The Trumps’ Seven Springs estate has carried very different values over the years.
Former President Donald J. Trump testified Monday that he lowered the value of one of his properties — the sprawling Seven Springs estate in New York City’s northern suburbs — because he “felt it was too high.”
He and his company have placed very different values on the property over the years.
Mr. Trump bought the 212-acre estate in Westchester County, N.Y., in the mid-1990s in hopes of a golf course or luxury homes. He valued the estate at $291 million on his 2012 balance sheet and in the financials he provided to Deutsche Bank when he wanted to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014.
But locals blocked his development plans, and Trump ultimately claimed a $21 million tax break after agreeing to preserve much of the land. In a 2018 federal ethics filing, he said it was worth no more than $50 million.
Seven Springs is a throwback to another era. The main building, built in 1919 by Eugene I. Meyer Jr., former head of the Federal Reserve who bought The Washington Post in 1933, sits on more than 500 acres of lush, virtually untouched land just an hour’s drive north of New York. City.
The Trump Organization website described the mansion as 50,000 square feet, with “three pools, carriage houses and surrounded by nature preserves.”
In 2014, Eric Trump told Forbes that the estate “is really our turf.” Growing up, he and his brother Donald Jr. spent many summers there, riding all-terrain vehicles and fishing on a nearby lake. At some point the brothers moved into a carriage house on the property.
“It was our home base for a long time,” Eric Trump told Forbes.