Practically No One Wants To Live In Trump Tower NYC Anymore, Apparently

You're heard Trump Tower mentioned in the news. You can picture its towering, glassy facade. If you've been to New York, maybe you've even taken a selfie in front of it. Despite all of that, Trump Tower's desirability has dropped significantly since President Donald Trump's election, and now it's among the least popular luxury buildings in New York City, according to a report from Bloomberg.

“No one wants in that building," Michael Skar, who recently sold his parents' Trump Tower luxury condo at a loss, told Bloomberg. “The name on the building became a problem.”

Bustle has reached out to Trump Tower and the Trump Organization for comment on this story.

The pattern that Bloomberg noted — of dropping occupancy rates and condo owners being forced to take losses in their sales — had already begun appearing by April 2018, when HuffPost reported that the number of Trump Tower properties on the market had doubled and that owners were offering significantly reduced prices for many of them. Now, according to Bloomberg, numerous properties had gone for up to a 20% loss after adjustment for inflation — and this is in one of the most profitable real estate areas in New York.

"If I were looking for office space, that would be a building I’d want to avoid," Edward Son, a former CoStar Group Inc. analyst, told Bloomberg.

The vacancy in Trump Tower currently stands at about double the average in New York, per Bloomberg, and there could be many reasons for this. As Newsweek noted, Trump has an approval rating of under 20% in Manhattan. The extensive — and expensive — security apparatus at Trump Tower, particularly while Melania and Barron Trump were still living there, as Business Insider described, also proved to be difficult to residents, as Bloomberg and HuffPost described. And anyone who bought space hoping to bump shoulders with the nation's chief executive would have been sorely disappointed on that front, as an NBC News analysis showed that Trump has only visited the building 13 times during his presidency.

While that may seem like plenty — after all, the guy's got tons of properties — then it's worth considering the other Trump properties that he's spent the most time at. According to NBC News, Trump has so far spent 99 days at Mar-a-Lago and 71 days at the Trump National Bedminster golf course, for example.

As Bloomberg wrote, Trump Tower made a big splash when it opened in 2004, and quickly became quite popular. Trump hasn't invested much in improvements for it recently, though, so buildings with newer and better amenities are pulling in more business. Trump Tower currently has about 42,000 square feet of office space being advertised at far lower than the going rate in such a prime area, according to Bloomberg.

While Trump Tower seems to be struggling to find people to occupy its upper floors, it has gained popularity in one regard: as a tourist attraction, as The Telegraph reported all the way back in 2016. Plenty of people seem to be coming through the building's doors — or even just stopping outside for a quick picture — but according to Bloomberg's report, they just aren't staying for any length of time.