Mar-a-Lago valuations are at core of Trump fraud trial

FORT LAUDERDALE — How much is Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago worth? That’s been a point of contention after a New York judge ruled that the former president exaggerated the Florida property’s value when he said it’s worth at least $420 million and perhaps $1.5 billion.

Siding with New York’s attorney general in a lawsuit accusing Trump of grossly overvaluing his assets, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump consistently exaggerated Mar-a-Lago’s worth. He noted that one Trump estimate of the club’s value was 2,300 percent times the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s valuations, which ranged from $18 million to $37 million.

But Palm Beach real estate agents who specialize in highend properties scoffed at the idea that the estate could be worth that little, in the unlikely event Trump ever sold.

“Ludicrous,” agent Liza Pulitzer said about the judge citing the county’s tax appraisal as a benchmark. Homes one-tenth the size of Mar-a-Lago on tiny inland lots sell for that in the Town of Palm Beach, a wealthy island enclave.

“The entire real estate community felt it was a joke when they saw that figure,” said Pulitzer, who works for the firm Brown Harris Stevens.

In the ongoing trial over the lawsuit, though, what a private buyer might pay for a place like Mar-a-Lago isn’t the only factor in determining whether Trump is liable for fraud.

The 126-room, 62,500square-foot mansion is Trump’s primary home. It is also a club, private beach resort, historical artifact, and banquet hall with a ballroom that features gold leaf. It is where Trump stored government documents federal prosecutors say he took illegally after leaving office in 2021.

Built in 1927 by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, financier E.F. Hutton, she gave the property its name — Spanish for “sea-to-lake” — because its 17 acres (7 hectares) stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway.

Post kept the mansion after the couple’s divorce, using it to host opulent galas. In 1969, Mar-a-Lago was designated a National Historic Landmark.