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TR U M P STR A TEGI ES FO R R E A L ESTA TE

would be extremely difficult. First, Trump would have to agree to buy
the engineering society’s property. Then he would have to convince
the owners of the adjacent properties to sell him their unused air
rights. In complete compliance with the law, Trump could then incor-
porate these air rights with the parcel he was buying and get a build-
ing permit for a much larger building. If he could buy enough air rights,
he could build something really unique—the tallest residential building
in New York City.
The keytomaking this concept work was to acquire the air rights of
adjacent buildings quietly. Building owners in New York City with ex-
cess air rights are often willing to sell them freely because they con-
siderthe dollars they get for the air rights as “found money.” But if
word got out to nearby building owners about what Trump was doing,
theprices for those air rights on parcels on the same block might have
escalatedthrough the roof. A difficult problem to be overcome was
that only air rights on contiguous parcels were of value. He had to
makeadeal for the air rights on one parcel adjoining the one he was
buying,and then work his way down the block to acquire the air rights
on several parcels that adjoined one another. So he took options on
various properties, offering the owners a high price, subject to his
abilitytoacquire the air rights needed to form the chain permitted by
thezoning. The outright purchase of all the adjacent parcels was im-
possible because one of the parcels was a church that might be willing
to sell its air rights but never the church.
Thus, we had several negotiations going on concurrently, and we
had to conduct all the negotiations secretly. To help keep our negoti-
ations for air rights simple, we offered the same price per square foot
for the air rights to all adjoining property owners. If one owner got a
higher price per square foot, we agreed that all other owners would
get that same price. That way no owner could feel cheated. In some
cases, we actually told an owner, “This is the price per square foot

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