Condominiums in buildings with Trump’s name on them have plummeted in value—while the value of condos that removed the Trump logo shot up.
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Trump brags about pretty much everything—but particularly his wealth and his real estate.
That was the basis of the civil fraud trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which culminated on Friday when a judge ruled Trump must pay $355 million—or $453.5 million with interest, according to NBC News—after finding him liable of fraudulently inflating his net worth and the values of his properties to get good deals on bank loans and insurance policies. (He said, for example, that his Mar-a-Lago estate was valued at $1 billion—about $970 million more than a Palm Beach county tax appraisal that found it was worth between $18 million and $27 million.)
But a report published by the New York Times on Sunday—based on sales data from two real estate tracking firms and an analysis by an economist at Columbia University—reveals that Trump-branded real estate has taken a hit in his hometown of New York City following his 2016 election.
Condominiums in buildings with Trump’s name on them plummeted in value during the one-year period before and after the election, going from selling at a one percent premium compared to similar units to selling for four percent less, according to the Times. Over the ten-year period from 2013 to 2023, the contrast was even starker: the seven Manhattan buildings till emblazoned with the Trump name dropped in value by 23 percent, according to the real estate website CityRealty. That includes the famous Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where he infamously descended the escalator to launch his 2016 campaign: the average price per square foot of its condos fell by nearly 50 percent since 2013, according to CityRealty.
