Image: Jamel Toppins for Forbes
Donald Trump seems disinclined to share any tax information, despite decades of precedent among presidential candidates. A lot of Trump critics have argued that he’s afraid that it will show he’s not a billionaire. Highly doubtful. First, Trump’s income will not directly correlate with the value of his assets, the debt on them or his stake in each. Second, we’ve been scouring Trump’s fortune since the debut of The Forbes 400 in 1982. Sometimes he’s up, sometimes down—and for much of the 1990s, he was off. But his fortune is real, though by no means approaching the $10 billion that Trump continues to maintain he’s worth.
After 15 months of unprecedented focus, Forbes pegs his fortune at $3.7 billion, down $800 million from a year ago. His drop in net worth is in part due to a softening of New York City’s real estate market, particularly in retail and office, where valuations are trending down. New information was also a factor. Of the 28 assets or asset classes scrutinised by Forbes, 18 declined in value, including his trademark Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, his downtown jewel 40 Wall Street and Mar-a-Lago, his private beachfront club in Palm Beach. Seven assets rose in value—including San Francisco’s second-tallest building, 555 California Street. One held steady. There are two new assets included in his total count. One is a 4 percent stake in an affordable housing compound in Brooklyn that is listed in Trump’s Federal Election Commission filing. In his sole real estate deal this year, Trump bought a nearly 50-year-old warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina, that was in foreclosure. The warehouse had been owned by a company, Titan Atlas, in which Donald Jr had been an investor. At one point, the younger Trump (as well as other investors) had personally guaranteed a Deutsche Bank loan to the company; his dad later bought it out. As for his campaign, Trump loaned it $48 million of his own cash, which Forbes does not expect he will get back, and gave it $7 million.
The stakes are high. For the first time since H Ross Perot Sr in 1992 and again in 1996, a member of The Forbes 400 has a shot (in this case, as a major party’s nominee, a far better one) of becoming president of the United States. On the following pages you’ll find our estimates and assumptions for all his assets. And no, as with Oprah Winfrey and Mark Cuban and all the rest, we don’t subscribe an intangible value to his “brand”. Great businessmen turn brands into profits, which then get valued. The deals that putatively could get done do not.
1. Trump Tower
(New York City)
Type: Office and retail
What Trump owns: 244,000 sq ft
Total value: $471 million
Debt: $100 million
Net value: $371 million
Change vs 2015: –$159 million
opened: 1983
This Fifth Avenue glass skyscraper signalled Trump’s arrival as a proper Manhattan mogul. But the contractor he hired in 1980 to demolish the existing Bonwit Teller department store allegedly used a small army of undocumented Polish labourers, who were paid off the books when paid at all, to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Trump spent years in court battling a ruling that he was involved in the scheme before reaching a confidential settlement in 1999. He still denies wrongdoing. Trump Tower is worth $159 million less this year due to an estimated 20 percent drop in the building’s net operating income and an estimated 8 percent decline due to overall softening in Manhattan commercial real estate. Trump lives in the tower’s three-storey penthouse, which Forbes values separately.
$371,000,000
2. 1290 Avenue of the Americas
(New York City)
Type: Office and retail
What Trump owns: 30%
Total value: $2.31 billion
Debt: $950 million
Net value of stake: $409 million
Change vs 2015: –$62 million
(This story appears in the 11 November, 2016 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)