By Mark Hallum
President Donald Trump’s childhood home in Jamaica Estates is listed on Airbnb for $725 per night and drawing visitors who want to share his birthright.
The home at 85-15 Wareham Road, cited on the president’s birth certificate, appeared on the website in June and uses the property’s history as a selling point for visitors. It boasts 17 beds and mentions the location’s proximity to the F train. The five-bedroom house sold at auction in March for $2.1 million.
“POTUS – Donald J. Trump’s childhood home,” the listing reads. “Stay in the heart of NYC in the president’s childhood home. Featured in hundreds of news articles, stay in a part of living history.”
The listing says guests can enjoy the company of a cardboard cutout of the president while watching Fox News in the living room.
State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside), who has led a crusade against the rental website stemming from resident complaints about listings in their neighborhood, laughed Monday about the fact Trump’s home had even fallen victim to what he believes to be an epidemic in the suburban Queens neighborhood.
Avella noted that presidential homes are usually made into museums and carry strict historic preservation protections, but pointed out that the former home of the controversial developer had not drawn this reverential treatment.
The comment came during a news conference on the unveiling of Avella’s bill designed to hinder the unrelenting proliferation of Airbnb in Queens without the requirements designated for hotels.
“Airbnb’s unwelcome proliferation in neighborhoods in my district, mostly by absentee commercial operators, has created a public nuisance and public safety risks that are simply unacceptable,” Avella said of the measure. “If Airbnb wants to act like a hotel, then it must be subject to the same basic transparency and disclosure requirements that all legal lodging establishments in the city of New York are responsible for.”
Trump commented on the sale of his childhood home in September 2016, when he was shown a picture of the residence on “The Tonight Show” starring Jimmy Fallon.
“That is where I was born,” Trump said when Fallon held up an image of the home. “I had a really good childhood. Oh, that’s sad to look at that. I want to buy it.”
The listing does not charge extra for additional people staying in the home and offers a weekly discount of 20 percent and monthly discount of 40 percent. The home is booked until Aug. 27 and throughout most of September, according to Airbnb’s website.
A photo of one of the rooms shows a sign on the wall that says, “In this bedroom, President Donald J. Trump was likely conceived by his parents, Fred and Mary Trump. The world has never been the same.”
Trump lived in the home from the time of his birth in 1946 until 1950.
Acris records show the property was sold in December 2016 to Wareham Holdings LLC, which CNN Money associates with real estate investor Michael Davis, for $1.3 million. The March transaction is shown to take place between this organization and another listed as “Trump Birth House, LLC.”
If the CNN Money report is correct, Davis flipped the property for a 54 percent profit to another company, harvesting rental revenue from the president’s Queens legacy.
Reach reporter Mark Hallum by e-mail at mhall
