200 becoming a stank old salesman, and his father was a 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:06.279 Yale educated UH Congregational minister in New England. And the 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:09.720 terrible freeze where they lost their child. Grandpa Fink had 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:12.520 been to the brand new community of Miami and told 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:17.040 Solomon and Althea, George's parents about buying land in the 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.560 back country. And so Solomon Merrick, the educated man, ended 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.800 up buying this wilderness uh and moved out in what 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:28.200 was called the back country of Coconut Grove. So walk 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.320 us through what was the sales pitch for buying um 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.400 Florida property at that time, Like I imagine, you know, 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.880 they were pitching probably to all types of people, not 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:41.160 just people who were already in Florida. So what were 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:45.280 they telling them to entice them to buy into that market. Well, 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:49.040 um speculation and a lot of open land. Uh. And 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:53.080 George Merrick I think had as much to do with 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:57.640 creating the boom nationally because he advertised in national newspapers 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:01.480 about Coral Gables and was unheard of at the time. 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:05.920 So people came down not then other um vacant land, 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:09.000 other homesteads, and the whole area was homestead and Uh. 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.640 That tells you how vacant, I mean, how unpopulated South 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.320 Blarida was. And so other owners of these hundred and 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:19.800 sixty acre homesteads began to also develop them into subdivisions 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.720 with romantic names, and they too began to advertise in 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.679 the papers. I find it interesting you're talking about Merrick's 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:33.320 father being a minister, because Merrick himself while he was 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.520 selling property. And this is something that I learned recently. 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:41.960 He recruited to help him sell property. William Jennings Bryan 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:45.400 one of the great orators of the era. He's famous, 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:47.640 of course her in for President. He's famous for his 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:51.840 Cross of Gold speech, for his role in the Scopes 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:56.120 Monkey trial, himself religious minister, and so there seems to 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.920 be the sort of crossover between the salesmanship involved in 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:04.800 selling property as well as the sort of salesmanship involved 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.360 in UH preaching. So I agree with that a dent. 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:12.400 And I think that Merrick again was a genius when 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:14.520 it came to marketing, and I think he learned a 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.760 lot of it from Grandpa Fink and his father UH. 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:20.680 And then hiring William Jennings Bryant was just unheard of 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:23.520 at the time. So Jenny's blind became one of his 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.800 major salesmen to selling coral gables, both locally and nationally. 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:33.080 So in addition to these big name salesman like William 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.680 Jennings Bryan, you also had this network of young men 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:40.720 called binder boys, and they would go out and try 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.880 to get people to put down payments on houses. Right. 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.920 They would sell quote binders, which were laid down payments 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:50.920 and for a certain price. So you would get a 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:53.440 binder on a piece of land and you would pay 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:56.120 for it later. And they made a lot of money 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.640 doing that, and unfortunately a lot of them that was 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:03.240 a lot of that. The binders helped create the fall 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:05.880 or the end of the boom because people were not 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:09.680 able to pay them off after the stock market crash 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.960 and after the bank failures and everything else. So the 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:17.160 binder voice not only promoted the boom, they also helped 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.840 end it. Let's talk about some of the you know, 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.040 some of the things that characterized you called a boom, 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:26.440 might call it a bubble. But in any boom, there's 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:30.480 sort of glaring examples that in retrospect seems like people 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.600 behaving completely irrationally. What were some of those things, like 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:35.680 what were sort of the price jumps that we would 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:39.160 see on a plot of land from first purchase to 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.880 flip to the next flip and so on. Well, it 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:44.720 would go out dramatically. As I said, the hundred sixty 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:47.520 acre homesteads were basically free. I think it costs about 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.760 fifteen dollars to apply, and so a lot of the 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:55.280 land began as homesteads and then it was subdivided and 0:10:55.360 --> 0:11:00.320 sold off, so the price increases the exorbitant to the 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.840 owner in the beginning, and as the boom grass, the 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:05.920 prices kept going up up up, I mean in the 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:11.000 cables that was particularly true. Uh George Merrick wanted to 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.559 build beauty for the middle class. Uh and not he 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.679 did not start out building this grand fancy pan subdivision. 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.480 That only happened because it was so popular and people 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.480 kept paying more and more and more. The Binder Boys 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.040 they became so prevalent that they had to be like 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.480 they were like just selling out on the sidewalk and 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:32.040 selling out on the street everywhere, and they actually had 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:35.080 to pass ordinances to sort of get them indoors so 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:37.840 that people could get through the streets. Like how crazy 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.880 and frenzy did the Bonder Boys phenomenon guests well, the 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:45.280 downtown Miami eras where the Bonder Boys would solve the streets. 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:47.520 And if you look at some of the pictures all 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:50.440 the many of the first high rise buildings in Miami 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:52.920 were built in this era too, So some of the 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:56.840 early pictures of downtown Miami, the streets are just full 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:01.400 of people and the sky is full of medals. You know, 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:05.000 skyscrapers going up. So it was an incredible period of 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:09.520 time and people as I grew up bunch later than that, 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.920 but my people were still talking about dull boom and 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:18.679 everybody knew they were talking about the nineteen and they 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.280 were literally when you say the streets were filled with people, 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.080 is literally people coming down from the rest of the 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.760 country on the streets meeting up with the Binder boys 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:33.600 and making real estate transactions right there and site unseen, 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.040 like not really knowing anything about the real estate they 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:39.160 were buying right something that was true. And there were 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:43.000 busses though. George Berrick had a fleet of buses that 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.240 brought people in even in from the north into Coral 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.199 Gables to sell them. So he he tended to show 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:53.400 them and he created He had a first professional landscape architect, 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:57.560 Frank Button, did big plans and when you go into 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.640 Coral Gables today, these plans are still intact. So even 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:03.840 though George amery go we had eight years he planned, 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.320 he had the first planned trimunity and uh, that's why 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.720 it continues to be, you know, very valuable real estate 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:13.840 today even though it lost everything there for a while. 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:18.320 I like the anecdote that the binder boys, you know, 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:21.560 when they would get paid a down payment on a property, 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:23.600 it was all by check, so it would take them 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.600 a while to get the actual money. So what they 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:30.160 would do is they would take their um their binders 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.120 over to hotels and restaurants and clubs and use those 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:36.720 to get credit in the meantime until the check cleared. 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:39.760 Kind of creates this nice image of the boom times 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.640 and all these binder boys out partying in Miami with 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.480 the money that they haven't yet received. It was a 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.040 wild and crazy time, and uh there were nightclubs, and 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:55.400 there were prohibition uh escape issies, even though prohibition you know, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:14:00.400 was in effect not very much an affection Miami. So 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:02.560 I'm just curious, you know, when it came to the 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:06.559 people who were actually buying the properties. Give us some sense. 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:08.800 How many of them were in it because they were 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:13.800 actually excited about the prospect of developing this previously unused land, 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:15.520 and how many of them were in it just because 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:17.840 they were looking to make a quick book. Well, I 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.240 think there was plenty of each. It's hard to give 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.760 exact numbers because some of the people that came down 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:24.840 to make a quick book kind of fell in love 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:28.520 with the area state, So a lot of or lost 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.120 everything and had to stay. You had a combination of 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:35.760 the two when the boom ended and after the hurricane. Say, 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:40.000 there was this horrible hurricane in and that pretty much 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:44.240 stopped the quote boom. Uh, it just proctly blew Miami away. 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.160 But George Merrick continued to pour his money into Coral 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:52.080 Gables after the hurricane. So you can't say that it 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:54.720 completely stopped a lot of people, do I I disagree 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.640 with that point of view. It really stopped in twenty 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:00.960 eight and they literally threw George out of Coral Table 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.000 and he lost everything he put, every study had and 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:08.560 trying to keep it going after Okay, so the bust 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:13.640 really came for sure by nine when the stock market 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:16.160 crash you know, happened to and then that killed it off. 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:18.200 I want to talk a little bit more about the 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.320 bust in a second, but one thing I wanted to 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.640 go back to. You mentioned that George Merrick at one 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:26.800 point got his own fleet of buses to bring people 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:31.040 down would be buyers. Something that I read is that 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:35.560 at one point the craze to buy property in Florida 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.080 got so intense that they actually had to limit the 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.560 number of passengers who came in by rail and highway 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.720 so that they could make room for food and other 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.280 provisions to get into the state to feed the people 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:50.760 that were actually there. Was getting so clugged? Am I 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.960 remembering that correctly? Yes, you are. It's hard to even 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:58.000 imagine today. We've never seen anything quite like za boom 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:01.480 as as we call it. We've had the booms. In fact, 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:07.080 I was born here and and I frequently say I've 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.680 lived in maybe seven different Miamis because we've had a 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:14.160 series of these quote booms or uh speculative period where 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.240 we keep changing who we are. I like that. I 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.440 like that idea that like the boom and bus cycle, 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.240 is there just sort of almost definitional to uh, to 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.480 what Florida is all about at this point? Absolutely, I 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.720 would I would certainly agree to that. Particularly Miami. Ums 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.840 has been so true here in my life. I've been 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.520 through booms and bus Uh. I've watched it happen, you know, 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:43.160 are before we move on to the trigger of the bust? Uh, 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:47.040 what's your favorite anecdote from the boom period of this time? 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.800 Is there one thing that sticks out in your mind? Well, um, 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.560 you know that It's really hard because I've just known 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:57.800 so much. I think the idea that that George had 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.600 the Spanish theme, it's it's kind of ironic it today 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.400 we have somebody Spanish speakers and the majority of people 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:06.960 in Miami now or you know from from Latin America. 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:09.640 This certainly was not true. We were mostly what everybody 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:14.639 called crackers, which were the southerns who populated Miami prior 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:19.320 to the boom and uh, the crackers were everything. And 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:21.720 one of the quotes that was in the New York 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:25.040 paper is the only thing lacking, uh in Coral Gables 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.359 were the Spaniards themselves. And that's kind of ironic. What 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.119 do you think about today? Because George named all the 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.920 street names see after Spanish and then later Italian cities. 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.280 So he saw the history. He was a history book. 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:40.880 He saw the history of Florida. Were getting way back 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:43.800 with postibly on as what we should be thinking about 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:47.359 in that era. I see the boom town. So it's 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:52.640 all very fascinating, honestly, and let's uh, let's talk about 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.040 the bad stuff and how it eventually came to an end. 0:17:56.080 --> 0:18:01.960 So you mentioned the role that the six hurricane had. 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.760 The hurricane didn't kill the market outright, but it was 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.359 sort of the beginning of the end. How bad was 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.080 the hurricane, like sort of put it in context and 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:16.000 then talk about, you know, sort of the immediate hurricane 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:19.120 aftermath for the market. Well, it's still it was down 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:21.640 as one of the worst hurricanes in South Florida history. 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.600 The hurricane was another one that was a lot of flooding. 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:28.040 But the twenty six hurricane, and we in all our 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.640 history say it really did stop the boom. Uh So 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.159 we went into the great depression before the rest of 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:39.159 the days we led. Our great depression began really in 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:43.600 twenty six. And it was George uh that for his 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.480 fortune he was today be a billionaire. He poured his 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.280 fortune back into trying to keep the quote boom and 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.560 keep corl Gables a lot. So when the three amount 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.280 of eight, he didn't have anything. And when he died 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:59.080 he was only fifty five. His estate was less than 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.560 three or four hundred dollars. So that gives you the 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:07.879 idea of how the boom killed people's personal money on 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.560 the bus rather kills the personal fortune of most of 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.280 the people that had come down during the boom. So 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:16.960 what happened afterwards, because you know, if I think back 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.560 to the most recent real estate boom that we had 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:24.680 in the US, that would be just before two thousand seven, 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:28.119 two thousand eight, um. The aftermath of that was, I 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:30.600 mean incredibly emotional for many people. And you had lots 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:32.840 of people who were kicked out of their house. But 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:35.840 if a lot of the Florida properties were being bought 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.159 for speculative use, uh, you know what happened. People just 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.439 lost money or where their people sort of out on 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.680 the street. In South Florida. Well, a lot of people 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:49.560 did lose their homes. And there's some similarity between the 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:53.760 speculatives booms of the nineteen twenties and and the other booms. 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.399 A lot of people got the idea that they could 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:00.760 make money on Florida real estate as so they purchased 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:03.040 as as the prices went up, they continued to purchase, 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:06.200 even with more expensive prices. And then when the next 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.480 bust came and the prices dropped, they couldn't pay the 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.640 mortgage and so they lost their homes, They lost their property. 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.440 So it is definitely a pattern boom bus, boom bus, 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:21.120 boom bus in Miami history. And so George Merrick, you said, 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:23.840 he basically ended up broke. He was at one point 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:26.879 the modern equivalent of a billionaire. He ended up with 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.760 about four d dollars. The timing of the when people 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:33.840 sort of declared in your mind the boom, as you 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.200 call it, did it end with the stock market crash? 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:40.360 Of did it end a little bit before that? When 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:42.600 is the sort of period where you know you sort 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.240 of book ends the boom, Well, it kind of ended 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:49.800 with the hurricane of as far as most everybody but George, 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:52.920 And as I said, he poured his his fortune into 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:56.240 trying to keep Coral Gables going and he did not succeed. 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.040 He ended up actually being postmaster. Uh. He applied of 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.760 the reason very smart. He applied for the postmaster and 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:06.280 got a job as Miami postmaster. And he was only 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:10.240 fifty five when he died. So uh, it's a very 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:12.000 sad story in a way. But when you look at 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:16.800 Coral Gables today, his planning I was brilliant. And someone says, 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:18.399 you don't need it define to tell you when you 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.359 had a Coral Gables because of his planning that he 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:24.119 did back in the nineteen twenties during the boom. You know, 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:27.520 there's a quote that uh, I think it is right. 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.600 I can't remember it exactly, but I read it somewhere 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:32.880 recently and they were saying, like, the key to all 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:38.639 bubble is you have to have a tremendous story that 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:41.919 then just gets taken too far, but the fundamentals have 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:44.399 to be really good. And what it sounds like, I 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:46.120 think with Florida, and part of the reason he keeps 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.120 coming back is that the fundamentals actually really are good. 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:51.720 Like it is a very beautiful place. It's one of 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.960 the some of the best weather in the entire country. 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:59.920 The beaches are beautiful. As you mentioned, his community of 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:03.880 Coral Gables was very well designed. So while it may 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:06.639 have like gotten completely carried away and a bunch of 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:10.879 people lost their heads with speculation, the key thing I 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:12.960 think to go it seems to go back to is 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:16.399 that the underlying fundamentals are in fact very strong and 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:18.800 he was not wrong to be, you know, sort of 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:21.560 selling what he was selling. No. I think that one 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:24.120 of the major influences was a lot of vacant land. 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.600 Um you know, people had not the railroad did not 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:31.280 come down here until nine And you think about the 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:35.280 rest of the nation up to uh and and there were. 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:37.960 You know, when Miami was incorporated, there were three thirty 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:42.119 people here in e in the city of Miami, so 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:45.800 it started booming. The railroad created maybe one of the 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:49.119 first booms when it got here, and then it just 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:52.800 kept continuing. It's just a history of boom and buff Joe. 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:54.840 I think that's a nice place to leave it. I 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:57.560 think that is a perfect place to leave it. I 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:00.119 love I'm really glad you brought in the railroads there 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:01.879 at the end, because I do think that you know 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:05.359 that that's sort of a constant theme with bubbles, is 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:10.200 some new technology or to enable the sort of capital 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:13.119 to flow, and obviously the railroad being a key source 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:15.240 of capital from the rest of the country, are of 0:23:15.280 --> 0:23:17.760 a more parks. It was delightful to talk to you, 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:21.600 so great to get your perspective, and uh, I really 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.359 appreciate it. Well, I'm glad you're doing this because people 0:23:24.440 --> 0:23:28.240 need to understand that we're the capital booms. I guess 0:23:28.960 --> 0:23:33.359