Donald j trump the art of the deal

another luxury building that went up around the same time, the Galleria on East 57th Street.

As it turned out, Trump Tower also stole the market from one potentially major competitor. Long before I made my deal for the Bonwit site, another developer announced plans to build a huge condominium tower above the Museum of Modern Art, just off Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street. By all rights it should have been a fantastic success. The connection with the museum was very prestigious, the location was good, the architect, Cesar Pelli, was a big name, and the developer made it clear that he would spare no expense to build the best.

However, Trump Tower far outsold Museum Tower. first of all, although we got started later on construction, we began selling apartments in Trump Tower around the same time that Museum Tower did. From the start, I could see we had some advantages. Obviously, we had a better location on Fifth Avenue. But in addition, the shape of Museum Tower wasn’t inspiring. The facade, with its multicolored glass, wasn’t unusually striking, and the lobby was just another lobby. Finally, Museum Tower was marketed poorly. Their ads were dull, there was no attempt to create excitement, and it came off as just an average building.

By contrast, we took our strengths and promoted them to the skies. From day one, we set out to sell Trump Tower not just as a beautiful building in a great location but as an event.

We positioned ourselves as the only place for a certain kind of very wealthy person to live —the hottest ticket in town. We were selling fantasy.

The one market we didn’t go after was old-money New Yorkers, who generally want to live in older buildings anyway. On the other hand, we could appeal to several other categories of wealthy people.

Obviously, we were a natural choice for people connected with show business, in the sense that we’d created something very glamorous. Foreigners were another big market— Europeans, South Americans, Arabs, and Asians. Practically speaking, we offered them an immediate advantage. At the time we began selling Trump Tower, it was virtually the only condominium in New York. To buy an apartment in a condominium, all you need is the purchase price. To buy a cooperative—which is what most buildings in New York were at the time—you need approval from its board of directors, who have ridiculous, arbitrary powers, including the right to demand all kinds of financial data, social references, and personal interviews. Then they can reject you for any reason they choose, without explanation. It’s a license to discriminate. The worst part is that many people on these coop boards get their kicks from showing off their power. It’s absurd and probably illegal, but it happened to be great for Trump Tower. Many wealthy foreigners didn’t have the proper social references for these cooperatives, or didn’t want to put themselves through the scrutiny of a bunch of prying strangers. Instead, they came to us.

I still remember the morning, just before we began selling apartments, when one of my salespeople rushed into my office. “Mr. Trump,” she said, “we’re in trouble. Museum Tower just announced its prices, and they’re much lower than ours.” I thought for a minute, and I realized that actually the opposite was true: Museum Tower had just done itself damage.

The sort of wealthy people we were competing for don’t look for bargains in apartments.

They may want bargains in everything else, but when it comes to a home, they want the best, not the best buy. By pricing its apartments lower than ours, Museum Tower had just