After an unsuccessful attempt earlier this year to sell President Donald Trump’s childhood home in Queens, NY, the house is back on the auction block. The auction itself will conclude on Nov. 14, and according to the New York Times, it last sold for $2.14 million in 2017. The hefty purchase was made by a limited- liability company represented by a law firm that specializes in Chinese foreign investment, but ownership is still unclear.
Built-in 1940 by real estate developer Fred C.Trump, the home is a modest five-bedroom, Tudor style house in Jamaica Estates. Trump lived there until he was four years old before moving to a larger house behind the property. The house is not too far of a walk from the last stop on the F train, a conveniently short distance from his current New York residence, a triplex penthouse on Fifth Avenue bearing his iconic name. According to Trump, Jamaica Estates is an ‘oasis.’ Kaite Warren, a reporter for Business Insider visited the president’s former neighborhood to see if this rang true.
Warren reported that the area is very quiet and that the deeper she went into the neighborhood, the houses and the cars parked in front of them started to get increasingly larger/more expensive. This proves that even in 2019, the area is still very wealthy. According to StreetEasy, single-family homes in the area have recently sold for a median of $980,000. The community is also reported to have its own civic association and its own patrol.
Like many neighborhoods in NY, Jamaica Estates has gone through big demographic changes. Jason Horowitz of the New York Times describes the Jamaica Estates of the 1950s as “an exclusive and nearly all-white place resistant to outsiders and largely impenetrable to minorities.” Now the area is much more ethnically diverse with Jewish, Bengali, Hispanic and European people.
The property itself has also already been used by people to make political statements. According to 6sqft.com during The United Nations General Assembly in 2017, a group of refugees rented out the property through Airbnb as a way to express concern over the travel ban. In the same year, the home was also listed for rent on Airbnb at more than $725 a night. Speculation has also been made that Trump supporters might also use the property to make a political stance. How likely that is to occur is still unclear. According to the New York Times, the recent owner Mr. Haghani believes “there are investors, especially Trump supporters- and maybe even some Trump haters- who would love to buy the property.” It is also reported that Trump is running a promotion on his website, listingnut.com, in which he claims the company will award $10,000 to the individual who comes closest to guessing the final sale price of the home. If you want to bid you have to pay a $100 entry fee (nonrefundable), which will get you a survey of the property and a copy of President Donald Trump’s birth certificate.
