Donald Trump drops more than 200 spots in Forbes rich list to 544th with estimated fortune of $3.5bn

Forbes attributes his fall to the state of the Manhattan real estate market in which Mr Trump has invested a disproportionate amount of his fortune

'Forty per cent of Donald Trump's fortune is tied up in Trump Tower and eight buildings within one mile of it,' Forbes said (AP)

Politically Donald Trump may be at the height of his career, but his personal fortune has taken a battering over the last year.

According to Forbes’ 2017 billionaire list, the US President is now only 544th in the global ranking of the world’s super-rich, putting him more than 200 spots below where he ranked last year, with an estimated wealth of $3.5bn compared to $3.7bn last year and $4.5bn the year before.

The publication attributed his fall to the state of the Manhattan real estate market in which Mr Trump has invested a disproportionate amount of his fortune.

"Forty per cent of Donald Trump's fortune is tied up in Trump Tower and eight buildings within one mile of it," Forbes said. "Lately, the neighborhood has been struggling (relatively speaking)," it added.

Mr Trump’s wealth has been a subject of fierce debate and much speculation in recent years and he is notoriously sensitive about disclosing earnings.

In an article published in September 2015, Forbes wrote that no other mogul featured on their annual rich list has been “more fixated with his or her net worth estimate on a year-in, year-out basis than Donald J Trump”.

The magazine said that other billionaires on the list had a tendency of complaining that their estimate was too high rather than too low.

When Forbes estimated his fortune at $4.5bn in 2015, Mr Trump reportedly complained: “I’m running for President. I’m worth much more than you have me down [for].

“I don’t look good, to be honest. I mean, I look better if I’m worth $10bn than if I’m worth $4bn.”

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates topped this year’s rich list for a fourth consecutive year, with an estimated fortune of around $86bn. He was followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren Buffett, whose wealth was cited to be around $75.6bn.

Others in the top ten, which is heavily dominated by Americans in the technology sector, were Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, at number five, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at number seven and Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos.

Additional reporting by wires