From the Wikipedia article "the Villages, Florida":
Harold Schwartz, a Michigan businessman, began selling land tracts via mail order in The Villages area in the 1960s. Unfortunately for Schwartz and his business partner Al Tarrson, a Federal law in 1968 banned mail order sales of real estate.[5]
Stuck with considerable portions of Florida land, in the early 1970s Schwartz and Tarrson began development of a mobile home park, Orange Blossom Gardens, in the northwestern corner of Lake County. By the early 1980s, though, the community had sold only 400 units. In an attempt to improve the business, Schwartz decided to buy out Tarrson's interest and bring his son, H. Gary Morse, on board in 1983.
Morse noted that the successful retirement communities (such as Del Webb's Sun City developments) offered considerable numbers of well-maintained amenities to the residents and were also surrounded by diverse amounts of nearby commercial development. Thus, Morse began to significantly upgrade the development, which worked out well – the mid-1980s saw improvement in sales, and Schwartz then began to buy large tracts of land in nearby Sumter and Marion counties for future expansion.
Morse officially changed the overall development name to The Villages in 1992. The development is still controlled in all major aspects by descendants of Schwartz and Morse (as an example, Jennifer Parr, Director of Sales and the spokesperson on the sales video sent out to prospective buyers, is Schwartz's granddaughter).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida
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