Donald Trump's departure from the White House to his extravagant Mar-a-Lago estate has hit headlines in recent weeks, however, attention has now turned to his secret second home right next door to the fabled Florida compound. Having just hit the market, we can finally take a peek inside the mysterious mansion. Click or scroll on to tour the Trump family's little-known home in the Sunshine State...
The waterfront mansion is reportedly owned by a company linked to Donald Trump and his family, 1125 South Ocean LLC. Last on the market in 2018, the limited liability company, of which Eric Trump served as president and Donald Trump Jr. as vice president, bought the luxurious home for just shy of $18.3 million from the ex-president's sister, retired judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Now listed for $49 million, the family could be set to make a huge profit from the potential sale.
After the family snapped up the home, it appeared as a monthly rental listed for $100,000 a month on Trump International Realty. In 2019, the rental price was reduced to $81,250 and later the same year went down to $65,000.
Inside, the old listing images show the home decorated in old-fashioned furnishings and fixtures, with open entertaining areas facing out onto gorgeous sea views. However, a more recent listing shows how Melania put her stamp on the décor, turning this sunroom into a chic neutral space with paneled walls and cream furniture.
This reception room has direct access to the patio through chic shuttered doors – with its grand fireplace and high ceilings, it's the perfect formal entertaining space. As well as having ties to Trump's sons through their company, the house was also later listed as an asset of the former president in financial disclosure statements released during his time in office.
Spread over 10,455 square feet, the home boasts eight bedrooms and eight-and-a-half bathrooms. Offering plenty of luxury features, the beachfront property features marble floors, numerous ocean-facing balconies, a library and a wet bar.
As well as being next to the famed Mar-a-Lago, the house also sits across the street from two more Trump-owned houses that have been in the family for years. The next lucky owner of the beach house will have access to The Mar-a-Lago Club, a perk available to residents of Woodbridge Road that waives the initiation fee of the club, however, residents are still required to pay monthly costs.
Sitting on just over half an acre of land, the idyllic home has access to 194 feet of ocean frontage, as well as a luxurious private swimming pool and a number of stunning terraces with panoramic ocean views. However, Trump's return to the Sunshine State has been far from smooth sailing. Let's take a look at his controversial move back to Florida and the Mar-a-Lago estate he now calls home...
Since losing his controversial presidency to Joe Biden, Trump has relocated permanently to his Mar-a-Lago estate. However, some affluent neighbors aren't too pleased to see him according to CBS Miami. In December, a letter was sent to the town council requesting that an agreement from 1993 prohibiting any club member – including Trump – from staying at the property for more than three weeks a year be duly enforced.
Not only has Trump had a hard time with his neighbors, but demolition crews also moved in to remove the presidential helipad from the lawn of Mar-a-Lago. Installed four years ago, the helipad had allowed Donald Trump to fly directly to his Florida home while he was president, but since his position is no more, the perk has been taken away at a cost of around $15,000.
Many years before Donald Trump bought it, Mar-a-Lago was the vision of a wealthy heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post who commissioned the build in the 1920s. Before her death in 1973, she gifted the house to the nation in the hope that it would become the 'Winter White House' presidential retreat. But spiraling maintenance costs saw President Carter hand the estate back to the Post Foundation in 1981. The property was then put on the market for around $20 million – though some sources say $25 million – but potential buyers were not to be found and permission was sought to raze it to the ground.
According to the City Journal, Trump is said to have first heard about Mar-a-Lago from a taxi cab driver during a drive around Palm Beach, and knew there and then that he just had to have it. To the flashy real estate mogul, Post's winter retreat represented the ultimate trophy property. Trump initially offered the Post family $15 million for the estate.
The offer was rejected, so Trump decided to play tough. He purchased a beachfront parcel of land between the estate and ocean for $2 million. According to The Independent, he revealed plans to put a building up that would block the sea view from Mar-a-Lago, thus depreciating its value and putting off rival buyers.
Trump's audacious move had the desired effect. In 1985, the Post family agreed to accept just $8 million for the estate and all its contents. This is a fraction of what Mar-a-Lago cost to build in real terms and what it's estimated to be worth nowadays – Forbes valued the property at $160 million in 2018. The property magnate had landed the real estate bargain of the year, if not the decade.
When the Trump empire ran into financial difficulties in the early 1990s, Donald Trump worked out a way of turning his money-pit estate into a money-making juggernaut – by transforming it into a members' club. To win over the Palm Beach town council and gain permission for his venture, Trump promised to carry out a sensitive restoration of Mar-a-Lago, according to the Palm Beach Post. This would also allow him to claim a massive tax break in the form of a conservation easement.
Trump billed the club as open to all who could afford to sign up, unlike the two most established private members' clubs in Palm Beach, which, shockingly, barred African American, Jewish and LGBTQ+ people from joining. While Trump has been rightly applauded for this inclusive policy, some commentators say his motives were more about making as much money as possible and further ingratiating himself with the town council than anything benevolent. The town eventually granted permission for the club, though with some strings attached, which we will come to later.
Trump shelled out millions on the expensive restoration, which was given a big thumbs up by conservationists, and splurged on a number of additions to the property, including two swimming pools, a beauty salon and a spa, with the lion's share of the money going on a new 20,000-square-foot ballroom in the Louis XIV style. Trump is said to have spent $7 million gilding the palatial space and $100,000 a-piece on the gold basins in the bathrooms.
Trump was furious with Post's daughter, the actress Dina Merrill, after she wrote to the town council objecting to the club. In his book The Art of the Comeback, Trump went on to describe her as an “arrogant and aloof daughter, who was born with her mother’s beauty but not her brains”. Merrill's childhood suite is one of Mar-a-Lago's most fanciful. Inspired by Sleeping Beauty, the fairytale 'Baby House' features a charming silver-plated four-poster bed with squirrel motifs and a fireplace decorated with garlands of plaster roses.
Interestingly, Post had iron bars installed on the windows and placed guards at the door of the Baby House following the Lindbergh kidnapping of 1932 and wouldn't allow her daughter to go anywhere without bodyguards in tow, up until her 18th birthday. In later years, guests including 'Lady Bird' Johnson stayed in the suite, and when Trump acquired the property, his daughter Ivanka got dibs on it, though these days she prefers staying in the Banyan Bungalow on the grounds.
Although the mega-mansion itself, which had gone from 118 to 126 rooms, was restored, some of its contents were sold off at auction and replaced with reproductions. Among the items that Trump offloaded were the jewel-encrusted marble dining table, antique Spanish rug, Louis XIV chests and Venetian glasses worth a thousand dollars each.
The club has welcomed a long list of celebrities over the years, including Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, who spent their honeymoon at Mar-a-Lago. Other stars who visited the club whether for pleasure or to perform at a function include Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Tiger Woods, Billy Joel, Vanessa Williams, Liza Minnelli and Sylvester Stallone.
Laurence Leamer, author of Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace, recounts a story in his definitive book on the estate. In 2000, Trump hired top French chef Bernard Goupy, who wowed Celine Dion when she threw a baby shower at the club. Trump wasn't quite so impressed and fired Goupy not long after, having launched an expletive-packed tirade against his signature dish, a Caesar salad. The chef went on to work for Dion who renamed the dish 'Trump Salad'.
An Associated Press investigation conducted in 2017 found that Mar-a-Lago had been cited for 78 health code violations in the previous three years, with inspectors flagging up a range of issues that included chefs failing to wash their hands, dirty cutting boards, mold growing on the ice machine, as well as serving unsafe seafood and meat that had been improperly refrigerated.
Trump doubled the joining fee from $100,000 to $200,000 after he became president, prompting CNBC to report allegations that he was seeking to profit from his position. Some reports suggest the fee, which was $50,000 back when the club opened in the 1990s, is now $250,000. Members are also required to stump up yearly membership dues of $14,000 and spend a minimum of $2,000 per annum on food.
Trump visited the property 32 times during his presidency, spending a total of 142 days there. Mar-a-Lago was used for important government business and hosted meetings with world leaders, including China's Xi Jinping and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. But these trips didn't come cheap with four sojourns costing a whopping $13.6 million or an average of $3.4 million each.
The number of members is estimated at almost 500 and, contrary to what you might think, the list isn't completely dominated by MAGA Republicans. They do make up a significant proportion, though, including several who were nominated by Trump for ambassador posts. The most notable left-leaning member, Democratic Party power broker George Norcross, recently gave up his membership.
In an interview promoting his book Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago and the Rise of America's Xanadu, writer Les Standiford mentioned that some people insist the ghost of Marjorie Merriweather-Post roams Mar-a-Lago's corridors. What Post would have thought of Trump is anyone's guess and although her daughter wasn't a fan, the scion's granddaughter Marjorie Post Dye praised him for preserving the property.
Pictured here from the outside, the owner's suite contains the aforementioned Versailles Master Bedroom, an additional bedroom, the Pine Hall and the Louis XV hall, living rooms, bathrooms and offices. As well as searching for a school for Barron Trump and setting up an office at Mar-a-Lago to continue her 'Be Best' campaign, Melania Trump prepared for the family's move by overseeing the suite's expansion and revamp, opting for copious dark wood and white marble.
Working with her favorite interior designer, Tham Kannalikham, Melania updated some of the private quarters in her own modern aesthetic. According to a report by CNN, Donald Trump is said to have hit the roof when he saw the makeover. He reportedly ordered the immediate removal of the wood and marble. Here's how the master bedroom looked in the 1990s.
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