By SARAH MASLIN NIR
MARCH 28, 2017
They first arrived in late January, caravans of black Escalades driving along a small street in Jamaica Estates, an upscale neighborhood in Queens, and stopping in front of a modest Tudor-style house that had just been sold at auction: the home where President Trump lived as a boy. Out stepped a stream of people in business suits, according to a neighbor, all speaking Chinese.
The visits spiked between the auction and the closing of the sale last week, according to the neighbor, who did not want to be identified because of concerns about her privacy. It was revealed last week that the home had been bought by Trump Birth House, a limited liability company that obscured the identity of the person behind it.
But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China.
“Why is there an influx of Chinese people interested in this house, of all people?” the neighbor said she recalled wondering. “What do they want?”
The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the five-bedroom home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2.14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company.
They first arrived in late January, caravans of black Escalades driving along a small street in Jamaica Estates, an upscale neighborhood in Queens, and stopping in front of a modest Tudor-style house that had just been sold at auction: the home where President Trump lived as a boy. Out stepped a stream of people in business suits, according to a neighbor, all speaking Chinese.
The visits spiked between the auction and the closing of the sale last week, according to the neighbor, who did not want to be identified because of concerns about her privacy. It was revealed last week that the home had been bought by Trump Birth House, a limited liability company that obscured the identity of the person behind it.
But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China.
“Why is there an influx of Chinese people interested in this house, of all people?” the neighbor said she recalled wondering. “What do they want?”
The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the five-bedroom home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2.14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company.
A thin trail of documents associated with the sale led first to a second-story office on Main Street in Flushing, Queens, of Michael X. Tang, a lawyer who represents Trump Birth House. In the cramped and bustling office, which, according to its website, specializes in facilitating Chinese purchases of American real estate, a woman at a desk welcomed visitors.
“Oh, about the Trump house,” she said. She continued: Mr. Tang declined to comment.
Documents show that Mr. Tang was also the lawyer for a seemingly unrelated transaction on a palatial home in Old Westbury, N.Y., which sold for more than $3.6 million in 2014 to a person named Jiying Wei. The redbrick mansion, tucked at the end of a cul-de-sac and abutted by a private tennis court, is a far cry from the modest butter-colored childhood home of Mr. Trump. But, according to a person with knowledge of the sale, the mansion’s owner is a relative of the woman from China who bought the Trump family home.
Standing in the collonaded entryway of her home a few doors down in Old Westbury, a neighbor, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons, deepened the mystery: The only person who lives in the mansion, she said, is the family’s son, a local college student; the rest of the family lives in China.
The trail dead-ended at the cul-de-sac: The house was empty and the owner could not be reached.
“I did have some expectation that the purchaser would be a huge Trump supporter from within America,” Misha Haghani, principal of Paramount Realty USA, said of the Jamaica Estates home. He declined to reveal the identity of the buyer. “But it is entirely possible that the purchaser is a huge Trump supporter from outside of America,” he said.
Cathy Han, a real estate agent in New York who specializes in marketing high-end properties to Chinese buyers — including apartments in Trump-owned buildings — said she was not surprised that the home had been purchased by a Chinese buyer.
“When I saw it was Trump’s birth house property for sale, I knew immediately it would get a lot of attention from Chinese buyers,” Ms. Han said. “I know he is a controversial figure in the States, but among Chinese people, Trump is a very popular kind of character in China.”
She said the image that Mr. Trump liked to promote of himself as a successful businessman resonated in China.
“The whole thing about Trump is he has no experience in politics, but now he is the president of the U.S.A.,” she said. “The story is like a movie: It’s kind of inspiring, in a way, that a person can rise up to that position. And I think most Chinese people kind of respect that journey.”
The home had been owned by Isaac Kestenberg, purchased with his wife, Claudia, in 2008 for $782,500. On Election Day last year, as Mr. Trump’s ascendancy seemed possible, Michael Davis, a real estate investor, made an offer on the house, he said, ultimately purchasing it for about $1.4 million. Neither Mr. Kestenberg nor Mr. Davis knows who bought it this time, they said.
The sale to Trump Birth House closed on March 23. “I hope that the broader economy has as much lift from the president’s policies as the president’s childhood home got,” Mr. Davis said.
On Tuesday, rain pelted the crocuses popping up outside the home on Wareham Place. The house appeared to have been emptied. Around 1 p.m. a worker arrived in a National Grid van.
The new owner couldn’t be found, he said, so he had come to turn off the power.
Eli Rosenberg and Nate Schweber contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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