A lot of this stuff is about valuing property as collateral for loans. If Trump says a building is worth x $, and the lender accepts that, one would think thats proper and fair, both sides in agreement.
But an aggressive prosecutor can contest that with an alternate appraisal (a rather archaelogical estimate of its value at the time of the loan) and call the contract fraudulent.
Yeah but, all the bank has to do is look at the property value listed in the NYC records and see if Trump was telling the truth. Properties in NYC are way over assessed and taxed.
My Ex BIL was a Commercial Real Estate Leasing guy and he Developed a few Projects.
Getting Funding from ‘traditional” sources to build was like pulling teeth.
Now the question is, why are they singling out Donald Trump when there are dozens of large scale Developers in NYC? Are his Competitors as clean as the wind driven snow?
We all know the answer and the reasoning for this Witch Hunt and it has nothing to do with the Law.
When valuing a property the concept of “blue sky” is often used to increase it’s value using metrics other than income produced, sq footage and the like.
As an example an office building on 55th Ave in NYC compared to an exactly similar one in Staten Island would be be vastly dissimilar.
When applying for a loan businesses will always use the highest valuation of assets. This is done every day in the same way when protesting property taxes the company will argue using the lowest evaluation they can legitimately back.
In the end it is up to the lender to do the job of verifying the truest value of the assets.
Commercial appraisals use three methods to value a property. Cost, Replacement, and Income. Given the damage that Cuomo and DiBlasio have done to New York City, an income approach now won’t come up to the original values. Not Trumps problem.
Plenty darn hard to do months or years later....
IF there is ANYONE in the USA I would loan $$$ to—it is Trump.