There’s no denying that President Donald Trump has increased his wealth incredibly over the decades since he first entered the financial scene. Much of that growth has been in the area of his real estate ventures and investments.
So the average investor might be wondering where you’d be today if you had invested in Trump’s real estate empire 10 years ago, before he became the president of the United States in 2016.
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While all of his real estate has been private, we can look at what his properties have done. Below is a look at how your wealth might have grown.
Also find out how much Trump’s entire empire is worth.
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Growth Over the Past 10 Years: A Hypothetical Investment
Since Trump’s Organization is private, the best way to gauge its performance is by Trump’s personal net worth, which reflects much of its value. According to Visual Capitalist, below is Trump’s net worth dating back to 2015.
|
Year |
Estimated Net Worth |
|
2015 |
~$4.1 billion |
|
2017 |
~$3.5 billion |
|
2019 |
~$3.1 billion |
|
2020 |
~$2.4 billion |
|
2022 |
~$2.5 billion |
|
2024 |
~$5.1 billion (now, according to Forbes) |
If you were to mirror Trump’s wealth, a $10,000 hypothetical investment in 2015 could be worth around $12,500 today, depending on which valuation you use. By contrast, an S&P 500 index fund would have more than tripled your money over the same period.
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However, this is very nuanced, since Trump’s real estate portfolio has not grown in the last 10 years. His current net worth primarily comes from his investments in his social media app, Truth Social and his crypto portfolio.
In February of 2021, Trump founded Trump Media & Technology Group and a year later, he launched Truth Social.
According to Yahoo Finance, Trump Media is currently worth about $18 per share and while it has reached a height of $57 per share, it’s unlikely to reach those heights again.
The same goes for Trump’s meme coin and his crypto investments. Trump has not promised that your portfolio will grow if you invest in his $Trump coin. It is another gamble his fans and fans of crypto in general, may be willing to make.
Trump’s Real Estate Career
Trump has been in real estate for decades. He was an early investor in his lifetime, continually telling the story of the “small loan of a million dollars” he received from his father. The reality is that Trump got his start in his father’s real estate company and eventually took over control.
His first investments were in real estate, with his father and the Grand Hyatt Hotel securing him a bank construction loan of $70 million. Bank records and financial statements show that Trump borrowed $60 million from his father and another $413 million from his father’s company.
He has also borrowed the equivalent of $4 billion from banks, $3 billion of which he is rumored to not have paid back. His businesses have been in bankruptcy six times to reduce his debts.
While he has been involved in several other ventures, like the Miss Universe Pageant, Trump University and his show “The Apprentice,” his net wealth was reported as $4.5 billion in 2015 and it largely came from real estate.
The Trump Organization
The Trump Organization is the umbrella company under which most of Trump’s real estate has been bought and sold. It was his father’s company before him and his grandmother’s company before that. It began as Elizabeth Trump & Son in 1923.
It is the company that controls Trump Tower, Trump World Tower, The Trump Building at 40 Wall Street, Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, Trump International Hotel and Tower New York, Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Florida and over a dozen golf courses. The umbrella company and each of its holdings are privately owned, which means investors have no chance to invest and grow their wealth with Trump here.
But, for research purposes, one of the only buildings with public records is the 40 Wall Street tower, so let’s take a look at that. According to the New York Attorney General, the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street was listed at $550 million and has since then been valued at $120 to $180 million depending on income multiples, per The Wall Street Journal. That’s a decline of up to 78.2%.
That is just one example of his real estate investments. Overall, the significant majority of his real estate investments have declined in value.
Trump Entertainment Resorts
Trump Entertainment Resorts is another umbrella company Donald Trump owned, which managed Trump Plaza and Trump World’s Fair in Atlantic City. Trump founded the company in 1995 as Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts and then filed for bankruptcy in 2004, 2009 and 2014.
Finally, the company was sold to Icahn Enterprises in 2016 and all the company’s properties have either been sold or closed. Thus, while the company was publicly traded in 1995, it only ever traded between $14 and $21 per share. Once it was delisted from the market in 2009, it was down to 14 cents per share. So investors could not have invested by 2015.
Editor’s note on political coverage: GOBankingRates is nonpartisan and strives to cover all aspects of the economy objectively and present balanced reports on politically focused finance stories. You can find more coverage of this topic on GOBankingRates.com.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: If You Had Invested in Trump’s Real Estate Empire 10 Years Ago, Here’s How Much You’d Have Today