You seem to think that the buyer can buy the property from the owner and extinguish the easement. He can't. He will have to take the property subject to the easement and all of its restrictions.
There is no "going rate". The owner of the easement, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, could charge whatever it wanted to terminate the easement, even assuming it could legally terminate the easement without a court order and without jeopardizing its tax-exempt status, both of which are extremely doubtful.
Before believing some buyer would be willing to pay $200 million + for the property I'd want to see a current appraisal of Mar-a-Lago (done by an expert not hired by either Trump or the NY AG) that values the property taking into account the existing conservation easement on it. It's doubtful the comparables the lady in the video referred to are similarly restricted.
We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two. "At least," as one man said, "there's one advantage about death; it doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
Erwin N. Griswold
Taxes: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an automatic extension.
Anonymous
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