Despite selling his hotel in Washington, DC, for $375 million in 2022, former President Donald Trump ended up losing millions of dollars on the property years after he sold it, according to a report this week from Forbes.
In 2012, the Trump Organization won a bid to restore an old D.C. post office and turn it into a luxury hotel. The bid meant Trump was also committing to pay loans of over $250,000 a month to the General Service Agency (GSA) for the next 60 years.
After a $200 million renovation, the 263-room hotel opened in 2016 and quickly became a social hub for Republican politicians, diplomats and foreign governments. By 2020, at least 75% of the officials in Trump’s administration had been seen at the hotel, Forbes reported.
“Everyone hangs out there. Being in the Trump hotel’s lobby is a way to get people to know you,” a former Trump campaign adviser told Time magazine.
Despite its popularity among the party faithful and foreign governments seeking to curry favor with the former president, Trump International Hotel brought in well below its expected revenue and was particularly hard hit during the pandemic.
After unsuccessfully trying to sell the hotel for over $500 million, Trump finally sold the hotel to CGI Merchant Group, a Miami-based company, for $375 million in 2022. The company also assumed the lease from the GSA and took a $28 million loan from Trump himself, as well as a $285 loan from the merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners, to finance its new investment. Trump pocketed $127 million from the sale.
Though the hotel's name and clientele changed under new ownership (it was renamed the Waldorf Astoria and has since hosted prominent Democratic groups), its profitability or lack thereof did not. Last summer, CGI Merchant Group missed a loan payment for the first time, leading to BDT & MSD initiating foreclosure proceedings.
Trump consequently lost all of the $28 million he loaned to CGI Merchant Group.
BDT&MST eventually bought the hotel for $100 million. The group was the sole bidder for the property.
