If you’re among the three percent of Americans who invest in real estate and plan to buy property within the next 12 months, you may want to keep an eye on one property in particular. The childhood home of hotel tycoon and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will soon be up for auction.
The brick and stucco Tudor house in Queens, New York was all set to go to auction last Wednesday, October 19; however, the owners chose to postpone after receiving numerous requests for a pre-auction viewing of the home.
“Because the auction was getting so much press coverage a lot of bidders were contacting the firm to ask for more time to look at the property,” said Stina Dakers, spokesperson for Paramount Realty USA.
Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, built the home sometime around 1940. Donald lived there from the day he was born in 1946 until about 1950 when the family moved to a different home in the same neighborhood.
Conveniently located near the E and F trains, the home at 85-15 Wareham Place has five bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, a formal dining room, an eat-in-kitchen, a finished basement, a den, a screened-in patio, and a two-car detached garage.
The current owners, Manhattan restauranteurs Isaac and Clausia Kestenberg, purchased the home in 2008 for $782,500. The couple did not know at the time that the home once belonged to the Trumps.
“I found out when I bought the house from the neighbors here,” said Kestenberg. There was this lady Mary, an old lady, and she told me that Donald Trump was living here and that she was his childhood friend.”
Despite the home’s location and interesting history, it has struggled to attract bidders. Though it was initially listed at $1.65 million, the price has since been slashed significantly. The opening bid at the auction is expected to be only $849,000. Comparatively, a similar-sized home in the same neighborhood is currently on the market for $3.5 million.
Any experienced real estate agent would suggest using landscaping as a means for driving up the resale price. Studies show that landscaping can increase your home’s value by up to 14%. Three in four homeowners, for instance, will make changes to one or more of their outdoor structures, including terraces and patios.
This property, however, may be considered a special case. Trump has denied it, but many people are wondering if the increasing turmoil surrounding his presidential campaign is not turning consumers off of his brand.
Of course, Trump’s childhood home of a mere five years is not at all related to his official brand; however, anything attached to the Trump name could suffer as a consequence of the candidate’s inflammatory rhetoric.
