Swampland in Florida refers to decades-old but still recurring real estate scams involving swamp lands misrepresented as being possible to develop, or "buildable". These scams became widely known and now also have meaning as a common figure of speech.

Expressions like "I have swampland in Florida to sell you" or "I have prime swampland to sell you" are slang expressions that the recipient shows gullibility

Gullibility

Gullibility is a failure of social intelligence in which a person is easily tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action. It is closely related to credulity, which is the tendency to believe unlikely propositions that are unsupported by evidence....

. It says figuratively that someone lacks sense like one who would fall for an old deception

Deception

Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...

 or fraud

Fraud

In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...

 of paying large amounts of money for a worthless item such as swampland. These phrases are often preceded by or imply, "If you believe that then..." Sometimes other swampy locations besides Florida are used in the term.

Origin of the term

Similar terms came from the early 1900s where con-men would sell landmarks to which no one owns the title such as the Brooklyn Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River...

 to newly-arrived immigrants in the United States. The phrase about gullibility referring to those events said, "if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you." Those evolved in the 1960s and 1970s to include fraudulent sales of worthless swampland real estate in Florida.

Though the term originates in the United States, it is now also understood and used in other English-speaking countries.

Actual value of swampland

The common usage of this term implies that swamp

Swamp

A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...

land is worthless. Without development or some ability to develop it, it is not valuable for real estate purposes. There have been cases that swampland was purchased and turned into very valuable property, notably for the creation of Walt Disney World Resort

Walt Disney World Resort

Walt Disney World Resort , is the world's most-visited entertaimental resort. Located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida ; approximately southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States, the resort covers an area of and includes four theme parks, two water parks, 23 on-site themed resort hotels Walt...

 and also to some extent including many developed lands in Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

. On the other hand, there are also arguments made for the value of scenery and wildlife found in swamplands in their natural condition. Sometimes that is done by businesses to meet a development permit requirement to preserve some Florida land in order to build on other Florida land.

Swampland scams

In the 1960s and 1970s, scammers used nationwide advertising to lure victims to buy Florida real estate without visiting the properties first. It was a form of confidence trick

Confidence trick

A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...

. The new owners came to find their land was under water in a swamp or in some other way impossible to build upon. As the scam became widely known, California and New York legislators acted in 1963 to restrict this false advertising

False advertising

False advertising or deceptive advertising is the use of false or misleading statements in advertising. As advertising has the potential to persuade people into commercial transactions that they might otherwise avoid, many governments around the world use regulations to control false, deceptive or...

. Florida also enacted the Installment Land Sales Act that year in an effort to restore its reputation.

Swampland scams still occur in Florida. The Internet has brought about a resurgence via online auctions of Florida real estate. Scammers circumvent commercial registration requirements by making one-on-one sales. Over great distances some buyers can be convinced to pay before verifying claims. It usually involves unbuildable swampland misrepresented as buildable to fraudulently inflate the sale price.

Swampland in Arizona

A similar phrase, which replaces the Florida with Arizona is also used for the same reasons. As Arizona is well known to have an arid climate, it is assumed that wetlands in that state are non-existent. The implication is that the target of the insult is not only more gullible than someone who would buy swampland in Florida, but also ignorant. Another variation of the phrase is "ocean front property in Arizona", of which none exists because Arizona is a land-locked state. Country songwriter George Strait wrote a song with this variation as its title.

See also

• real estate
  • Economic bubble
    Economic bubble
    An economic bubble is "trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values"...
    
    
  • Florida land boom of the 1920s
    Florida land boom of the 1920s
    The Florida land boom of the 1920s was Florida's first real estate bubble, which burst in 1925, leaving behind entire new cities and the remains of failed development projects such as Aladdin City in south Miami-Dade County and Isola di Lolando in north Biscayne Bay...
    
    
  • Real estate bubble
    Real estate bubble
    A real estate bubble or property bubble is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets...
    
    
  • Real estate economics
    Real estate economics
    Real estate economics is the application of economic techniques to real estate markets. It tries to describe, explain, and predict patterns of prices, supply, and demand...
    
    
• swamps
  • Big Cypress National Preserve
    Big Cypress National Preserve
    Big Cypress National Preserve is a United States National Preserve located in southern Florida, about 45 miles west of Miami. The Big Cypress, along with Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas, became the first national preserves in the United States National Park System when they were...
    
    
  • Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary
    Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary
    Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is a National Audubon Society sanctuary located in southwest Florida, north of Naples, Florida and east of Bonita Springs, in the United States. The sanctuary was established to protect one of the largest remaining stands of Bald Cypress and Pond Cypress Corkscrew Swamp...
    
    
  • Everglades
    Everglades
    The Everglades are subtropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large watershed. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee...
    
    
    • Draining and development of the Everglades
      Draining and development of the Everglades
      The history of draining and development of the Everglades dates back to the 19th century. During the Second Seminole War beginning in 1836, the United States military's mission was to seek out Seminole people in the Everglades and capture or kill them. Those missions gave the military the...
      
      
  • Highlands Hammock State Park
    Highlands Hammock State Park
    Highlands Hammock State Park is a park west of Sebring in Highlands County, Florida, off U.S. 27. The park opened in 1931, four years before the Florida state park system was created.-Flora:...
    
    
  • Picayune Strand State Forest
    Picayune Strand State Forest
    Picayune Strand State Forest in Florida is primarily comprising two major tracts of land, the South Golden Gate Estates Tract and the Belle Meade Tract. The South Golden Gate Estates Tract comprises the majority of the forest. The land which is now Picayune Strand State Forest was originally logged...
    
    
  • Santa Fe Swamp
    Santa Fe Swamp
    The Santa Fe Swamp is 95-percent floodplain swamp. Along with Lake Santa Fe and Little Lake Santa Fe, it serves as headwaters of the Santa Fe River, which drains into the Suwannee River and then finally the Gulf of Mexico...
    
    

External links

• Florida Law Chapter 498: Land Sales Practices
• "$300,000 "Swampland" Scam Leads to Arrest" at State of Florida Attorney General
• "Hernando Man Convicted for Selling Swamplands to Floridians" at State of Florida Attorney General
• "I got swampland in Florida to sell you" at Miami Beach 411
• "Lake Apopka: The New Florida Swampland Scam" at Southwest Orlando blog
• "Beyond Disney World: Florida's swamp land is something to be truly admired and explored" at Poste Restante online travel magazine (via Internet Archive)
• Florida Land Scams - land scams in Polk County, Florida