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Investor Flips Donald Trump’s Childhood Home for 50% Profit

The home sold at auction and closed last week for $2.14 million

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The home officially closed last week for $2.14 million.

COMPOSITE: LAFFEY FINE HOMES; DON EMMERT / GETTY IMAGES
The home officially closed last week for $2.14 million.
COMPOSITE: LAFFEY FINE HOMES; DON EMMERT / GETTY IMAGES

A real estate investor has flipped President Donald Trump’s childhood home in Queens, New York, for a 50% profit, banking nearly $750,000 over what he paid for it.

Five days before Inauguration Day, investor Michael Davis sold at auction the brick tudor home where Mr. Trump first lived. The sale officially closed just last week for $2.14 million, auctioneer Paramount Realty USA announced on Monday.

More:Click to Read About the U.S. Treasury Secretary's $12.6 million D.C. home

Mr. Davis snapped up the home in December for $1.39 million, following Mr. Trump’s surprising victory in the U.S. presidential election in hopes that he could flip it at auction for a profit. He succeeded and made 53% over what he paid—though less than what some real estate professionals had predicted in November, in the wake of Election Day.

The most recent available property records for the home do not yet show who the buyer was.

Mr. Trump’s father built the five-bedroom house on Wareham Place, in the upper-middle-class neighborhood of Jamaica Estates, Queens, in 1940. The home is listed as the president’s address on his birth certificate.

The family lived there until Mr. Trump was 4-years-old, when they moved to a grander brick property on a nearby street also in Jamaica Estates.

The value of the property has bounced around significantly in response to the U.S. presidential election.

Former owners Isaac and Claudia Kestenberg first listed the house in July, asking $1.65 million, but dropped the price when it didn’t sell and eventually decided to take the property to auction with an opening bid of just $849,000.

The most recent sale puts the current value at more than one-and-a-half times that opening bid, a stunning appreciation in less than a year.

More:Click to Read About the historic Kleeberg mansion, which beats price expectations at auction

"This property is so much more than just real estate; it’s the childhood home of the 45th President of the United States, and it’s a part of history," said Misha Haghani, principal of Paramount Realty USA, said in a statement Monday.

"That intangible value makes it a perfect example of why special properties are appropriately sold by auction, just like art is. As they say, beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder."