Former President Donald Trump has reportedly increased the value of his Mar-a-Lago property in response to a court ruling accusing him of inflating the value of his Florida property. New York Judge Arthur Engoron agreed with prosecutors that the defendants overvalued their properties by more than $400 million, finding that a discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.
The ruling sparked outrage from the Trump family, who have accused Engoron of launching a “radical attack” that was politically motivated. Trump used the valuation as an example of his claims, writing on Truth Social that “this Democrat Operative valued Mar-a-Lago, the most spectacular and valuable property in Palm Beach, Florida, to be worth as low as $18 million, when in actuality, it could be worth almost 100 times that amount.” During his April 2022 testimony, Trump told prosecutors that Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.5 billion based on “broker talk,” explaining that he’s never put the property up for sale.
Another reason that Trump believes his property is worth significantly more than what the Palm Beach County assessor appraised it at—between $18 million and $27.6 million—could be due to a disclaimer on property appraisals that Trump’s attorney Chris Kise told Newsweek the legal team tried to challenge. According to the Palm Beach County website, the estimate of Total Market Value is for tax assessment purposes only and takes into consideration each of the factors enumerated in Section 193.011F.S. The Total Market Value estimate may be less than the actual market value of the property.
The former president’s son, Eric Trump, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “Mar-a-Lago is speculated to be worth well over a billion dollars making it arguably the most valuable residential property in the country. He also posted a listing of other Palm Beach properties with values of over $35 million, saying that these homes are about 1/30 the size of Mar-a-Lago, not on the beach (let alone the beach and intercostal), don’t span from one side of the Palm Beach Island to the other…it is a travesty of justice and embarrassment to the court.”
