Welcome back to Property Lines, a column by veteran real estate reporter Alexei Barrionuevo. Each week on Tuesday, Barrionuevo will report on housing trends, real estate deals, and major business moves right here on Curbed.
During a recent campaign stop in Doral, a suburb of Miami, Donald Trump boasted to supporters about how he re-negotiated a lower price with bankers for the golf resort he renamed Trump National Doral. He said he wanted to "show off" in front of his daughter, Ivanka.
The speech calls to mind how excited Trump was about his $150 million Doral purchase in 2012. Back then, Trump was also pimping the city of Doral as the next big thing in real estate. "If a house is for sale in Doral, if it doesn't sell within 48 hours, there is something wrong," he told me.
What seemed like typical Trump bluster turned out to be mostly right. Since the sale of the country club, Doral, home to 50,000 residents, has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. The average sale price of $318,000 in the most recent quarter is up 50 percent from four years ago, according to Avanti Realty, a Miami-based company that does extensive sales in Doral.