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Notes -
The judgement takes its numbers from the county assessor:
Possibly you're comparing the current valuation to the valuation in the relevant periods?
I also don't think you can reasonably use neighbouring properties prices as a guide to Mar-a-Lago's value when Mar-a-Lago has very different land use restrictions applied to it.
I know you aren’t from the states so you likely don’t have this local knowledge. Property tax values are untethered from actual FMV. The system isn’t designed to determine the real value of property. If you look at real estate, it is often sold well above the assessed property tax value. Indeed in many places even after a sale establishes fmv the property taxes don’t reset the valuation.
Also, land use certainly affects valuation. If Trump tried to sell MAL what do you think he’d get?
I don't have any real idea what it's actually worth. I was initially sceptical of this assertion that property tax values are different from actual values, but it seems legit, so - weird way to run a country, but ok.
But since we're abandoning that as an anchor, we don't have any actual numbers to work with. There doesn't seem to be an actual fair market value appraisal included in any of the court documents. So what we have is a highly unusual property with highly unusual use restrictions. It's very difficult to know what it's actually worth.
Fortunately, I don't think it's necessary to generate an accurate valuation to be able to determine that Trump's valuation was fraudulent. The fact that the 1) use restrictions exist, 2) they are inevitably going to impact the value significantly, and 3) that Trump's valuations assumed they did not exist is enough to satisfy both the judge and myself that he did the wrong thing.
The tax assessment thing is very odd. I learned a lot about it when I bought my house and realized it’s insane.
But I’m not sure your assessment of Trump’s valuation is fraud is accurate. It seems — solely from the comments here — like the judge is making a factual conclusion about the value of MAL and therefore saying Trump didn’t account for the land use restrictions and is fraudulent. Perhaps the judge is simply wrong re value? Citing to the assessor makes me think the judge is just wrong.
Again I think Trump would only be fraudulent is if he told the lenders there was no land use restriction.
He's not. He does cite the county assessor's valuation, probably foolishly, but the argument is not "The valuation is above the county assessor's valuation, therefore the land use restrictions were not accounted for, therefore fraud". The argument is "we have Trumps's SFC statements, they don't disclose the land use restrictions, therefore fraud".
One I’m not sure there is a duty to disclose a publicly knowable fact. Second, was there an assessment report provided by Trump that stated the value or did Trump merely write a value? it isn’t clear from what you said but it sounds like the latter which means the judge is saying he doesn’t think the value was right because he doesn’t think it properly corrects for land use.
I think he did both. I'm not familiar with exactly how it all works, but perusing the court documents, it seems that he provided a written report describing the properties as well as a spreadsheet breaking down their value.
In this spreadsheet for example he calculates Mar-a-Lago as being worth $531 million in 2012, based on the average price acre of two nearby properties ($25 million), multiplying that by Mar-a-Lago's acreage, and then adding a 30% premium for "completed facility and greater buildout".
So he's explicitly basing its valuation on the price of nearby properties that are not encumbered by the same land use restrictions and making no acknowledgement of or adjustment for those restrictions.
In general, no. Certainly Trump had no duty to seek a loan on favourable terms.
However, given that he elected to seek a loan, and that he provided financial information as a part of that loan application, I do think he had a duty to ensure that the information he provided was not knowingly misleading.
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