Mike Ford
30 minutes ago edited
Let me clarify this for folks unfamiliar with business and residential real estate valuation....Bottom Line...in some locales and instances, it is quite legal and proper to double or even triple actual measured square footage, as a sort of an algorithm to account for the value of very high ceilings....which Trump stated. Here is a clip from that vaunted conservative rag, the WaPo

Talk about a Pandora’s box. You open up a huge can of worms when you start talking about square feet. Let’s start with the bottom line: There is no uniform method across the country to measure square footage in residential homes. We wish there was one precise method for measuring that was agreed to all over the country, but there isn’t.
In some municipalities, vaulted ceilings will double the square footage of a room.
https://www.washingtonpost....

Hope this clears things up. As for the charge of perjury...what likely happened is that although there was no plea for a smaller crime...there was almost certainly a background threat.

Bottom line, Trump is entirely correct to state such measurements when obtaining a loan....as long as he states the reasoning....then it's up to the banks to either accept or deny that algorithm.

Here's some more info on how some of the "ephemerals" can increase "value" for loan purposes.

The author of the below piece, is familiar with pricing in the Palm Beach area and used to live 2 blocks up Fram Mar-a-Lago

https://afnn.us/2023/11/09/...

Side note: I came upon this little bit of arcane information when I heard Trump responding to some question about this as he remarked (words. to the effect) "It's because it has very high ceilings..."

I thought that was strange and thought it was just The Donald bloviating...then I did some asking around and poking around the internet....lo and behold, it's not an uncommon practice and legal in certain circumstances..