The typical “Trump” branded condo that sold in the U.S. this year was purchased for a median of $720,000—9.7% more than the typical comparable luxury condo. That’s down from the 22% price premium Trump-branded condos fetched in 2019, and a 33.5% premium in 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president. The price premium of Trump-branded condos has declined every year that Trump has been in office.
This is according to a Redfin analysis of Trump-branded and comparable luxury condos in U.S. cities, excluding New York City, where multiple listing service data on sales of Trump properties was incomplete. The research compared the properties by sale price, price per square foot and time spent on market, with results controlled for features such as location, size, views and number of bedrooms and bathrooms. The analysis includes sales of Trump-branded condos and other luxury units in cities including Hollywood Beach, FL; Sunny Isles Beach, FL; Honolulu; Chicago; Jersey City, NJ; Stamford, CT; Las Vegas; New Rochelle, NY; Shrub Oak, NY and White Plains, NY.
The median sale price of the typical Trump-branded condo has declined 17% since 2016, while the price of the typical comparable luxury condo has dropped 1.3%.
Trump properties also take longer to sell; the typical Trump-branded condo spent 118 days on the market before going under contract this year, compared with 78 days for the typical comparable luxury condo.
“The Trump name has become increasingly polarizing over the last four years— particularly this year with the pandemic and the upcoming election—which may explain why the price premium of Trump-branded condos has been on the decline,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “The fact that Trump condos continue to fetch 10% more than similar luxury condos may be a reflection of the president’s devoted supporter base.”
Fifty-seven percent of condos listed for sale in Trump-branded buildings this year mentioned the name “Trump” in online listing descriptions, down from 64% in 2019 and a high of 85% in 2015, the year before Trump was elected president.
“Before Trump entered the political sphere, his name on a building represented luxury,” Fairweather continued. “Today, the name carries such a large political weight, that many listing agents may choose to leave it out of their marketing materials so as not to distract or deter potential buyers.”
Data for 2020 includes sales from Jan. 1, 2020 through Sept. 30, 2020. Data for all past years includes sales from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. We identified Trump-branded buildings in the real estate portfolio listed here. We then searched condo listings for the applicable dates for addresses listed in the portfolio, excluding properties in Manhattan. There were roughly 90 condo sales in the 2020 period and 190 in the 2016 period.
For the non-Trump condo sales, we first found all condo sales in the same zip codes as Trump-branded properties. Within each zip code, the sample of sales was limited to the top tercile of price per square foot in order to compare Trump property condos with comparable luxury properties. About 160 total sales of Trump-branded condos between 2014 and 2020 were excluded from the analysis because they were not in the top tercile of price per square foot in their respective zip codes. To calculate the percent premiums, we used a linear regression model to compare sale prices of Trump condos to comparable non-Trump luxury condos. The results control for many condo features including location, size, views, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, whether the home is on the waterfront, month of sale and whether the home is newly built.
For the analysis of marketing remarks, we pulled the listing descriptions for every property listed in a Trump-branded building, then searched for mentions of “Trump” within each description. After excluding listings with no description, we counted the number of listings containing at least one mention of “Trump” and divided that by the total listings sold that year.
