By Tom Bergin
(Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s family business has paid off in full in cash the $160 million loan on its 40 Wall Street office tower in Manhattan, a Trump Organization spokesperson said on Monday, underscoring how the business’ fortunes have improved since Trump’s re-election last year
Trump has cited 40 Wall Street, a 72-story landmark building in the financial district of lower Manhattan which he bought for $1 million, as one of his most successful real estate investments ever. In recent years, however, the building struggled with low occupancy and its income has been unable to cover debt payments.
The loan was due for repayment in early July, and the spokesman for the Trump Organization — a term used by the president’s family to describe its holdings — said the building was now debt-free.
Analysts estimate that about $114 million of the loan was outstanding.
The president’s golf and resort businesses have performed well in recent years, throwing off a lot of cash. In recent months, his family business has struck lucrative licensing deals with developers and opened multiple beachheads in crypto currencies, which have yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and other revenue.
The loan on 40 Wall Street was extended by Ladder Capital in 2015 and had a low interest rate of 3.67%, according to a financial disclosure released earlier this month.
Prevailing interest rates for similar buildings have been almost twice the level on the Ladder Capital loan, leading some analysts to predict it would be difficult for the Trump Organization to refinance the debt.
Trump’s financial disclosure showed he had hundreds of millions of dollars of liquid assets – held via a revocable trust – at the end of 2024, giving his company the option, as some other property investors have done, to use spare cash to avoid taking on expensive debt.
Ratings agency Fitch said occupancy at 40 Wall Street had declined to 74.4% as of September 2024 and that the income from the building was below the levels of a decade ago.
However, no payments were missed on the loan, according to Morningstar Credit’s head of CRE analytics Dave Putro.
(Reporting by Tom Bergin; additional reporting by Shankar Ramakrishnan and Matt Tracy; Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Leslie Adler)
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