Trump sees Florida mansion sale as "positive sign"

MIAMI (Reuters) - Real estate mogul Donald Trump said on Thursday that things may be looking up for the battered U.S. real estate market after he managed to sell a Palm Beach mansion this week for nearly $100 million (50 million pounds).

Trump snapped up the oceanfront five-acre (2 hectare) property at a bankruptcy auction in 2004 for $41 million. The deed lists the sale price he got four years later as $95 million, said Robert Brody, a West Palm Beach lawyer representing the buyer.

"It's perhaps a very positive sign," Trump said of the sale in an interview with CNBC. "It's a sign that maybe things are getting better."

The U.S. housing market has gone from boom to bust in areas like Miami and Las Vegas, where speculation and lax lending standards combined with other factors to cause home prices to double or more between 2000 and 2005.

But Trump said high-end pockets of the market like Palm Beach continue to hold up nicely.

"Palm Beach is an amazing place. Not so long ago a house was sold for $82 million, another house was sold for $70 million. So Palm Beach is a very unique place," he said.

He said he knew "very little" about the buyer but media reports have identified him as Russian fertilizer billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

Trump said it was a bit disappointing, perhaps, that the Palm Beach property hadn't gone to an American buyer.

But he said most potential U.S. bidders on the property were personal friends or acquaintances of his who would never give him the pleasure of more than doubling the return on a four-year-old investment.