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Notes -
The latest Trump legal woes comes once again from NY where a judge ordered his business dissolved for fraud. Nobody losts money and it came down to some misstatements. I haven’t read the full case, but the judge on a high profile part of the case is completely off. Not even ballpark off.
He valued Mar-a-Lago at 17-25 million. I texted a broker in the area and he told me 100 million for an ocean acre and 25 million for a non-ocean acres. Mar is between 17-20 acres depending where you look online. Palm Beach has gone up a lot since COVID so maybe divide those numbers by 2 since Trump made his filling. He listed the property at 450-650 million. Without doing a full underwriting (maybe zoning issues where it couldn’t be worth the raw land price) it still appears Mar is worth a lot of money.
If you are going to do lawfare shouldn’t you avoid obvious mistakes? It’s easy to see a headline and write this whole case off as political. It weakens public perception of all other cases if you make mistakes that are this stupid.
If I am remembering this case correctly he did likely violate the law and include some statement that were obviously false but in a category that no one besides Donald Trump gets prosecuted for. So the case of Mar-a-Lago violates a principle of maintaining plausible deniability.
Edit: @AshLael looked up the prosecutors brief and it appears they did not use the tax assessment for valuation purposes. Which would negate my main point. The judge has a history of making stuff up against real estate developers and being later reversed. It’s quite possible this judge hates developers and just does stupid things.
https://twitter.com/goodguyguaranty/status/1707232241925910944?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
https://nypost.com/2023/09/27/mar-a-lago-judges-developer-hating-past-is-a-big-win-for-donald-trump/
Which would change the ruling and it’s citations to much more of all developer are bastards story (which is culture war) than my why are you lawfaring stupidly story
Those issues very much exist - as the judge highlights in the ruling. Mar-a-Lago cannot be used for anything other than as a social club. Valuing it as if it were unrestricted land is obviously going to get you much larger numbers.
It’s still worth atleast the most expensive home in palm beach which is a tenth of the size or 250 million. It’s allowed to be a residence.
Could even be worth more than sfh because would be impossible for a billionaire to assembly a lot like that now.
Is it?
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.
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.
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