This month in real estate history

1995: Trump sells Plaza Hotel at loss
Real estate developer Donald Trump sold the iconic Plaza Hotel for $325 million 18 years ago this month. The sales price represented a major loss for Trump and his investors, who purchased the property seven years earlier for $400 million.

Trump (who is also featured in a profile this month) acquired the hotel during the upswing in the real estate market, and launched a program to rehabilitate the 20-story building and its more than 800 rooms. But the tough real estate market in the early 1990s caught up with him, and in 1992 he agreed to turn over 49 percent of his interest in the hotel to a group of lenders led by Citibank. That was followed by the 1995 sale to Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and British hotel company Millennium & Copthorne, led by chairman Kwek Leng Beng.

The sale did not net any cash for Trump. Instead, the new owners took over Trump’s loans. Citibank retained an ownership stake, as did Trump, he said at the time.

The French Renaissance chateau-style structure facing Central Park was built in 1907 and was named a city landmark in 1969. Israeli developer Elad Properties purchased the building in 2004 for $675 million, subsequently converting it to residential, hotel and commercial condominiums.

1970: Poverty drives down Bronx values
For the first time in 25 years, the city’s assessed property values declined in one of New York City’s boroughs. Noting the impact of poverty on housing values, tax officials cut $14 million from the assessed value of Bronx real estate 43 years ago this month.

The $14 million was a net decrease in the borough’s assessed values. In some areas, for example, Co-Op City, property values were rising. But in specific areas of the borough that were hit hard by poverty, such as the South Bronx, the city cut $64 million from assessed property values.

The lowered value was “a reflection of our realization of the real estate situation in the spreading ghettos of the Bronx,” the city’s chief assessor, Philip Click, said at the time.

The Bronx’s overall assessment for the tax year 1970 to 1971 was $3.8 billion.

The city’s total tax picture remained bright despite a brief national recession in 1970, as new office towers opened in Manhattan that boosted assessed values in that borough by $870 million to $15.8 billion, a record high. Queens had the second highest assessed value, at $7.9 billion, followed by Brooklyn at $6.7 billion, and then Staten Island at $1.2 billion. The city overall had an assessed value of $35.3 billion, up about $1 billion from the previous year.

1927: Vanderbilt Fifth Avenue mansion sells for $6.6M
Eighty-six years ago this month, a developer with plans to build the future home of the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman concluded the drawn-out $6.6 million purchase of the opulent chateau-style mansion built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II. The home occupied the entire block front of Fifth Avenue, between 57th and 58th streets.
Frederick Brown’s purchase necessitated a judge’s approval of a sale plan. Even before the approval was given, workmen
were demolishing the turreted residence to make way for the store.

The high annual taxes on the property, which reached some $140,000 per year, burdened Vanderbilt’s widow, and was an impetus to sell the home, the New York Times reported.
Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned Richard Morris Hunt, the renowned architect behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to design the home, which was completed in 1894.
Cornelius’s widow, Alice Vanderbilt, owned the property at the time of the sale, and the proceeds were to be divided by more than 50 heirs.

The mansion was first reported sold for an undisclosed price in 1920 to another developer, and then again in 1925 with a price of $7.1 million, but those transactions were never finalized. Bergdorf Goodman moved into a new building, erected at the site, in 1928.