After failing to sell for years, the owner of Donald Trump’s childhood home has launched a crowdfunding campaign to sell it and give it to the outgoing President as a gift.
Located in New York City’s Queens, the Tudor-style estate first started gaining attention when Trump was inaugurated back in 2017. At over 2,000 square feet and five bedrooms, it was a fairly large and high-end property at the time. It belonged to Fred and Mary Trump, who lived there from Trump’s birth in 1946 until the family moved in 1950.
The latest owner, a Chinese investor who bought the property in 2017 for $2.24 million, has played up the connection to Trump by displaying stacked copies of Trump’s seminal book The Art of the Deal, Trump photos, eagles and other American symbols and a giant cardboard cutout of the president throughout the house. At one point, it was rented out on Airbnb for $800 a night.
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But despite the repeated media coverage, online jokes and other attention, the home has mostly stood empty and failed to find a buyer. It was put on the market for $2.9 million in February 2019 and, in November of that year, failed to meet the reserve price at auction before the owners postponed it.
Now, in the latest effort to unload the home, Paramount Realty USA Auctions has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $3 million to purchase the property and give it to Trump as a gift. As part of the campaign, it calls on the devotion of pro-Trumpers and Make America Great Again fans to give what they can to “buy his childhood home in his honor.”
“We are raising funds to buy President Trump’s childhood home for him, or a charity of his choosing, as a token of appreciation,” reads the crowdfunding campaign. “What happens to the historic property is up to him!”
GoFundMe
After three weeks on the site, the campaign has raised $5,000 of the $3 million goal. The supposed reasons are many — Trump’s unpopularity in New York and, increasingly, the country as a whole, as well as the high price in comparison to that specific part of Queens. But despite the struggle to sell, the owners have not budged on the price and keep expecting to sell it for around $3 million.
“It’s not that nobody wants it,” Misha Haghani, owner of Paramount Realty USA Auctions, told realtor.com. “It’s that the seller wants a price that’s not normal. He’s represented the home three times in auction, twice successfully. “This is a house in a residential neighborhood full of other houses. As a typical home, it’s probably worth around $1 million.”