A Tudor-style house in Queens where President Donald Trump spent his earliest years has sold for $1.93 million, according to real estate listings, capping a rapid turnaround for a property that had sat vacant and fallen into disrepair before its latest renovation.
The five-bedroom, three-bathroom home in the affluent Jamaica Estates neighborhood was built in 1940 by Trump's father, the developer Fred Trump. The president lived there until he was 4 years old, and his family has not owned the property for decades.
The sale price appeared Friday on real estate websites after a buyer whose name has not been disclosed entered into a contract in July. The seller, developer Tommy Lin, purchased the home last year for $835,000 and then spent about $500,000 on an eight-month interior overhaul, according to the New York Post.
That renovation added a chef's kitchen, herringbone wood floors and spa-like bathrooms, transforming a residence that had become known less for its history than for its condition. Before Lin bought it, the house had water damage and mold from a burst pipe, and a colony of feral cats had taken up residence in the home where Trump spent his first years.
The property has changed hands several times in recent years, often with prices that reflected Trump's political rise as much as the real estate itself. Months after he became president in 2017, the home sold for $2.14 million to an entity called Trump Birth Home LLC, according to Zillow. It was briefly offered for rent on Airbnb, complete with copies of a life-sized cardboard cutout of Trump, copies of his book «The Art of the Deal» and a framed People magazine cover featuring him.
It was listed for sale again in 2019 with an asking price of $2.9 million, but it went unsold until Lin acquired it. By then, the house had deteriorated further, with the Post reporting that the burst pipe, mold and feral cats had left it in poor shape.
The latest sale is a sharp reversal from that low point. Lin's renovation turned the property into a modern home, and the $1.93 million price is more than double what he paid for it, though it remains below the $2.14 million fetched in 2017 and well under the $2.9 million asking price from 2019.
Trump, now 80, built his public identity in real estate before entering politics, developing Trump Tower in Manhattan and living there for decades. His father's construction of the Jamaica Estates home places the family's early history in the same outer-borough development business that later became the foundation of the Trump Organization.
The president has continued to put his mark on residential spaces in Washington. He has overseen the addition of a massive ballroom to the White House and decorated the Oval Office with gold-plated fixtures that echo the aesthetic of his own properties.
For the Queens house, the sale closes a chapter that mixed family history, celebrity interest and the ordinary mechanics of the housing market. The buyer remains unidentified, and it is not clear whether the home will be occupied, rented or held as an investment.
What is clear is that the property's value has tracked both the market and the Trump name. A house that once sat empty and mold-ridden has now changed hands for nearly $2 million, a price that reflects its renovation, its location and its status as the birthplace of a president.