Sure, but here’s one approach. (Offered purely for the hypothetical value in this discussion, not in any way to encourage such behaviour!)
Andy offers to buy a car from Betty and pays with a cheque. Andy and Betty go to the vehicle licence office and Betty signs it over to Andy. Andy gets a valid licence for the car.
Andy then sells the car the next day to Chris, insisting that Chris pay cash. They go to the vehicle licence shop and Andy transfers the car to Chris, using the valid licence he got from the transaction with Betty. Chris now has a valid licence for the car.
Betty deposits the cheque and it bounces. Andy has left town.
The principle of Bona fide purchaser for value protects Chris’ ownership of the car. Betty has been defrauded by Andy and their only recourse is to try and track down Andy.
Moral: insist on cash or certified cheque or wait until the e-transfer hits your bank account before signing away ownership!
I guess the question for legal types (hint) is whether a valid transaction where the payment is not fulfilled is different from outright theft? Betty intended to sell to Andy, but the payment did not complete (presumably deliberate fraud would be different from a confused or misguided non-payment? “I meant to have the money, but my last paycheque was not what I thought it would be.”).
Whereas if Chris had bought a car from Doug, who had found it unlocked with a key under the visor (or in the cup-holder, nowadays) so the car was outright stolen, is the title for Chris less secure?
@ Northern_Piper in your examples the person conveying to the BFP has title albeit subject to equitable interests due to that person’s failure to pay the previous owner or fraudulent prior sale to someone else.
Contrastingly a thief has no title at all. The BFP is SOL.
IME the only exception is where there is some form of Torrens style system where a public register is absolute.
So one wonders, is this bank CEO just a deluded Trumpist who thinks everything Trump touches really is gold? Or is there something nefarious going on in the background (money laundering, or whatever), as one routine suspects where Trump is involved? Or is this guy and his bank just taking a big big risk with losing it all? Maybe the deal comes with a huge interest rate calculated to make the risk palatable?
According to that article, Forbes valued Trump Tower at $285 million only about six months ago so. If this bank has a first mortgage over Trump Tower subject to no other securities, its position would seem to be moderately safe.
But the thing is, that that kind of undercuts the entire premise of this thread.
According to the same Forbes assessment that you cite, Trump has a total of $1.3B of debt across all his properties, and - per their linked article - a net worth of $2.5B. That would imply assets worth $3.8B and debt of $1.3B, which is about the same debt to asset ratio as Trump Tower. So if he didn’t have a problem with Trump Tower based on this ratio, then he should be OK overall based on that same ratio.
Trump sold the Trump Princess in 1991 for a reported $19 million. It was renamed Kingdom 5KR by its new owner, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, and now spends most of its time berthed in the south of France at Antibes. Occasionally, the boat is seen cruising to nearby Cannes or Monte Carlo. From a sentimental arms dealer to the future American president to a real Arabian Prince, what lies in the future for this exceptional floating palace?
Apparently, he paid £30m for the yacht and another $8.5m to Trumpify it.
I have no real clue about Trump’s overall financial position and I’m not sure too many people really do. It wouldn’t surprise me if his situation isn’t as dire as many suspect and there is a large amount of wishful thinking going on about him being bankrupt amongst those who (understandably) wish him ill. The opposite also wouldn’t surprise me. For example it could be that this bank has a first mortgage over Trump Tower and is relatively safe, but there could be 2nd tier borrowings on top of that. Who knows?
Now I’ve got a question about this, which probably just speaks to my lack of understanding of high finance:
I saw a headline somewhere that one of Trump’s kids was bragging that with this $100 mil re-fi, they now have oodles and oodles of cash. How does that work? I thought the whole idea of a re-fi is that the new loan just goes to pay off the prior loan, not to put cash in the borrower’s pocket.
I’m not really an expert but there are a number of ways. The simplest and most likely is that they re-financed to a level greater than before eg they owed $80M but refinanced to $100M by convincing the bank they/their assets were good for it.
It would surprise me if all savvy financiers hadn’t worked this out about Trump a long, long time ago.
I suspect all that happened recently was that Trump’s accountants reached a point where they could no longer ignore what they had long privately suspected.
Too many questions, too much legal heat. Either they double down and so go down with the yacht, or back out claiming “Oops! We were duped too.”
The problem I see with any executive approving a loan is, unless it’s a private corporation owned by them, the executive has a duty to his company to ensure the math works (or plausible excuse “it looked good to me” with departmental analysis to back it up) and the loan is sound - at risk of being sued by shareholders, prosecuted for fraud, etc.
Forbes seems to think they do, and they list the amount of debt that Trump has on all his properties. The thing about debt, especially mortgages on properties, is that they tend to be publically available. As they need to be, because other potential lenders need to know about them. You can do a title search on any property and come up with all the mortgages on that property. So I assume if Forbes reports that there was $100M in debt on that property, that’s probably solid info, and similar for the rest of his debt.
“Trump Tower is one of the most iconic properties in the world and sits on arguably the most prestigious corner in all of New York,” Eric said in a statement provided after this article was published. “We have incredibly low debt, have a tremendous amount of cash and have an extremely profitable company. We had no problem refinancing.”