Donald Trump's rental property is now priced much closer to its St. Martin peers. (Reuters)
The art of the deal boils down to slashing prices — at least when it comes to President Donald Trump’s luxurious St. Martin compound.
A company controlling the property has just reduced the asking price for Trump’s Le Château des Palmiers, a walled compound on the northwestern tip of the Caribbean island, by $11 million. It’s now selling for $16.9 million — a nearly 40 percent price cut, according to the listing with St. Martin Sotheby’s International Realty.
The nearly five-acre estate was the most expensive home on the market in the tropical French territory when it went up for sale for $28 million about three months ago. The price cut indicates that the presidential connection wasn’t enough to collect a premium on the property. The price is now closer to its mega-mansion peers in that part of St. Martin and it is the second most expensive listing after another beachfront estate in the same neighborhood of Terres Basses, listed with Sotheby’s for $17.5 million.
Trump bought Le Château des Palmiers in 2013 for an undisclosed price, though it was on the market at the time for $19.7 million, according to reports of the sale at the time.
The president owns the property through a limited liability company, one of the dozens of entities established to manage his various holdings in the United States and abroad. Since assuming the presidency, Trump has turned over those entities to a revocable trust managed by his son Donald Jr. and Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg as a way avoid conflicts of interest.
The trust claimed the St. Martin property had a value of $25 million to $50 million on Trump’s most recent financial disclosures filed in June with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
It’s not clear why the trust is so eager to offload the property. A publicist for the Trump Organization did not immediately return requests for comment.
The filings indicate the estate overlooking on Plum Bay has mainly served as a rental investment, pulling between $100,000 and $1 million yearly. Vacation packages for the president’s tropical refuge start at $6,000 per night in the low season for the smaller of two villas and top off at over $20,000 during the winter holidays, according to the Sotheby’s St. Martin office.
The Mediterranean-style compound has 11 bedrooms spread across two villas and multiple outbuildings. The larger villa has a two-story master bedroom with a Jacuzzi bath tub and two private balconies. The smaller villa has a number of themed bedrooms, including the “Jungle Room” with a king-size bed.
There’s also a pool cabana, a two-bedroom manager’s house and a number of other red-roofed gazebos all enclosed in an eight-foot boundary wall, according to the listing with Sotheby’s agent Lesley Reed, who has not returned requests for comment.
A vacation at the Trump estate comes with a full staff, private chef, a private one-hole golf course, private beach access and room for 20 people — all of which offer a “vacation of a lifetime,” according to the listing.
The Washington Post first reported the price reduction.