Quote (Goomshill @ Oct 17 2023 05:27am)
You know that even if a developer couldn't get out of that conservation agreement clause, designed for preservation of a cereal mogul's estate not a president's- that would still leave Trump with a property that is his choice of either reverting to residential zoning for a literal mansion on prime real estate on a lot nearly 30x larger than surrounding lots worth 8 figures- or keep it as a commercial zoned club earning $25 million in revenue per year. But in the real world, a developer buying the property or just Trump himself would have no problems getting approval to void out the 23 year old use agreement if they wanted to chop up the lot, because for one the town has zero reason to oppose such development and obvious financial incentive to accept it, and for two the original purpose of the agreement was their reluctance to allow a commercial club next to all the residential area in the first place. When they didn't want a gaudy hotel next to them and would have been happier to have it subdivided and sold off, but Trump wanted the use agreement specifically so he could make more money off the property, which is exactly what he did, and why its so profoundly backwards to believe that somehow makes the property worth less.
So even taking that very wrong assumption, you'd still wind up at the previous point of "its a 17 acre mansion on palm beach that earns $25 million per year from the club alone, let alone land value".
There's no scenario in which its anything but wildly dishonest to pretend you actually believe a mansion that dwarfs its neighbors by orders of magnitude is worth a fraction of them and a club on that land is worth less than the revenue it produces in a single year
You know you'd actually have a good argument if what you were trying to say is that Trump, like so many other rich real estate traders was abusing the conservation deduction to artifically lower his tax burden. In which it would be Florida's jurisdiction, not New York's. When Trump is actually making an accurate and realistic valuation of his property on his SFCs in New York and has a massively undervalued property in Florida for property tax purposes between the conservation deduction and his technical primary residence which might even have qualified for the homestead exception- New York isn't in a position to come out and prosecute Trump for telling the truth in their jurisdiction.
You're just in a salad of your own thoughts now. Which makes sense. I've debunked literally every claim you've made and shown you were dishonest by actively ignoring the most important parts of the land use agreement you yourself were constantly citing.
So to summarize. Trump cannot break apart the lot, cannot redevelop the lot, cannot modify the building on the lot, cannot build residential space on the lot, and that makes it worth massively less compared to the surrounding land that can be developed into residential space.
Trump actively misrepresented the state of affairs when evaluating Mar a lago for the purposes of securing credit because he admitted it was evaluated as though he would be allowed to redevelop it into residential space.
When the judge got it appraised he relied on a local appraiser that took into account both the revenue of mar a lago (25M) and the expenses. This was a standard assessment for all clubs under land use agreements in Palm Beach.