The Queens house where Donald Trump lived until he was 4 years old will be sold to the highest bidder just days before his inauguration. The 2,000-square-foot Tudor, located at 85-15 Wareham Place in Jamaica Estates, was initially put on the market in July, with an asking price of $1.65 million. When it failed to sell, owners Isaac and Claudia Kestenberg scheduled an October auction (opening bid: $849,000), but postponed it at the last minute, apparently because they thought they could get more money if Trump actually won the election. The Kestenbergs’ bet paid off decently: On December 17, an unnamed real-estate investor bought the five-bedroom for $1.25 million. That person now plans to flip the house in a January 17 auction with Paramount Realty USA.
Paramount’s Misha Haghani appeared confident that the buyer would turn a profit, telling Politico, “I have no clue what this is worth. It’s such a unique property. It’s really up to the discerning buyer to say what it’s worth. That’s why an auction makes sense here, for the same reason that art and other things with intangible value are sold at auction.” How do you put a price on the rooms in which America’s least-popular president-elect threw his first tantrums?
