President Donald Trump’s childhood home in Queens, New York, has been sold, in a deal by a lawyer who specialises in real estate investments made by overseas Chinese buyers.
The identity of the purchaser, who paid more than $2 million (€1.98 million) for the modest Tudor-style home, was obscured behind a recently created limited liability corporation, Trump Birth House. The sale closed March 23rd.
In an email, Michael X. Tang, a lawyer registered as the representative for the corporation, said he was not permitted to disclose any information regarding the transaction. The $2.14 million sale price is more than double the average value of comparable homes in the area, according to the property site Trulia.
“The value is intangible — it’s not about the house or the bricks or the lot size,” said Misha Haghani, principal of Paramount Realty USA, which represented the property in an auction shortly before Trump was sworn in as president. “The value lies with the association with the current president of the US of A.”
It is not known what will become of the property. Haghani said that while plans for a presidential library and a museum had been floated to him by representatives for the buyer, nothing had been made firm.
The house was built in 1940 by Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump’s father, a real estate developer. The president lived there from his birth to age 4, when the family moved to a larger home just behind the pale yellow Tudor. It was sold by Michael Davis, a real estate prospector who bought it in 2016 for just under $1.4 million, with the intention of flipping the property.
Last month a penthouse in Trump’s Park Avenue building was purchased for $15.8 million by Xiao Yan Chen, known as Angela, who is founder of Global Alliance — an organisation that, according to its website, specialises in connecting U.S. companies with people in high levels of the Chinese government.
An association with the name Trump has had differing effects on properties around the world: On apartment buildings in Mumbai, India, it is a sought-after asset; on a Washington hotel, it poses a potential ethical quagmire; and on the upper west side of Manhattan, tenants of a Trump-branded complex so loathed it that last year the name came down.
In talk show appearances shortly before the auction, Trump spoke of possibly buying the property himself. Haghani said that while he did not know the true identity of the buyer, he did not believe that it was the president.
© 2017 New York Times News Service
