Does anyone here believe there is a house, anywhere, that is worth 400 million, or a tiny New York apartment? No, me neither, but they sell for that every day of the week.
Do you think that a pair of red slippers worn in the movie the Wizard of Oz are worth one million dollars? They were insured for that, when they were stolen.
How about art, paint on a canvas is valued at millions of dollars? How can that be? Or is it valued by the person who painted it, and the age of the painting?
Most celebrity homes are valued at outrageous prices because of who build or owned them. And, that is the case with Mar-A-Lago. Trump was famous before he became president.... and now he is even more famous, the estate would sell based on those facts.
Here are the facts. The property was left to the federal government as a "Summer White House", but the property is too expensive to maintain, and needs a LOT of work to maintain it. It sat on the market for years until Trump bought it for $7 million. And while he did repair the property after he bought it and then tried to re-sell it with no takers at all.
That "historical property" designation is a real deal killer for the super wealthy. Would you spend millions of dollars on a property you can't tear down, renovate, or update? I've seen property owners who were refused permission to paint the walls a colour which was "inappropriate" to the style or time. It all depends on how batshit crazy the local "Hysterical Society" is, and who's in charge. While you can fight them, billionaires don't want to go hat in hand to a committee of old farts, every time he wants to paint the kitchen. Who wants the aggravation?
Trump tried using Mar-a-lago for a summer place, but the house is old and needs a LOT of expensive upkeep, so he tried to develop it, into a golf resort and met with all kinds of resistance from the locals. Trump's record of failure and bankruptcy being secondary to their fear Trump wouold build a lot of cheap-ass condos on the property and wreck their quiet, peaceful, wealthy neighbourhood.
So they allowed him to rezone the property to accommodate his desire for a golf/beach club, but there is a zoning restriction on any further construction or re-development of the land, and it's use cannot be changed from a golf/beach resort.
The building restrictions and historical designation trump any value the property might have had in comparison to other neighbouring properties which are free of any such restrictions. The Trump name is of no value, and if anything, are now a drag on the value of the property. As with all Trump businesses, Mar-a-lago the resort, is losing money - bigly.
Trump has basically traded away everything that gave the property any large monetary value in order to get permission to convert the property from a private residence to a money losing commercial property. Such a smart businessman is Trump.
This is why Trump's businesses have gone bankrupt 7 times. Donnie just keeps making one dumb decision after another.