Trump Properties Suffer Price Slump as Name Loses its Shine

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The building has stunning Manhattan skyline views, its spa offers deep-tissue massages, and the fancy restaurant off the lobby serves up prime steaks. Best of all, many apartments at the Trump World Tower in New York are selling at a deep discount – assuming the buyer doesn’t mind the name over the door. “Fifty per cent of the people wouldn’t want to live in a Trump building for any reason … but then there are guys like me,” says Lou Sollecito, a car dealer who recently bought a two-bedroom unit with views of the Empire State Building. “It’s a super buy.” The purchase price was $3m, nearly a million less than the seller paid in 2008. Bargain hunters are swooping in to take advantage of prices in Trump buildings that have dropped to levels not seen in over a decade, a crash brokers attribute to a combination of the former president’s polarizing image and the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a stunning reversal for a brand that once lured the rich and famous willing to pay a premium to live in a building with Trump’s gilded name on it. 11 Trump-branded buildings in Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas and New York found prices for some condos and hotel rooms available for purchase have dropped by one-third or more. That’s a plunge that outpaces drops in many similar buildings, leaving units for sale in Trump buildings to be had for hundreds of thousands to up to a million dollars less than they would have gone for years ago. Just how much the Trump name is to blame is impossible to say. Many units for sale are in cities that were hit hard by the pandemic or in hotels that had to shut down or in condo buildings much older than their competitors, making comparisons difficult. Still, Trump’s red-meat rhetoric and policies haven’t helped. Within a year into his presidency, hotels and condo buildings in Panama, Toronto and Manhattan that paid millions to use his name started stripping it off their facades. After Trump was accused of whipping up the mob that stormed the Capitol on 6 January, things got really bad. Banks vowed not to lend to him, the PGA canceled a tournament at his New Jersey golf course and New York City fired him as manager of a public course in the Bronx. Several brokers say many potential buyers won’t even look at Trump buildings now.