I've wrapped up a book this week, entitled: 'The Great Crash 1929'....written by John Kenneth Galbraith.
I'd strongly recommend a read of the book if you ever had curiosity or interest in the period before the 1929 crash. Galbraith lays out a very good description of the 1920s, the real estate speculation on, the shorts-strategy on stocks, and the wild speculation going on. You also get a good long negative impression of Hoover and FDR.
It's around 220 pages long and avoids the dullness you get with most books on economic subjects.
One of the topics that he picks up....is this Florida real estate 'boom'. Very early in the 1920s....land speculators came into Florida....buying up farm acreage....to resell and get speculation going on.
Example: you'd buy a 50-acre package....split it into 50 1-acre lots, and then say the whole property (which you might have bought for $200 an acre) is now worth $1,000 per acre. You sell the property to the buyer who only puts down 10-percent of the asking price, but has a monthly payment plan. Speculation starts up and four months later, you find that someone is willing to pay $1,500 to $2,000 for that acre. This second guy sells his 1-acre six months later for $3,000.
Guys who walked into this at the early stage....buying ten lots....easily walked away with 200-percent profit in one single year, and were probably addicted to the 'game' at that stage. So they returned, and the whole thing simply went out of control.
If you had the bare basic knowledge level of the 1929 event....this would really help to fill in the rest of your landscape on the era.
