How Much Is Trump's Mar-A-Lago Really Worth?

Before becoming president, Donald Trump was a real estate magnate who made a lot of investments over his career. But the flashiest of his portfolio, which consists of several golf courses, country clubs and tall buildings in the U.S. and around the world, is the Florida-based Mar-a-Lago estate.

Acquired in 1985, Trump reportedly paid around $5 to $10 million for the Palm Beach resort and turned it into a money-making club, making it one of the most valuable homes in the world.

But how much is the vast South Florida mansion really worth?

The Spanish-Moorish-Portugese-Venetian-inspired Mar-a-Lago, which literally means "sea-to-lake" in Spanish, was originally built for Post cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post when she was Mrs. Edward F. Hutton, according to the Palm Beach Post.

They commissioned Marion Sims Wyeth to build her a 58-bedroom palace on a 17-acre jungle between the ocean and the Intracoastal. And by the time the palace was finished, Viennese architect and theater designer Joseph Urban had provided the estate with the ornamentation design.

A total of six hundred workers built Mar-a-Lago for more than three years, using Italian stones and about 36,000 antique Spanish and Portuguese tiles, as well as old marble floors and roof tiles from Cuba.

And when Post died in 1973, she gave the estate to the U.S. government to make it a presidential retreat. However, the government did not accept it since the maintenance would cost millions of dollars a year, and the location was directly under Palm Beach International Airport's flight path.

After the U.S. government gave Mar-a-Lago back to the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation, it was sold to Trump in 1985. He reportedly paid $5 million for the house, $3 million for the furniture and $2 million for the beachfront land across the road, Forbes reported.

In 1995, Trump turned the estate into a private club, hosting rich members and glitzy events.

The estate generated around $10 million in revenue in 2014, and when Trump decided to run for president in 2015, the sales of the estate jumped to almost $22 million.

During his presidency, Trump used Mar-a-Lago to host foreign leaders like the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In 2017, the value of the estate shot up to $25 million, $23 million in 2018 and $21 million in 2019.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Forbes estimated that Mar-a-Lago was worth $170 million, although the Trump Organization said that the value was "closer to $500 million."