Donald Trump's childhood home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, sold for $1.93 million this summer, nearly $1.1 million more than the developer who renovated it paid just last year.
Listing agent Joe Zhu of RE/MAX Edge confirmed the final sale price exclusively to the New York Post, closing a chapter on one of the most unusual residential listings in New York City. The five-bedroom, four-bathroom Tudor at 85-15 Wareham Place has changed hands multiple times since Trump left the White House for his first term, each sale drawing national attention less for the house itself than for the man who once lived in it.
Developer Tommy Lin bought the roughly 3,100-square-foot property for $835,000 and poured more than $500,000 into an eight-month gut renovation. He initially relisted it at $2.3 million, pulled it off the market, then brought it back at just under $2 million. The final price landed $70,000 below that reduced ask, but still left Lin with a substantial gain on his total investment of roughly $1.35 million.
Trump's father, the real estate developer Fred Trump, built the brick-and-stucco residence in 1940. Donald Trump lived there from birth until about age four, when the family moved to a larger home nearby in Jamaica Estates. The property traded for $2.14 million in 2017, shortly after Trump entered the White House. Fox News reported that the 2017 buyer was Trump Birth House LLC, a company linked to Chinese overseas investors, and that the home was later listed at $2.9 million.
After that sale, the property was offered to tourists on Airbnb, a novelty listing that traded on the presidential connection. But the house eventually fell into serious disrepair. Burst pipes caused water damage, mold spread through the interior, and a colony of feral cats moved in.
By the time Lin acquired it, the home that a sitting president once called his first address had become a wreck. The $835,000 price tag reflected the damage. The Washington Examiner had previously reported that the property was auctioned with no reserve through Paramount Realty USA after an earlier sale in December 2016 for $1.25 million, one of several transactions that saw the home's value swing wildly depending on the political moment and the condition of the structure.
Lin's renovation preserved the Tudor exterior but overhauled everything inside: a chef's kitchen, herringbone floors, and spa-style bathrooms across four full baths. The work took eight months.
Zhu told the Post that the connection to the 45th and 47th president was the property's strongest selling point. "There were quite a lot of people" interested because it was Trump's former home, he said. Some prospective buyers, Zhu added, saw additional historical value in owning the property, a factor that set it apart from comparable homes in the Queens neighborhood.
When the Post first reported in July that the home had gone under contract, Zhu said the agreed-upon price was "very close" to the asking price at the time. The final number bore that out: $1.93 million against a $1.99 million ask.
The identity of the buyer has not been disclosed. Whether the new owner intends to live in the home, hold it as an investment, or put it to some other use remains unknown. Trump's personal history, from the family's years in the White House to his roots in outer-borough New York, has consistently turned otherwise ordinary real estate transactions into national news.
The home's price history reads like a barometer of Trump's political fortunes. It sold for $1.25 million in late 2016, weeks after Trump won the presidency. Within months, the next buyer paid $2.14 million, a 71 percent jump. Then came the Airbnb phase, the decay, the feral cats, and a crash to $835,000.
Lin's renovation and the $1.93 million exit suggest the Trump premium is real, if volatile. The house is modest by the standards of the man who built gold-plated towers in Manhattan, but the address carries weight that no comparable listing in Jamaica Estates can match.
Political figures on both sides of the aisle have seen their personal lives and properties become objects of intense public fascination. Prominent Republicans, from Trump to Mitch McConnell during his extended health absence, find that the public's interest in their private worlds rarely dims, even when the details are mundane.
The sale also underscores a pattern familiar to anyone who watches New York real estate: a savvy developer spots a distressed asset, bets on the brand attached to it, and walks away with a tidy return. Lin's total outlay, purchase price plus renovation, came to roughly $1.35 million. His sale price cleared that by more than half a million dollars, before transaction costs.
Several questions remain open. No one has explained how the property deteriorated so badly after the 2017 sale, or who bore responsibility for the burst pipes and mold. The gap between the Airbnb-era listing and Lin's bargain purchase suggests a period of neglect that no one involved has publicly accounted for. Even accountability for what happens behind closed doors, whether in Washington or Queens, tends to arrive late, if it arrives at all.
In the end, the market did what markets do: it priced in the name on the mailbox. And in this case, that name was worth every penny of the markup.