Gutted and remodelled, Trump’s childhood home sells for nearly US$2 million
The buyer has not been publicly disclosed; listings for the property have not shied away from its association with the US president
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[NEW YORK] A Tudor-style home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, doesn’t stand out among rows of others with warm colours and brown brickwork on a tree-lined street.
But the house on Wareham Place was President Donald Trump’s childhood home until he was four years old. And since Trump’s first election in 2016, it has gone from a pricey Airbnb listing fashioned with a cardboard cutout of the president to a hangout for feral cats.
After a full gut renovation, the five-bedroom, three-bathroom house sold for US$1.93 million on Thursday (Sep 10), according to real estate records and the buyer’s agent.
The seller, Tommy Lin, a real estate developer, bought the home in March 2025 for US$835,000 at a significant discount after the property sat vacant for years.
With a revamped chef’s kitchen and herringbone floors, the home hit the market in November, with Lin seeking US$2.3 million. Lin did not return a request for comment.
The buyer has not been publicly disclosed. The new owner plans to live in the home “long term” and has wanted to remain anonymous, said Gerald Magny, an agent with RE/MAX Edge representing the buyer. The agent added that he did not believe politics played a role in the sale.
“They loved the work that was put into the home,” Magny explained. “I don’t think the lore of it being President Trump’s former childhood home helped necessarily.”
Listings for the property did not shy away from its association with Trump, calling it a “true legacy property” and a “rare and extraordinary opportunity” to own the president’s childhood home.
Trump’s father, Fred Trump, built the home in 1940. The fourth of his five children, Donald, was born in 1946. The Trumps left the house in 1950 after the elder Trump built a 23-room, colonnaded brick mansion directly behind the family’s old backyard, where Donald Trump spent the rest of his childhood.
Jamaica Estates has long been a wealthy enclave within one of the most diverse counties in the country. The neighbourhood was even more secluded and white during Trump’s childhood.
“Different parts of Queens were rough; this was an oasis,” Trump said in a 2015 interview.
Despite the Trump family being decades removed from the property, it has still occasionally attracted visitors.
A developer named Michael Davis bought the house in 2016 after the election, and later rented it out for US$725 per night on the home-sharing platform Airbnb.
The home was adorned with Trump memorabilia that included a life-size cardboard cutout, framed magazine covers and paperback copies of The Art of the Deal.
Plaques indicated the “likely childhood bedroom of President Donald J Trump” and the room where “President Donald J Trump was likely conceived”.
The home was sold in 2017 for US$2.14 million to a limited-liability corporation called Trump Birth House in a sale managed by a law firm specialising in foreign Chinese buyers.
Several attempts to sell the home via auction in 2019 were unsuccessful as the home fell into disrepair before it was bought by Lin years later at a significant discount.
Magny said that the property no longer had any reference to Trump’s time there. The president’s association with the home “might have garnered some attention”, Magny noted. “But for this particular buyer, it didn’t seal the deal.” NYTIMES
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