Trump calls Mar-A-Lago ‘the most expensive house, probably, in the world’

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Donald Trump likes to toss around eye-watering sums when estimating the value of his Florida private club Mar-a-Lago — often in the same sentence.

“The house is worth a billion, a billion and a half, $750m,” Mr Trump said in meandering remarks outside his civil fraud trial in New York on Tuesday. 

It was “the most expensive house, probably, in the world,” he added.

The true value of Mar-a-Lago has been a hotly contested subject ever since Mr Trump was ruled to have fraudulently inflated the value of his commercial and residential properties from New York to Florida in order to deceive banks and officials to claim favourable tax and insurance rates.

According to public Palm Beach property records, Mar-a-Lago was valued at $37m as of 1 January 2023, up from $31m a year before.

Judge Arthur Engoron has previously said in court that he relied on the Palm Beach County property appraisal which valued Mar-a-Lago at between $18m and $37m.

Mar-a-Lago is currently taxed at a valuation of $33.4m, meaning Mr Trump will owe $602,834 in property taxes for the year.

Should Mar-a-Lago in fact be worth $1.5bn, as Mr Trump asserts, he would instead owe Palm Beach County around $22.7m in taxes for the 2023 year.

High-end Palm Beach real estate experts told the Associated Press last week that if the property was ever sold, Mr Trump would likely net at least $300m to $600m.

Mr Trump’s name recognition and the unique nature of the club meant it would attract wealth bidders, they said.

South Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz wrote to Palm Beach County officials earlier this month asking them to tax Mar-a-Lago at a valuation of $490m.

“If the property value of Mar-a-Lago is so much higher than it was appraised, will you be amending the property value in line with the Trump family’s belief that the property is worth well over a billion dollars?” Mr Moskowitz wrote.

The Trump Organisation did not respond to a request for further information by The Independent on how Mr Trump had reached a $1.5bn valuation.

Speaking to reporters outside court on Tuesday, Mr Trump ranted that Mar-a-Lago was “the biggest house, the most spectacular place in all of Florida” and worth 100 times the $18m estimate.

In August, Eric Trump denied a report by the real estate listing firm Zillow that the private club was sold for $422m.