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There seems to be a lot of confusion over what the @nytimes story on Trump’s taxes tells us about his actual net assets/businesses. And how it’s normal to show losses for tax reporting purposes in the commercial real estate industry.
(2) And make no mistake, post-Apprentice Trump is in the commercial RE business. Which means that the important number to derive is the Net Operating Income (“NOI”) from his various properties. NOI is basically the same as EBITDA, except it is calculated before corp overhead.
(3)Depreciation allowance for commercial RE currently is 39 yrs, or 2.5% of cost per yr. Given Trump Tower is probably fully depreciated, and golf course land and land improvements cannot be depreciated(per IRS), I am guessing Trump’s annual depreciation expense is at most $20M.
(4) From his debt schedule we can estimate that Trump is paying around $40M in annual interest. So...if Trump is reporting no taxable income, his EBT is zero or negative, and his annual EBITDA (“NOI”) is probably below $60M.
(5) Here’s The Problem: Commercial real estate is valued on a “cap rate” basis, which is NOI/value. NYC office buildings are currently at a 5-6% cap rate, hotels/resorts are at over 10% on 2019 NOI, and golf course are “bid wanted”.
(6) Even if most of his NOI is from office buildings, it’s hard to see them worth more than $700-800M in today’s market. The hotels and golf courses are at best worth another $200-300M. See this(from 2016) on the 1.1M sq ft 40 Wall Street, Trump’s biggest office property.
(7) Bottom Line: In today’s commercial RE market, in terms of hard assets, Trump’s property holdings value may only just cover his debts.
