Donald Trump’s heavily mortgaged skyscraper at 40 Wall Street is on “lender watch” amid plummeting income and increasing costs, Bloomberg reported Friday.
The vacancy rate at the 72-story building — Trump’s most valuable — jumped to almost 18% in the third quarter of last year, according to a monthly filing on the building’s remaining $126.5 million mortgage, Bloomberg reported.
Expenses, meanwhile, have reportedly risen 11% since the origin of the 2015 mortgage.
Trump has often bragged about the building he acquired in 1995, which was appraised at $540 million in 2015.
The day of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people, a Trump bragged in a TV interview that 40 Wall Street was suddenly the tallest building in the city. Not only was his claim insensitive, it was also a lie. Another nearby skyscraper on Pine Street in Lower Manhattan became the tallest building after the destruction of the Twin Towers.
High-rise office leasing in Manhattan has been dropping for years, which was exacerbated after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic as many companies shut down and employees of surviving firms worked remotely.
Wells Fargo, which is servicing the mortgage on 40 Wall Street, “has reached out to the borrower for a status of leasing developments” and the plans to improve the property’s performance, according to the filing, Bloomberg reported.
