The property, 40 Wall Street, seems to be deeply underwater. Trump controls the building but not the land on which it sits, long held by a German shipping family. The president currently pays $2.5 million a year in ground rent, but that expense is set to skyrocket to an estimated $16 million in 2033, potentially wiping out all of his $9 million of operating income. As a result, the asset is now worth about $85 million, according to Forbes estimates, or $30 million less than the remaining balance on the loan.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/05/21/trump-has-to-cough-up-115-million-in-next-46-days/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=ForbesMainTwitter&utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainTwitter
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00:00Today on Forbes, Trump has to cough up $115 million in the next 43 days.
00:08The most troublesome loan in Donald Trump's empire, a $115 million mortgage against a Wall Street skyscraper, comes due in exactly 43 days.
00:20How the president covers that bill will reveal a lot about his current financial standing and how politics is shaping it.
00:26The property, 40 Wall Street, seems to be deeply underwater.
00:32Trump controls the building, but not the land on which it sits, long held by a German shipping family.
00:38The president currently pays $2.5 million a year in ground rent, but that expense is set to skyrocket to an estimated $16 million in 2033,
00:49potentially wiping out all of his $9 million of operating income.
00:52As a result, the asset is now worth about $85 million, according to Forbes' estimates, or $30 million less than the remaining balance on the loan.
01:03To plug the hole, someone will have to come up with a pile of cash.
01:08One option is that the president could foot some or all of the bill himself, tapping the hundreds of millions he has recently earned from crypto ventures.
01:16Forbes last estimated Trump's liquid holdings at $770 million in March, but much of that is tied up in knots.
01:25Trump has around $600 million in legal liabilities, and he has posted nearly $300 million of deposits and bonds associated with those obligations.
01:34It's also not entirely clear how much of his liquid assets sit in cryptocurrencies versus U.S. dollars.
01:42A second possibility is that Trump could find someone willing to refinance the debt.
01:47Given the dearth of profits, it's hard to imagine a typical lender believing the property will produce enough to pay back all $115 million that Trump owes.
01:56Then again, perhaps a non-traditional lender will want to extend the money in hopes of a different sort of payback.
02:04The president has a history of weaseling his way out of trouble at 40 Wall Street.
02:09That's what happened during the Great Recession, when cash flow problems caught the eye of his lender at the time, Capital One.
02:16Trump tried to get around a $5 million principal payment due in 2015, according to documents later released in court.
02:23The bank declined to restructure, and Trump turned to another lender, Ladder Capital, which employed the son of Allen Weisselberg, Trump's longtime chief financial officer.
02:34The younger Weisselberg, Jack, acknowledged to colleagues that 40 Wall Street could run into problems.
02:41In an email to Ladder's chief executive in 2015, Jack Weisselberg wrote,
02:46The rub on the deal is the ground lease, but we have gotten comfortable with that risk.
02:51Ladder extended the $160 million and worked with other institutions to package the mortgage with dozens of loans,
02:59then sell off the bundle in pieces, painting a rosy picture for the buyers.
03:04The property never lived up to the hype.
03:07With the deadline to pay back the loan now approaching, Trump's plan remains unclear.
03:12A representative for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
03:17The president has repaid more than 10 mortgages in the last decade, most of them well before their due date.
03:24He may not even be worried about the problems at 40 Wall Street.
03:27After all, now that he is back in power, plenty of big money players, supporters, companies, even countries,
03:34are suddenly eager to make him happy.
03:38For full coverage, check out Dan Alexander's piece on Forbes.com.
