PALM BEACH — Not far from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, cosmetics heir William Lauder bought the estate of the late conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for $155 million.
Elsewhere around the island this year, luxury auto sales mogul Michael Cantanucci bought a mansion on North County Road for $170 million. And fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger sold a 6,500-square-foot home built in 1927 on South Ocean Boulevard for $41.4 million.
So why did a New York State judge last Tuesday place Mar-a-Lago’s value in a range of $18 million to $27.6 million?
Those figures, based on an assessment by the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser, arose after New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued former President Trump, his Trump Organization and three family members
alleging they overvalued assets and exaggerated his net worth while securing loans and insurance while building his real estate empire.
The use of those numbers by New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron
stunned real estate professionals who either deal in or help manage some of the priciest estates and mansions that occupy the island haven for the rich and famous. The judge last Tuesday concluded Trump had committed business fraud against banks and insurers and ordered various business licenses in the state of New York rescinded.
“The value of $18 million to me is way off the mark,” said Billy Nash, founder of Nash Luxury at Illustrated Properties, a division of The Keyes Co.
“At the end of the day the market dictates value,” he said. “If you had that property on the market for $18 million, there would be 100 people lined up to buy it. And it’s an historical landmark. I would put it in the category of a Henry Flagler estate.”
Flagler, the railroad baron and development pioneer, extended his Florida East Coast Railway line to South Florida in the early 1900s. Socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post built Mar-a-Lago between 1924 and 1927. The estate, whose name means “Sea to Lake” in Spanish for its location between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth, cost $7 million to construct or roughly $90 million in modern-day dollars, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
The valuation dispute is the latest controversy involving the estate, which was the scene of an FBI raid in connection with the U.S. Government’s criminal case against Trump
over his alleged illegal retention of classified documents.
“The market is screaming over this because it’s obviously incorrect,” Nash said of the judge’s ruling. “People in real estate are scratching their heads: How do you come up with this number? There is a lack of supply that continues on the island. It is a sought-after destination by people from all over the world.”
Mendy Katz, founder of Monarch Estate Services of Greenwich, Conn., which helps owners manage their luxury properties in the Northeast, Florida and elsewhere, said the market dictates value. The demand for homes in Palm Beach, he said, remains high.
“Clearly supply and demand is what drives up the price,” he said. ”The assessor will determine what the taxes cost. That has nothing to do with the actual value of the property.”
Ken Johnson, a real estate economist at the Florida Atlantic University College of Business, said it’s a difficult task assigning values to the behemoth trophy properties of Palm Beach.
“If you take the name out of it and this was someone else in Palm Beach, it’s very hard to assess value there because these are very unique properties,” he said. “They don’t trade very often.”
A judge cited Palm Beach County property appraiser assessments of $18 million to $27.6 million between 2011 and 2021, rejecting the conclusion of a local real estate broker who put it at $1.2 billi…
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