by Vince Coyner, American Thinker:
Like millions of Americans before me, I’ve done exactly what Donald Trump did; namely, sought a loan based upon my best estimate of what my property was worth—and I didn’t look to what the tax assessor said in reaching that value. However, as part of the Democrats’ lawfare, Letitia James twisted a perfectly ordinary act into something evil, and a partisan judge put his imprimatur on her efforts. If it’s allowed to stand, the results will be devastating, not just for the political class but also for normal Americans.
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In December 2020, I had to put my home on the market and move 1,000 miles away. Two months before, I’d considered refinancing my mortgage, and the bank gave me a valuation of $285,000. I thought it probably should have been higher, but didn’t really feel like taking the time to investigate because I wasn’t really that worried about it.
That changed in December when I was forced to worry about it. So, I reached out to a realtor friend (an actual realtor, not a guy with a side gig) and asked him to give me an estimate. He thought the house would probably sell for about $305,000, maybe $315,000 tops. Again, I was skeptical, so I started doing my own research. I looked at my community, what was available in my county, and what comparable houses were selling for. I also took note of the neighborhoods, roadways, schools, etc. After all of that, I estimated my house was worth about $400,000. I thought it could sell for $415,000 or even a bit more.
Image: Donald Trump by AI.
We put it on the market at $405,000 and, ten days later, it was sold with the buyers offering $395,000. We eventually settled for $400,000. I was confident it could have sold for more, but exigent circumstances made the logistics of waiting impossible, which is sad because, had I been able to wait 12 more months, it would likely have gone for $550,000, almost twice the bank’s original valuation.
All of this to say that, in the world of real estate, there are a million different factors that go into valuing something. Based on those criteria, there are likely countless different values that can be set on a particular property. What’s more, values can be volatile, particularly in the high-end markets.
Real estate, like most businesses, can be unpredictable, sometimes very much so. This makes what NY AG Letitia James has done to Donald Trump especially unconscionable.
As CNN summarized James’s indictment,
Trump and his company used “false and misleading” financial statements, her lawsuit alleged, “repeatedly and persistently to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, and to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums.”
Reading that, one would imagine that some banks or insurance companies lost money because they loaned money to Trump or that Trump defaulted on them. That didn’t happen. Indeed, Trump paid back the loans with interest. There were literally no victims, and banks still wanted to lend to him!
But that didn’t matter. The bottom line is that, according to James, Trump used one set of books for getting a loan and another set of books for taxes. But of course, outside of a politicized prosecutor’s office, that’s normal, not actionable.
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