The Tudor-style house in Jamaica Estates, Queens, where Donald Trump spent the first years of his life has sold for $1.93 million, closing the book on a property that spent years vacant, mold-damaged, and overrun by feral cats before a developer poured more than $500,000 into an eight-month gut renovation. The five-bedroom home at 85-15 Wareham Place went into contract in July 2026, and the final sale price landed just $70,000 below the most recent asking price.
Broker Joe Zhu confirmed the $1.93 million sale to the New York Post, which first reported the sale in July 2026. Zhu said the offer came in very close to asking, and that the property's link to the president was a major selling point. “There were quite a lot of people interested because it was Trump's former home,” Zhu told the outlet, adding that prospective buyers were drawn to the historical value as much as the renovation itself.
Developer Tommy Lin bought the rundown property for $835,000 in 2025, according to the Post's reporting. That figure lines up with public records reviewed by 6sqft, which found Lin purchased the neglected home off-market and financed it with $931,500 across two mortgages from Accolend, a lender specializing in short-term fix-and-flip loans. The seller reportedly accepted the discounted offer because they urgently needed liquid funds, per the same account.
Years of Neglect Before the Renovation
Before Lin's purchase, the roughly 3,100-square-foot house had sat vacant for years, the Post reports, suffering a burst pipe that caused water damage and mold. The property also became home to a colony of feral cats during that stretch of disrepair. 6sqft's earlier reporting put a finer point on the decline, describing a colony of 20 to 30 feral cats cared for by neighborhood volunteers, some of whom paid out of pocket to trim the lawn while the home's owner let maintenance lapse entirely.
The house had already lived several lives by the time it fell into that state. It was offered to tourists on Airbnb at one point, and 6sqft's history of the property describes an even stranger chapter: investor Michael Davis leased the home back for $4,000 a month after buying and flipping it, running it as a short-term rental for $725 a night complete with Trump memorabilia and a life-size cardboard cutout, before a group of refugees rented the house during the 2017 United Nations General Assembly to protest Trump's travel policies.
A Trump Real Estate Roller Coaster
The home's price history reads like a chart of political novelty rising and falling. Manhattan investor Michael Davis bought the house for $1.39 million in December 2016 from divorcing restaurateurs Isaac and Claudia Kestenberg, who had purchased the Tudor for $782,500 back in 2008, according to 6sqft's reporting. Davis sold it in 2017 for roughly $2.14 million to Trump Birth House LLC, according to 6sqft's reporting.
After that, the house struggled to find a buyer at the prices sellers wanted. Auction firm Paramount Realty USA made repeated unsuccessful attempts to sell the property between 2019 and 2021, including a sealed-bid auction scheduled for Inauguration Day in January 2021, and even launched a $3 million GoFundMe campaign in 2021 hoping to buy the home as a gift for Trump, per 6sqft. None of it worked; a 2019 auction seeking $3 million received no qualified bids.
The Gut Renovation and What's Left of the Original
Lin's renovation left the distinctive Tudor-style exterior intact while completely reworking the interior, adding spa-like bathrooms, a chef's kitchen, and herringbone floors, according to the Post. The finished home now has four bathrooms and five bedrooms across its roughly 3,100 square feet. The available account does not discuss museum or national-landmark proposals or protection.
The property first returned to the market at $2.3 million before being relisted at just under $2 million, and it ultimately sold for $1.93 million, below that most recent $1.99 million asking price. That figure still represents a real premium over the neighborhood: the median sale price for Jamaica overall was $706,000 in Q2 2026, according to PropertyShark, which reported an 8.7% year-over-year increase.
Where Trump's Family Went Next
Donald Trump lived at the Wareham Place house until about age 4, before his family moved to a larger home nearby in Jamaica Estates. The available account does not detail the later home's room count, architectural style, lot arrangement, or the family's subsequent residential and boarding-school timeline.
