Ivanka Trump attends a round table discussion with her father U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Feb. 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
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Ivanka Trump has long styled herself as a self-made woman, at least as much as the daughter of a billionaire can be. “It’s a point of pride that I’m in control of my life,” she wrote in her 2009 book, The Trump Card. “I own a two-bedroom apartment in a Trump building, but no one gave it to me.”
In fact, her father appears to have pretty much done exactly that. For years, Donald Trump’s personal balance sheets, which were recently released in connection with a fraud lawsuit against him, included “receivables,” with one noted as “Ivanka (T Park Ave).” That particular receivable was listed at $1.5 million, the exact price of the two-bedroom unit in Trump Park Avenue that Ivanka bragged about owning.
In other words, although Ivanka might try to claim her father did not technically give her apartment, he appears to have loaned her 100% of the money she needed to buy it. In her book, Ivanka conceded that she had received some fatherly help. “I’m paying a mortgage on my apartment,” she wrote. “Admittedly, I pay my mortgage directly to my father instead of to a bank, but it’s a mortgage just the same, and I’ve never missed a payment.”
Her loan, however, does not appear to have been a “mortgage just the same,” as she put it. In 2021, 17 years after Ivanka purchased the apartment, her father’s financial documents still listed a receivable of $1.5 million described as “Ivanka (T Park Ave)”, suggesting that her mortgage came with an unusually long period in which she did not have to pay down any principal.
Forbes has previously covered other deceptions related to the apartment. In addition to claiming that no one gave her the apartment, Ivanka also boasted, “Nor did I benefit from an insider price.” But she received a big bargain. Other buyers in the building were paying about $1,670 per square foot on average, but Ivanka paid just $968 per square foot, adding up to a $1.1 million discount on her 1,549-square-foot apartment.
The deals didn’t stop with the initial purchase. According to court filings, Ivanka started renting a penthouse apartment in the same building in 2011. As part of the rental agreement, she also received an option to purchase the unit for $8.5 million. The place was probably worth more like $10.2 million at the time. Ivanka does not appear to have exercised the option, which would have given her a chance to buy the apartment for an estimated $1.7 million less than it was worth.
She soon received another offer, according to the filings. In 2014, Ivanka got an option to purchase an even bigger unit in the same building, this time for $14.3 million. In December 2016, shortly after Donald Trump won the election, he signed an amendment to the lease, lowering the option price to $12.3 million. Forbes figures the true value was closer to $25 million at the time. Ivanka does not appear to have exercised that option either.
In early 2017, Donald Trump appointed both Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner to official roles in the White House. They relocated to Washington, D.C., where they reportedly rented a house for $15,000 a month. Representatives for the Trump Organization and the Kushner Companies did not respond to requests for comment.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, his heirs followed him south to Florida. In Miami, on the exclusive island of Indian Creek, Ivanka and Jared reportedly bought a mansion for $24 million, this time using a traditional lender, Bank of America, which supplied $15 million.