The Trump Name May No Longer Be a Stain on Real Estate

Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photo Shutterstock

At Donald Trump’s inauguration this year, there was perhaps more chatter about the billionaire tech magnates and heads of industry who attended — LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg — than about Trump himself. It was a telling sign for almost anyone watching that his second round would be different — a contrast from the cautious distancing and sometimes overt criticism from business leaders that marked Trump’s first term.

A shift seems to be happening for those selling Trump-branded real estate as well. In his first go-around as president, his name was considered so objectionable that six residential buildings on Riverside Drive went to great effort and expense (costs were estimated at as high as $1 million per building) to remove it from their facades. Even the rental building in the complex got stripped of its lettering at the tenants’ behest. And it wasn’t just liberal Upper West Siders taking a political stand: a New York Times analysis from last year found that the value of Trump-branded properties in Manhattan slipped 23 percent between 2013 and 2023. (The buildings that removed the signage, meanwhile, saw sales prices climb 9 percent, slightly more than the Manhattan condo market overall.)

Since the election, however, luxury brokers say the stigma has lifted. “It’s been night and day. It’s just a completely different climate now,” says Lisa Simonsen, an associate broker at Brown Harris Stevens, who has a four-bedroom listing at Trump Park Avenue. Before the election, many of the buyers who came through the $9.95 million apartment were just trying to score a bargain, she says, and the owners, who had recently done a high-end renovation, opted to rent the unit rather than take a low-ball offer. (It was hardly a hardship: The renters paid a building record of $52,500 a month.) When the apartment went back on the market this October, the tire-kickers were gone. “We are very busy with showings,” says Simonsen. “And all the people coming through are serious buyers.” Adam Disick, a broker at Addison Realty Group, is seeing much the same. He recently listed a one-bedroom at Trump Tower that is both spacious and well priced (his listing, over 1,500 square feet, is asking $1.69 million, which in any newer development would be divvied up into a two-bedroom with the price point to match). “There has been consistent interest and traffic for the last 45 days,” he says. “It’s definitely a different tone than the first time President Trump was elected. People aren’t being as cautious. They just don’t care anymore.”

Lisa Simonsen of Brown Harris Stevens, who listed a Trump Park Avenue apartment in October, says the climate has shifted since the election, and so has the buyer pool — from bargain hunters to serious buyers.

“The stigma has dissipated,” agrees Kathy Murray, an associate broker at Douglas Elliman who has a two-bedroom listing at Trump Park Avenue. Before, international and New York–based buyers could be wary of the association, she says, but lately she’s noticed they just seem focused on the apartment itself, not on the name outside the door. There are buyers, too, who are now outright enthusiastic about moving into a Trump-branded property, she adds, taking New York’s rightward slide in the last election as a sign that it’s okay to be openly MAGA: “People are less fearful to speak their mind.” Adelaide Polsinelli, a commercial broker at Compass, was even more blunt. “I think it’s super-acceptable to be red these days,” she says, adding that the vast majority of building owners she works with have been Trump supporters for years. The difference now is that no one is hiding it.

It’s still early to say this is a sea change for the value of the Trump brand. The data at this point is scant — only a few months have passed since the election, and there aren’t that many Trump-branded buildings left in New York (Trump Park Avenue, Trump Tower, Trump World Tower, and Trump Parc and Trump Parc East still bear Trump’s name in gold, but basically all of his other New York condos dropped the branding during the last few years). Although there was a moderate uptick in sales at Trump-managed properties last year — 14 more than in 2023, making for a total of 100 sales, according to Ondel Hylton, the director of content at City Realty — that number is not significant enough to indicate a trend, Hylton says.

The Trump Park Avenue condo, large and recently renovated on a prestigious strip, could be a bellwether of how buyers are now approaching Trump-branded buildings.

There could also be another factor that would explain the surge of interest: After years of price stagnation, they’re kind of a good deal. Pricing at Trump-branded buildings remains near 20-year lows, according to City Realty data — and while they rose a smidge (2 percent) last year, that was the only year besides 2022 that they went up in the last two decades. That might be because, with the exception of Trump Park Avenue (a prewar condo conversion on a prestigious street of mostly co-ops that has maintained its allure better than most other Trump properties), most Trump-branded buildings were built decades ago, when luxury standards were different than they are today. They just don’t compete for buyers who want to live in glitzier buildings like Central Park Tower or One Highline.

It’s also hard to discount how much of the uptick is just the city’s newly buoyant real-estate market. “I don’t think New Yorkers in general have changed their opinion,” Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel said, citing the many polarizing political headlines from Trump’s first week in office. Despite his reelection, he is still a divisive figure, something most buyers would prefer to avoid hitching a multimillion investment to regardless of their political leanings. Besides, one of the few remaining Trump-owned buildings, Trump Tower, comes with the security headaches of sharing a building with a sitting president. “The police barricades are pretty unsightly,” says Miller. “And say you bought a pied-à-terre to visit a few times a year and it’s pouring rain and you want to get a taxi, you can’t do it.” If anything, he thought the interest that brokers at Trump-branded buildings were seeing was likely due to other factors — a combination of pent-up demand, the stock market surging, and buyers finally accepting higher interest rates — rather than anything MAGA related.

Rex Gonsalves, a Brown Harris Stevens agent who has a listing for a $2.25 million three-bedroom at Trump World Tower, by the U.N., is noticing that difference. “If I had listed it last year, it wouldn’t have mattered how much love or animosity buyers had for Trump — no one was buying anything.”