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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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It’s allowed to be a residence.

Is it?

Donald Trump agreed that "Trump intend [s] to forever extinguish [his] right to develop or use the Property for any purpose other than club use (the 2002 Deed ).

He’s literally living there. And yes it’s allowed to be used as a private residence.

Can you provide any evidence that it's allowed? The deed seems to say otherwise. And just because he's doing it doesn't mean that the deed allows it - Trump is well known for bending/breaking various rules.

Looked it up technically has to be listed as an employee. The deed allows that.

Wait, does that mean that by dissolving the company, the judge is “firing” him and thus nullifying his residence there?

That would be a hilarious outcome if so.

Lol, interesting.

Still seems like the sort of thing that would impact property value a large amount. "Yes Mister Gates, this beautiful beachfront estate can be all yours! But to actually live in it you need to continue operating it as a social club and hire yourself as an employee."

Nobody is disagreeing it affects the value. It’s the absurdity of emphasizing 27 million.

I believe it has a more residential private area. It’s gigantic anyone buying it is wanting an entertaining space where they get to be the boss. And as boss you get to pick your friends to be the members. Sort of like having the biggest yacht (which people do spend 500 million plus for yachts) and this yacht is surrounded by the richest people in the world. An exclusive billionaires club.

So why did Trump argue in 2020 that $26.6 million was too high a valuation?

Tax values aren’t the same as market values. Tax values are just a made up value (though usually they are suppose to be proportional to market values when compared to similar properties).

The tax man then figures out how much money they need to raises. Divides that number by the total tax assessed values to get a millage rate. Then applies that to every building to get their tax for the year.

This is well known in real estate circles and common practice. The judge and the prosecutor are making category errors (I believe on purpose but some evidence shows they might just be dumb).

Popular real estate twitter anon (and I believe lefty) https://twitter.com/goodguyguaranty/status/1707232241925910944?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

Judge hates developers. Frequently makes stupid decisions and gets overturned. So this might not be trump but his own bias against developers.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/27/mar-a-lago-judges-developer-hating-past-is-a-big-win-for-donald-trump/amp/

Interesting. Out of curiosity I went and looked at the OAG's filing to see whether they explored this issue at all, and... it seems like they don't even mention the county assessor's valuation.

The part relating to Mar-a-Lago starts on page 101, have a look for yourself

The argument they make is not "Trump did fraud because be valued Mar-a-lago above the $27 million valuation". It's "Trump did fraud because he said the property did not have the land use restrictions that it does".

So maybe it's just the case that the judge accepted that argument but then threw in his own 2300% calculation gratuitously based on a country assessor valuation that did not form a part of the case against Trump? I dunno.

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