In the world of real estate, Donald J. Trump’s name has long been synonymous with luxury. At one of his buildings in Manhattan, a five-story waterfall slides down a wall of Breccia Perniche marble. White-gloved doormen, cascading chandeliers and panoramic views of the city’s skyline are the hallmarks of another.
It’s that image of luxury, which he turned into a brand, that the former president held up as a rebuttal to the recent lawsuit that he lost on Friday after a judge determined that Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate holdings, ordering him to pay a penalty that will exceed $450 million.
“My client is worth hundreds and hundreds of millions,” said one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, during closing arguments at the trial, adding, “let alone the brand, which is worth billions.”
But up and down the spine of Manhattan, condominiums in high-rise buildings emblazoned with Mr. Trump’s name have underperformed, according to sales data from two real estate tracking firms, and an analysis of the data by the Columbia University economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh.
The line in the sand is the year 2016, when Mr. Trump was elected president.
In a one-year window, condos in buildings that had the Trump logo went from selling at a 1 percent premium compared with similar units, to selling for 4 percent less, meaning that Trump condos became a “bargain” among the city’s luxury units, said Mr. Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate.
Even the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, one of the crowning achievements of the Trump brand, whose 80-foot cascade flowing down a wall of peach marble was reportedly built with slabs handpicked at a quarry in Italy by Mr. Trump’s ex-wife, saw the average price per square foot of its condominiums tumble 49 percent since 2013, according to Ondel Hylton, the senior director of content and research at CityRealty. The building’s age, growing competition from the ultra-luxurious condos on nearby Billionaires’ Row and regular protests have all dampened interest, Mr. Hylton said.
By contrast, condominiums in four buildings where the Trump logo was removed at the behest of residents — sometimes after a legal battle — have seen their value shoot back up.
“This analysis cleanly identifies that it is the Trump brand that is responsible for the value deterioration,” Mr. Van Nieuwerburgh said. “Removing the Trump name from the building removes the loss associated with the name.”
A review of the price per square foot of condominiums in the seven buildings in Manhattan that still carry the Trump name found that the value dropped 23 percent between 2013 and 2023, according to CityRealty, a real estate listing website. An analysis using a slightly different methodology by ATTOM, a property data analytics company, showed that the drop was 17 percent.
By contrast, the four buildings that removed the gold-hued Trump logo ended the decade from 2013 to 2023 up 9 percent, outpacing the Manhattan condominium market, which was up 8 percent over the same time period, according to City Realty.
Mr. Van Nieuwerburgh started with the same data, then combed through the sales figures, making sure that he was comparing apples to apples: a three-bedroom condo in a doorman-serviced Trump building on the Upper West Side, for example, was compared to a three-bedroom unit in the same neighborhood in a building that also had a doorman.
He found that the Trump-branded buildings collapsed in value by 25 percent compared with similar properties from their peak in 2013. “It’s huge,” he said.
The data that was analyzed is exclusively for Manhattan. It is possible that Mr. Trump’s brand is faring better in parts of the country where the former president’s politics are more aligned with a majority of voters, including in Florida, which is home to his Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as numerous towers in Sunny Isles Beach and Hollywood, Fla., that are adorned with his name.
In an email, Eric Trump, the former president’s son and the de facto chief executive of the Trump Organization, questioned the analyses.
“Data can be manipulated to tell any story you want, but the fact remains that our buildings sell for the highest prices per square foot of any properties in the world. That is undeniable,” he wrote. “This year alone, Trump International Hotel & Tower New York closed on a $17 million unit, exceeding the prices at Time Warner, Essex House and the most prestigious properties in the city.”
But the $17 million condo sale at 1 Central Park West, also known as the Trump International Hotel, is a far cry from the top-selling condos in the city, which included a $52 million sale for a West Village penthouse. The Trump condo sold for over $4,600 per square foot; the…
Read More: In New York, the Trump Brand Is Costing Some Condo Owners