No flipping please, says auctioneer seeking US$3m for Trump's childhood home

New York

US President Donald Trump's childhood home is up for sale for the fourth time in four years, with a bloated US$3 million target price that the auctioneer hopes his admirers will pay.

Other Tudor-style houses on the street in Jamaica Estates, an affluent New York suburb which resembles an English park, are listed for only about US$1.3 million.

"It's more likely that three million people will pay US$1, or a million people will pay US$3, or 300,000 people will pay US$10, than one person will pay US$3 million," Misha Haghani, principal at Paramount Realty USA.

Trump's late father Fred built the five-bedroom home with a fireplace and narrow driveway in 1940. In 1950, when the current president was four, Mr Fred Trump moved the family into a grand 23-room mansion he built on two lots behind the backyard.

"Love Trump? Thank President Trump by contributing to this campaign to buy his childhood home in his honour!" Mr Haghani appealed on a GoFundMe page. "What happens to the historic property is up to him!"

President Trump can donate the funds to a charity, or turn the property into a presidential library, museum or national historic site, among other suggestions on the page.

The campaign raised US$125 by late Wednesday, including from Trump haters. "There are people who are posting negative remarks and donating money," Mr Haghani said.

Paramount Realty first sold the house in 2016 for about US$1.4 million for a family who had lived there for seven or eight years. The buyer hired Paramount to flip it.

At a Jan 17, 2017 auction, three days before Mr Trump's inauguration, an unidentified bidder clinched it for US$2.14 million.

In 2019 the owner, known simply as Trump Birth House LLC, listed the house for US$3 million for just 10 days. "That owner has hired us to sell the house again," added Mr Haghani.

The house was advertised on Airbnb in 2017 with photos of life-sized Trump cardboard cutouts in the rooms, with bunk beds, for over US$700 a night.

For digs not on par with Mr Trump's luxury hotels, US$3 million is too rich, according to neighbours.

"It's too much," said Fakhertag Obeid, 61, who is also annoyed with strangers knocking on her door to ask about the Trump house.

"But for me, it's OK because I live in the neighbourhood. That means all the houses are going to be a little bit higher and I'll benefit from it."

Mr Haghani hopes he will not have to sell the house again. "No more hot potatoes, flipping, to flipping, to flipping, to flippers who flip to other flippers, etc. There's only so much you can do with this." REUTERS