Real Estate Boom Again Grips Florida, August 1979

August 20, 1979 New York Times

With home heating costs soaring in the North, people are lining up to pay high prices for homes in Florida.

The last time people stood in line to buy town houses in Miami Lakes, not everyone played fair.  Some people used stand-ins - they paid people to camp out for them, then arrived fresh as daisies to sign paperwork.  The first arrivals showed up three days early to camp out...

The spectacle serves to dramatize the home buying frenzy that has propelled the Florida real estate market to its dizziest heights since the boom years of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Tremendous overbuilding, a reversal in the economy, and tremors from the Arab oil boycott put an end to those halcyon days for developers in the mid 1970s.  In 1974 and 1975 for example, overbuilding left 30,000 condos empty in South Florida alone, many of them built speculatively with rates 5 to 6 points above prime.

Many feared that the crisis in confidence would put a pall on Florida real estate for a decade to come.

Not so.  In fact, the new oil crisis seems to be fueling the current boom.  Impending recession has left many scurrying to the relatively safe housing market and worldwide inflation has sent both foreign and domestic capital winging its way into the Flordia real estate market....

Buyers in the condo market have increased 22%.  Fuel costs up north are skyrocketing and people with independent income and retired don't want to keep the thermostat at 68 degrees in the winter time.  These are the people buying in Florida.

Investment from Latin America where the political situation is often chancy and Canada, where inflation and the volatile Quebec situation play a role, are also strong here.

Last month, 550 people, including a liberal sprinkling of Latins, waited in line more than two hours to buy apartments in a luxury condominium on Claughton Island and the building is yet to be built. Nothing exists but a 44 acre site, architects renderings and a four lane bridge.

In this real estate market, you can sell anything", said Casey Cousins of Cousins Associaes..."My clients talk about the out and out fear they were experiencing because of the winter, one woman said she hadn't seen out her kitchen window for three months, the snow banks were pushed up so high".

Davie Adler paid $75,000 for a town house in Coconut Grove, said she was happy in Connecticut but was fearful of an oil crunch this winter or next.   "What bothers me more is the prospect of the added costs of heavier and heavier clothes, and the threat of short fuel supplies..."

Although most real estate agents are ecstatic about the trend, at least one is upset.

"I have people coming to me all the time for investment, but I'm morally against it.  This is why my children and yours have to pay $60,000 for a townhouse that's only worth $45,000 to $48,000."



Florida Cities Fastest Growing, New York Times, June 1979

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