Donald’s Latest Deal!

Donald’s Latest Deal!

Donald's Latest Deal!

Must SeeTop 10 Florida Condos For Sale

Donald Trump's numerous critics say he is cheap, a buffoon, an egomaniac, a charlatan and a demagogue who is one of the major contributors to America's dysfunctional politics. They say he has become a billionaire by running roughshod over his competitors and customers, and criticize his obsession with extreme politics and President Obama's birth certificate and Harvard report card.

His many supporters (an April 2011 poll by Public Policy Polling showed Trump with a nine point lead among likely candidates for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination) say he is a genius, generous (a major contributor to UNICEF, St. Jude's Hospital and Children with AIDS), a patriot and the best promoter since P. T. Barnum, pushing a full line of Trump merchandise including menswear, vodka and bottled water. He has many famous friends including Regis Philbin, Barbara Walters and Mike Tyson. And a longer list of enemies and public feuds with celebrities such as Robert De Niro, Bill Cosby, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Maher and Cher. David Letterman was a friend but now appears to be on the outs for insinuating that Trump might be a racist.

Trump was born in 1946, the son of a wealthy New York real estate developer. After graduating from the Wharton School of Business, Trump joined his father's company and changed the name from Elizabeth Trump and Son to The Trump Organization. Despite becoming one of New York City's biggest real estate developers while still in his 30s, by the early 1990s Trump was on the brink of personal and business bankruptcy. His Atlantic City casino/hotel operations filed for corporate bankruptcy in 1991, 1992, 2004 and 2009. The Trump name was further dragged through the mud for several failed real estate projects in the recent big crash including Trump International Hotel and Tower that went through foreclosure in 2012 and is now sitting empty and rusting on the Fort Lauderdale Strip and Trump Baja in Mexico that never progressed beyond a hole in the ground, leaving unlucky pre-construction buyers with losses of over $20 million. Today, The Donald is worth somewhere between $3 and $7 billion.

Trump has been a huge investor in Florida real estate and spends much of his time at his vacation home in Palm Beach. His most famous Florida acquisition was the Marjorie Merriweather Post estate he bought in 1985 for $10 million. He lived there until 1995 when he spent millions more dollars to turn it into one of the world's fanciest country clubs. It has five tennis courts, a beach club and a 20,000 square foot Louis XIV gold and crystal ballroom. And then there was his Maison de l'Amitié mansion, also in Palm Beach, that he bought for $41 million in a 2004 bankruptcy sale and sold in 2008 to Russian fertilizer billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, for $100 million.

The Trumpster's newest Florida deal is the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in Jupiter that he bought in November. Although some people question the wisdom of investing in golf properties since a number of golf courses have recently closed or gone to auction, and experts expect up to an additional 2,000 courses to close by 2020, Trump has been on a golf buying craze. He currently owns a dozen courses including the Doral Golf Resort in Miami that he bought last year for $150 million (in 2007, Morgan Stanley paid $501 million for Doral), a course he is currently developing in the Bronx, and his pet project – Trump International Golf Links in Scotland that Trump claims is "the greatest golf course in the world." According to the Palm Beach Post, Trump is the only American investor currently in the golf course buying business.

The Ritz-Carlton Club & Spa (it will be renamed the Trump National Golf Club) features a Jack Nicklaus signature course, a 68,000-square-foot clubhouse, pro shop, resort-style swimming pool, 15,000-square-foot fitness center and tennis courts. The complex offers fractional ownerships (timeshares) starting at about $120,000 and homes range in price from a bit over $1 million up to $4 million.

Source: www.condo.com