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Poor 40 Wall Street. Such a handsome building.

It was the tallest building in the world for a few months only, until it was bested by The Chrysler Building in 1930. A plane flew into it in the ’40’s. In the ’80’s it was owned by Fernando Marcos, who neglected it and left it largely unmanaged. Trump bought it in the ’90’s with the concept of turning it into a residential property but, as with most of his endeavors, he was unable to execute his plan. He had money enough to slap his big gold name on it but no one would lend him the money to do the job. It leases as an office building now at very low rates when compared to the surrounding properties but still is rife with vacancies and an odious collection of Class C tenants who would never get a lease from any other office landlord as is demonstrated by the following Bloomberg article.

I don’t think the electorate appreciates how singularly unsuccessful he is at his chosen trade. Trump claims he bought it for a million dollars and now its worth four hundred million, on some days six. The square footage may support that kind of valuation but it’s disrepair, it’s tenancy and it’s general trumpiness would effect a big discount and, in any case, the buildings subject to at least $50M. I find it hard to accept but sometimes bad things happen to good buildings