"We Are Not Desperate": Trump's Mar-a-Lago Membership Fee Blasts Off to $1 Million Ahead of Election

Mar-a-Lago plans to raise its club membership fee to $1 million, quintuple the cost in 2017.

July 23, 2024

Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in September 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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Are you looking to join the exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach to hobnob in Republican party circles with Donald Trump loyalists?

Well, it is going to cost you a pretty penny.

During a sit-down interview at Mar-a-Lago with Bloomberg, club manager Bernd Lembcke and the former president said club membership fees will increase from $700,000 to $1 million in October.

"In October we are going up to $1 million [per membership] because we have four memberships to sell. We are not desperate," Lembcke said.

Ten years after Trump purchased the sprawling waterfront estate in 1985, he transformed the property into the Mar-a-Lago Club, a members-only club with guest rooms, a spa, salon, pool, and fitness center, among other luxury amenities. Trump told Bloomberg during the recent interview that memberships had a $25,000 initiation fee back then. The fee jumped to $200,000 by 2017.

The 20-acre resort and club, which spans more than 60,000 square feet and 120 rooms, is capped at 500 members. In 2012, the fee was cut in half after memberships declined owing to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme to which members fell victim. Following the 2016 election, the resort upped the membership fee back to $200,000.

On top of the hefty initiation fee, members have had to pay annual dues of around $20,000. It's unclear exactly how much members coughed up in annual dues over the last year.

Long before Mar-a-Lago became the "Winter White House" of the former president and the site of an FBI raid in the classified document-hoarding case against Trump, it was a private mansion belonging to Postum Cereal Company heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post, who hosted extravagant dinner parties and charity galas at the property.

Since Trump's rose to power in the GOP, the club has turned into his fundraising headquarters and MAGA ground zero for his election bids.

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Naomi Feinstein is a staff writer of Miami New Times where she primarily focuses on news. Naomi started her career with New Times as an intern from June–August 2019, then worked as a fellow from August 2022 to February 2023 before joining the staff full-time. She graduated from University of Miami where she contributed to the student-run newspaper, The Miami Hurricane. She holds a master’s degree and graduated with honors from the Columbia School of Journalism. In 2021, Naomi was recognized as the College Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists of Florida, and she placed second for Best General News Story in the 2021 Pinnacle Awards.

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