Land in the Sun

In the past decade, no fewer than a million Americans seeking the sun have bought homes in Florida. Even more have taken the half step of buying land --for retirement, for future vacations, or merely for an investment. Now the trend is spreading overseas. From Caracas to Hong Kong, thousands of foreigners are buying palm-fringed lots in Florida, a place that most of them have never seen.

Bargain Investments. Many of today's foreign buyers are Europeans (mostly Germans, followed by the Dutch, Belgians and Swiss) impelled partly by a desire to escape dismal winters but still more by the smell of a bargain investment. Florida lots often cost about one-fifth the price of a comparable homesite on the Continent. Typical terms: as little as $1,295 for a 10,000-sq.-ft. plot with water and sewerage connections, and $25 down and eight years to pay at 5% interest. Moreover, if they choose to build, Europeans get more house for their money in the U.S. than they do at home.

Miami-based Deltona Corp. set up an office in Frankfurt in 1963 to tap a market among U.S. servicemen overseas, now finds that sales to Europeans are as high as those to Americans. Europeans have bought $1,250,000 worth of lots at Deltona developments near Daytona Beach and on San Marco Island off Florida's west coast. A Nuernberg accountant named Herman Boeckler grew so enthusiastic after a visit to his lots that he not only bought more property but formed a Deltona Club back home. Even some of Europe's lesser nobility have been attracted. One of them, Duesseldorf's blonde Baroness Praxedis von der Osten-Sacken, bought seven Deltona lots for $16,075, "because the land and homes are ridiculously inexpensive. Besides, I love the sun, and I plan to move to Florida."

Chartered Flights. Deltona, headed by Miami's big-building Mackle brothers, also has a flourishing outpost in Hong Kong. Last year it sold more than $1,000,000 worth of land, mostly to Chinese investors. Operating on a still larger scale is Miami's General Development Corp., whose chairman is Charles Kellstadt, ex-chief of Sears, Roebuck, and among whose major stockholders is Publisher Gardner Cowles. It reports $4,000,000-a-year sales of Florida realty to investment-minded Europeans and Latin Americans. The firm sometimes charters flights for foreign prospects, who get a $125 discount if they buy.

All this activity (which helps the U.S. balance of payments) is an unexpected dividend of rising prosperity. As European countries achieved a better economic situation, they relaxed currency controls and thereby enabled investors to turn abroad with their traditional penchant for putting nest eggs into land rather than stocks.

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