How much would your house be worth if the Trump Organization owned it?

[Nevilledog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/27/trump-property-inflated-values/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/2oUGi


A year offering no shortage of bad news for Donald Trump outdid itself Tuesday afternoon, with New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruling that the former president’s namesake business, the Trump Organization, had repeatedly and fraudulently inflated the value of its real estate properties.

The ruling held no shortage of condemnations for the company and for its lawyers, whose reliance on already-rejected arguments spurred Engoron to issue sanctions against them. But the ruling was also remarkable for its delineation of the scale of that inflation.

It was by no means a secret that Trump in particular had a habit of overstating his net worth. This is well documented, including in interviews where Trump announced that his net worth depended on his mood. But there’s a difference between Trump, salesman-turned-politician, overstating things to close the deal and the Trump Organization presenting inflated data to potential lenders. In one case, Trump is trying to extract your vote in a marketplace bounded almost solely by the constraints of personal honesty and free speech. In the latter, there are legal ramifications for misleading potential investors — ramifications that the judge felt should apply to the Trump Organization.

The ruling walked through the scale of the inflation undertaken by the Trump Organization over the past 10 to 15 years. For example, consider the gap in valuation given to Trump’s Seven Springs property in Westchester County, N.Y. The judge compared its appraised value with what was presented in Statements of Financial Condition (SFCs) presented to potential investors.

“Not withstanding receiving market values from professional appraisals in 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2014 valuing Seven Springs at or below $30 million, Donald Trump’s 2011 SFC reported the value to be $261 million, and his 2012, 2013 and 2014 SFCs reported the value to be $291 million.”

*snip*


The archive link only shows the valuations based on a $400k home, but you get the idea.