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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.
Seems a fair analysis. That seems like a more thorough valuation. My origional comment was the prosecutor was doing lawfare but I assumed they wouldn’t do it stupidly.
It now appears as though the judge is particularly anti-developer and quite likely really really stupid on the material.
I’ve said a few times I believe Trump exaggerates and I am easily convinced his valuation assumptions could be aggressive; though the banks should have the people to work thru it and get the data they need.
Unfortunately for the Trump is a criminal crowd it seems as though the judge gave them bulletin board material making this case look stupider than it is.
Fwiw I don’t know if in the mid 2010’s the property had huge value as a private residence plus club. I do think there is a market for it now at a very high valuation.
Other homes are selling in the 200 million range so I could see some rich guy plopping down a billion for it now.
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