How much is Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago worth?

That has been a point of contention after a New York judge ruled that the former president exaggerated the value of the Florida property when he said it was worth at least $420 million and perhaps as much as $1.5 billion.

Judge Arthur Engoron joined New York’s attorney general in a lawsuit accusing Trump of grossly overvaluing his assets. He thought Trump consistently exaggerated the value of Mar-a-Lago.

He noted that a Trump estimate of the club’s value was 2,300% times Palm Beach County tax assessor’s valuations, which ranged from $18 million to $37 million.

But Palm Beach real estate agents who specialize in luxury real estate scoff at the idea that the estate could be worth so little

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in the unlikely event that Trump ever sells.

Ridiculous, Officer Liza Pulitzer said of the judge who cited the county tax bill as a benchmark. Houses one-tenth the size of Mar-a-Lago, on small lots in the interior that are sold for that

the city of

Palm Beach, a wealthy island enclave.

The entire real estate community thought it was a joke when they saw that figure, said Pulitzer, who works for the firm Brown Harris Stevens.

That thing would fetch hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, said Rob Thomson, owner of Waterfront Properties and Mar-a-Lago member. There’s zero chance it will sell for $40 million or $50 million.

In the ongoing litigation over the lawsuit, however, what a private buyer might pay for a place like Mar-a-Lago is not the only factor in determining whether Trump is liable for fraud.

What is Mar-a-Lago?

The 126-room, 62,500-square-foot mansion is Trump’s main home. It is also a club, a private beach resort, a historical artifact, and a banquet hall with a gold-leaf ballroom. It’s where Trump kept government documents that federal prosecutors say he illegally took after leaving office in 2021.

Although Trump has long admitted to using truthful hyperbole in his business dealings, he is not exaggerating when he calls Mar-a-Lago unique.

Built in 1927 by grain heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, financier E. F. Hutton, she gave the property its name, Spanish for sea-to-lake, because its 17 acres extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway.

Post kept the mansion after the couple’s divorce and hosted lavish galas there. In 1969, Mar-a-Lago was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Post, who died in 1973, donated the property to the U.S. government as a winter retreat for presidents, but Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter never used it. The government, citing high maintenance costs, returned it to Post’s foundation in 1981.

The building fell into disrepair. Trump bought it in 1985 for about $10 million, the equivalent of $30 million today. He invested heavily in its renovation.

However, in the early 1990s, Trump was in financial distress after several of his companies went bankrupt. He told Palm Beach

village

officials, he could not afford the $3 million annual maintenance

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and proposed subdividing the property and building mansions. The city rejected the plan.

Negotiations continued, and in 1993 the city agreed to let him turn the property into a private club, giving him cash flow he could use for maintenance. He built the ballroom, but signed away the development rights.

The agreement limits the club to 500 members. The starting cost is $500,000, with annual dues of $20,000.

Trump typically lives at Mar-a-Lago from October to May, before summer in New Jersey.

So what is Mar-a-Lago worth?

That’s hard to say. The biggest problem is that there are no comparable homes. No one builds mansions in Palm Beach like Mar-a-Lago anymore, and the mansions that did exist were demolished, torn up or turned into a museum long ago.

Trump, in a statement in April, justified his belief that Mar-a-Lago could be worth a billion dollars by comparing it to the price of the Mona Lisa, otherwise a Renoir painting would require the ultra-rich to pay a premium to get something to buy something unique in its kind.

Eli Beracha, president of Florida International University’s Hollo School of Real Estate, agreed that it is difficult to assess the value of any unique property. The fact that Trump owned Mar-a-Lago would likely increase its sales price.

Some people will argue that not everyone likes Trump, some people would even pay less as a result. … But the highest bidder will likely be someone who buys it because it belonged to Trump, Beracha said.

Pulitzer said the floor price for Mar-a-Lago would be $300 million. Thomson said at least $600 million. If super-billionaires got into a bidding war, they said, a sale of a billion dollars or more could be possible.

The much smaller Palm Beach complex once owned by the Kennedy political dynasty was sold three years ago for $70 million.

How did Palm Beach County end up with such a low tax bill?

The county gives Mar-a-Lago its current tax value of $37 million, based on its annual net operating income as a club and not on its resale value as a home or reconstruction costs. It is one of nine private clubs in the province that are taxed in this way.

Becky Robinson, the tax assessor’s spokesperson, said this method is used because private clubs are so rarely sold or built, making it impossible to determine their tax rates by comparing them to similar properties. Mar-a-Lago’s property taxes will be $602,000 this year, county data show.

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a South Florida Democrat, wrote to the county, saying that if Trump claims Mar-a-Lago is worth $1 billion, he should be taxed accordingly. If Mar-a-Lago had an estimated value of $1 billion, then so be it

annual

Property taxes would be about $18 million.

Robinson said the county bases its assessments on the law and its formulas, not the property owners’ claims.

Why it matters

In her lawsuit against Trump, New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James argued that Mar-a-Lago was one of several assets that Trump overvalued in financial statements given to banks and others.

Based on those statements, Trump valued Mar-a-Lago at $739 million, an amount that James said ignored deed restrictions that required the property to be used as a social club and not as a private residence. Her lawyers have argued that Trump should have valued Mar-a-Lago in his financial statements the same way he valued the county, based on its club status.

Trump’s financial statements, the New York lawyers wrote, valued the club based on the false and misleading premise that it was an unrestricted tract of residential land that could be sold and used as a private residence, which was clearly not the case.

Trump’s lawyers have said there was no cheating, and that the banks likely did not rely on his financial statements anyway when determining whether to lend him money.