How Much Is Mar-a-Lago Worth?

Recall that this question was a major bone of contention at the 2023–24 trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud suit against now-President Trump. The theory of the fraud case was that Trump had grossly overvalued many of his assets in order to obtain favorable rates on loans and insurance coverage.

I was derisive of the case for various reasons. James unprecedentedly and improperly applied a consumer fraud statute to arm’s length transactions between sophisticated financial actors. There were no fraud victims. James (with the indulgence of her fellow-elected progressive Democrat, Judge Arthur Engoron) offered expert testimony calculating what the state claimed Trump’s loan rates should have been based on cockamamie formulas (which assumed that the state knew better than industry professionals with skin in the game how to price risk). And while there was convincing proof that Trump exaggerated the value of his assets, he also represented to his counterparties that they should do their own due diligence — an admonition they didn’t need since that is their business. A New York appellate court threw out the absurdly astronomical disgorgement penalty against the president (nearly $500 million when interest was factored in) but left the liability finding in place. Trump is appealing that to New York’s highest court.

I revisit this history in light of the latest conclusion by Forbes that the president is now worth $6.5 billion — up by $1.4 billion since his second term started, though down from $7.3 billion six months ago (principally due to reversals in the value of his crypto holdings and the poor performance of his media company). What caught my eye was Forbes’s $560 million valuation of Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Palm Beach resort club and residence that has become his “winter White House.”

That is way up from $370 million just a year ago, a reflection of how, as Forbes puts it, “personal assets belonging to Trump have flourished as people aim to curry favor with him or at least show their support.” But more relevant for present purposes, the Forbes valuation sheds light on a dispute in the civil fraud case that Trump used to great effect.

In his opinion claiming that Trump had exaggerated asset values, Engoron pegged the value of Mar-a-Lago as between $18 million and $27.6 million. Trump, by contrast, claimed it was worth between $426 million and $612 million. Engoron concluded that this was “an overvaluation of at least 2,300 percent.”

So, was Trump right all along? It’s hard to say.

I don’t have much sympathy for Engoron, a frequently reversed partisan hack of a judge. He tried a terrible case, was unabashed in his disdain for the defendant, and has already seen one of his two main rulings reversed — the penalty. (And, as suggested above, there’s a good chance that, in the end, the liability ruling will get reversed, too.)

Nevertheless, I continue to think (as I said during the trial) that his ruling on the Mar-a-Lago point has been misunderstood, thanks to the disingenuous descriptions of it by Trump and his supporters. As Engoron himself repeatedly pointed out, he did not value Mar-a-Lago. The $18-to-$27.6 million valuation was made by the Palm Beach County property appraiser (based on the time frame covered in the lawsuit, which was mainly the decade prior to 2020).

That seems extraordinarily low. But that’s largely because the county considers Mar-a-Lago a deed-restricted private club. Trump bought it for just $10 million in 1985, and about a decade later, agreed to a conservation and preservation easement. Such restrictions significantly diminish the value of real estate in comparison with what it might generate if sold free and clear. In fact, because of these legal restrictions, Palm Beach County values the property in terms of the income that it generates, not what it would yield if sold.

James has made inconsistent public statements about what Mar-a-Lago should be worth based on its income — anywhere from $25 million to $75 million. Look, there may be lots of reasons for the gray area here: you never really know what an asset like this is worth until you put it on the market and find out what people are willing to pay for it. But, if you’re a prosecutor accusing someone of fraud based on a theory of asset inflation, it’s incumbent on you to have a solid, consistent, defensible position about what the asset is worth. James never did. And this is not the only asset in the case about which that could be said: She was alleging that Trump made outrageous inflations, but her own estimates signaled arbitrariness in the valuation process.

For his part, Trump tirelessly cited the low-end $18 million figure, without explaining whose valuation it was (he attributed it to James and the judge, but it was the county) and why that figure would be low (due to the restrictions and metrics for valuation, not a potential sale price). That was misleading.

On the other hand, this doesn’t mean he misled his counterparties. Since they take real estate as collateral all the time, they would have known about legal restrictions and the difference between valuing income versus valuing a hypothetical free-and-clear sale.

That said, if the property was worth $370 million in 2025, then it almost certainly was not worth between $426 million and $612 million a decade or so ago, as Trump claimed. Of course, if that was an exaggeration, it was a slight one compared to Engoron’s claim of a 2,300 percent inflation — posited with no acknowledgment that Trump advised his counterparties to do their own evaluations.

Bottom line: This was a really stupid, nakedly political civil prosecution. Lawfare.