After years on the market, Donald Trump’s childhood home finally sold — at a significant loss. The Tudor-style five-bedroom, in a nice slice of Jamaica Estates where houses sit back on wide lawns, went for just $835,000 in early March — far less than a similar property on the block, which sold for $1.26 million in 2021, and a full 61 percent less than the seller paid in 2017. The buyer, a corporation listed as 1388 Group, got it at “a steep discount,” per the New York Post, which broke the news.
One possible reason? The place was trashed. As Trump’s star rose in 2016, a speculator went after 85-15 Wareham Place, buying it in December of that year and flipping it three months later for $2.14 million — a profit of $750,000. The new owner, who registered under an LLC, tried to turn the place into a piggy bank by converting it into an Airbnb, where Trump supporters might pay $725 per night to spend some time where the president presumably learned to walk, among other accomplishments. “A wave of enterprising features writers booked rooms to write ruminative ‘In Search of Trump’ pieces while staying as guests,” as we noted last year. But one month after it opened for business, the city shut it down with a partial vacate order. The house went on the market again, and neighbors watched as the building seemed to sit there, abandoned — the grass growing, trash accumulating, and mysterious smells wafting over. One neighbor saw a silver lining in the apparent neglect, and turned the president’s birthplace into a refuge for feral cats.
When the Post went by on Thursday, workers were hauling out old boards and filling a large dumpster. A neighbor told the reporter that the buyer was a “known flipper” who may have also gotten a deal because the seller was motivated. A “source close to the transaction” told the Post that the seller “just needed the money.”
The seller of 85-15 Wareham has never been identified, obscuring their identity with an LLC — Trump Birth House LLC — which only traced back to the office of the lawyer who signed their paperwork. That was in the heady days of Trump’s first term, and multiple outlets took a swing at the mystery. When the New York Times tried to crack the case, it reported that someone with knowledge of the deal told them the house was owned by a “woman from China” whose relative also relied on the same real estate lawyer to buy “a palatial home in Old Westbury,” but it didn’t find anyone home when they visited. When Curbed went last year, a neighbor told the reporter that a Chinese family bought the building, “but we’ve never seen them.”
As for the buyer, their identity was also masked by an LLC, in this case 1388 Group Inc., which lists an address in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and is owned by Huisha Zhen. Zhen is also named along with Bei Chen on another document that lists their mortgage ” Chen also signed the deed for Trump’s childhood home. (Chen answered to that name over the phone, but hung up without giving further comment.)
On Friday, no one answered the door at the Bensonhurst address, and the blinds and curtains were drawn in every window. Things were similarly quiet at a second address tied to Zhen in the mortgage document on 65th Street in Bensonhurst. There, a worn stop-work order was affixed to the door of a three-story brick building.
The buyers took out a mortgage with the lender Accolend, which advertises itself as a lender “for real estate investors” whose packages include “short-term financing for purchasing and fixing up investment properties. But neither seem to be major real estate players, although Chen owns multiple properties, and Zhen seems to know a bargain, paying $920,000 in 2018 for 85th Street — a five-bedroom triplex that had been listed at $1.299 million. (The seller on that property had no comment.)
It’s unclear if the house on Wareham Place is just another investment flip or if the buyers have other plans. (After a renovation, it could go to a “MAGA chud,” a broker we spoke to speculated.) As for the current owners’ potential feelings about Trump? Zhen isn’t a registered voter, and Chen’s registration doesn’t name a party affiliation.