The First Florida Housing Market Slump
Because history often repeats itself, analysts often look to the past to predict future Florida mortgage and housing market trends.
The St. Augustine Record has taken this philosophy to another level, comparing the current Florida housing market tailspin to a similar situation which sprang up in colonial times.
This week, the National Association of Realtors reported another decline in sales of existing homes as well as a glutted market. St. Augustine, which claims to be America’s oldest city, can probably make the dubious claim of one of the earliest thoroughly glutted housing markets.
From April 1763-February 176,4 all but a handful of St. Augustine’s 3,100 residents departed for Cuba or New Spain (Mexico). Florida was transferred from Spain to Great Britain. Military families composed most of Spanish St. Augustine’s population, and they were reassigned to other Spanish posts.
Almost every private property in St. Augustine was up for sale (probably for just a little bit less than a Florida mortgage loan costs now).
British subjects, moving in to replace the Spanish, found a buyers’ market.
Forty-year old Spanish St. Augustine native Juan Jose Elixio de la Puente became the real estate agent for all who had left. Today we might wonder about conflicts of interest on his part.
Elixio de la Puente made a housing map of St. Augustine in January 1764. The document portrays about 300 parcels, including properties belonging to the Spanish government or the Roman Catholic Church.
His map gives simple lot dimensions, just length and width with no notation of jogs and irregularities. He recorded building materials and listed the property owners. The map has proved to be an invaluable resource about St. Augustine and its people.
But the emigrants cared little for what this map would mean to the area in the next few centuries; they needed to sell the money from their property - and many of them found no buyers and had to settle for lower home prices.
Elixio de la Puente sailed to Cuba soon after he made the map and placed reliance in British subject Jesse Fish to handle the sales for the evacuated Spanish. Fish himself bought many of the properties.
Many of the evacuees of 1763-64 never saw a peso.
When Great Britain transferred its Florida colony back to Spain in 1784, some exiled Spanish families came back to reclaim their homes and lands, asserting that as far as they were concerned, there had been no sale.
In 1784-1785, after Great Britain flipped its Florida colony back to Spain, it was the turn for British subjects to leave. Once again, this Florida housing market saw a glut of inventory - and consequent low prices.
This may not bear any relevance for the Florida home loan seekers of today, but it’s interesting to note that market swings have been going on longer than the U.S. has even existed. Ride it out, and real estate should prove an ultimately worthwhile investment again soon.
SOURCE: St. Augustine Record
