“They’re Giving Them Away”: Apartment Prices Fall In Trump Buildings

The building has a spectacular view of Manhattan, its spa offers therapeutic massages and the restaurant with access from the lobby offers first-class meat, but the best thing is that many departments of the Trump Tower are sold at deep discounts, as long as the buyer does not mind the name on the facade.

“50% of the people do not want to live in the Trump building for no reason, but there are guys like me ”, said Lou Sollecito, a car salesman who recently bought a two-bedroom unit overlooking the Empire Express Building. “It is a phenomenal purchase.”

He paid $3 million, almost a million less than what the seller had to pay in 2008.

Speculators rush to buy units in buildings Trump, where prices fall to unprecedented levels, a phenomenon that real estate agents attribute to hostility towards the former president Donald Trump combined with the pandemic.

It’s a staggering setback for a brand that used to attract the famous rich and be willing to pay more to live in a building bearing the gold Trump name.

A study by The Associated Press from about 4,000 transactions over the past 15 years at 11 Trump-branded buildings in Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas and New York, it found that the prices of some hotel apartments and suites offered for sale have fallen by a third or more.

The drop exceeds that of other similar buildings: units for sale in buildings Trump they cost hundreds of thousands and up to a million dollars less than a few years ago.

“They are giving them away”, said Lane Blue, who paid $ 160,500 in the March building for a studio at Trump Tower in Las Vegas, $ 350,000 less than the seller paid in 2008. It is the second unit he has bought in the building and may not be the last.

It is impossible to know to what extent the phenomenon is due to the name Trump. Many units for sale are located in cities heavily affected by the pandemic or in hotels that had to close or in condominium buildings much older than their competitors, making comparisons difficult.

Still, Trump’s bellicose rhetoric and policies have not been factors in his favor. When he had only been in the White House for a year, several Trump hotels and condos in Panama, Toronto and Manhattan, which paid millions for the brand, began to remove his name from the facades.

The situation worsened when they accused Trump of encouraging the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6. Many banks swore not to grant him loans, the PGA canceled a tournament at his golf course in New Jersey, and the city of New York fired him as manager of a public golf course in the Bronx borough. Several real estate entrepreneurs say buyers don’t even want to see a Trump building.

“I wish they would remove the name”, said Gary Gabriel, an apartment owner at Trump Palace in Manhattan’s upscale Upper East Side neighborhood. “It is a shame”.

It is also an opportunity.

“We see the river. We see the lake. It has a view of downtown, “says Nilufar Kabir, who bought a one-bedroom home at the Trump condo-hotel in Chicago for $ 680,000, almost 20% less than what the seller had paid. “It’s a bicoca.”