Donald Trump’s 40 Wall Street looks nice from the ground. Its financial picture is far less impressive.
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The most troublesome loan in Donald Trump’s empire, a $115 million mortgage against a Wall Street skyscraper, comes due in exactly 46 days. How the president covers that bill will reveal a lot about his current financial standing—and how politics is shaping it.
The property, 40 Wall Street, seems to be deeply underwater. Trump controls the building but not the land on which it sits, long held by a German shipping family. The president currently pays $2.5 million a year in ground rent, but that expense is set to skyrocket to an estimated $16 million in 2033, potentially wiping out all of his $9 million of operating income. As a result, the asset is now worth about $85 million, according to Forbes estimates, or $30 million less than the remaining balance on the loan.
To plug the hole, someone will have to come up with a pile of cash. One option: The president could foot some or all the bill himself, tapping the hundreds of millions he has recently earned from crypto ventures. Forbes last estimated Trump’s liquid holdings at $770 million in March, but much of that is tied up in knots. Trump has around $600 million in legal liabilities, and he has posted nearly $300 million of deposits and bonds associated with those obligations. It’s also not entirely clear how much of his liquid assets sit in cryptocurrencies versus U.S. dollars.
A second possibility is that Trump could find someone willing to refinance the debt. Given the dearth of profits, it’s hard to imagine a typical lender believing the property will produce enough to pay back all $115 million that Trump owes. Then again, perhaps a nontraditional lender will want to extend the money in hopes of a different sort of payback.
The president has a history of weaseling his way out of trouble at 40 Wall Street. That’s what happened during the Great Recession, when cash-flow problems caught the eye of his lender at the time, Capital One. Trump tried to get around a $5 million principal payment due in 2015, according to documents later released in court. The bank declined to restructure, and Trump turned to another lender, Ladder Capital, which employed the son of Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s longtime chief financial officer.
The younger Weisselberg, Jack, acknowledged to colleagues that 40 Wall Street could run into problems. “The rub on the deal is the ground lease,” he emailed Ladder’s chief executive in 2015. “But we have gotten comfortable with that risk.” Ladder extended the $160 million and worked with other institutions to package the mortgage with dozens of loans, then sell off the bundle in pieces, painting a rosy picture for the buyers. The property never lived up to the hype.
With the deadline to pay back the loan now approaching, Trump’s plan remains unclear. A representative for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment. The president has repaid more than 10 mortgages in the last decade, most of them well before their due date. He may not even be worried about the problems at 40 Wall Street. After all, now that he is back in power, plenty of big-money players—supporters, companies, even countries—are suddenly eager to make him happy.
This story has been updated with additional information about the president’s liquid holdings.
