Don't flip, says auctioneer seeking $3 million for Trump's childhood home

[December 10, 2020]  By Roselle Chen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's childhood home is up for sale for the fourth time in four years, with a bloated $3 million target price that the auctioneer hopes his admirers will pay.

Other Tudor-style houses on the street in Jamaica Estates, an affluent New York suburb which resembles an English park, are listed for only about $1.3 million.

"It's more likely that three million people will pay $1, or a million people will pay $3, or 300,000 people will pay $10, than one person will pay $3 million," Misha Haghani, principal at Paramount Realty USA.

Trump's late father Fred built the five-bedroom home with a fireplace and narrow driveway in 1940. In 1950, when Trump was 4, Fred moved the family into a grand 23-room mansion he built on two lots behind the backyard.

"Love Trump? Thank President Trump by contributing to this campaign to buy his childhood home in his honor!" Haghani appealed on a GoFundMe page. "What happens to the historic property is up to him!"

Trump can donate the funds to a charity, or turn the property into a presidential library, museum or national historic site, among other suggestions on the page.

The campaign raised $125 by late Wednesday, including from Trump haters. "There are people who are posting negative remarks and donating money," Haghani said.

Paramount Realty first sold the house in 2016 for about $1.4 million for a family who had lived there for seven or eight years. The buyer hired Paramount to flip it. At a Jan. 17, 2017 auction, three days before Trump's inauguration, an unidentified bidder clinched it for $2.14 million.

The childhood home of U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in the Jamaica Estates section of Queens borough of New York, U.S., December 9, 2020. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

In 2019 the owner, known simply as Trump Birth House LLC, listed the house for $3 million for just 10 days.

"That owner has hired us to sell the house again," said Haghani.

The house was advertised on Airbnb in 2017 with photos of life-sized Trump cardboard cutouts in the rooms, with bunk beds, for over $700 a night.

For digs not on par with Trump's luxury hotels, $3 million is too rich, according to neighbors.

"It's too much," said Fakhertag Obeid, 61, who is also annoyed with strangers knocking on her door to ask about the Trump house.

"But for me, it's OK because I live in the neighborhood. That means all the houses are going to be a little bit higher and I'll benefit from it."

Haghani hopes he will not have to sell the house again.

"No more hot potatoes, flipping, to flipping, to flipping, to flippers who flip to other flippers, etc. There's only so much you can do with this."

(Reporting by Roselle Chen; Writing by Richard Chang and Michael Perry)

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