Property costs money to maintain. And it can only earn as much as someone is willing to pay for it, so if everyone’s poor they won’t pay enough rent to make up for the holding cost.

But they might be able to hope for the selling price in the future to be worth a lot, right? Unless it looks like they have to lock up their money in that investment, doing nothing, for a decade or more while other investments (stocks, bonds, etc.) do much better.

Investing in real estate is tricky, especially at scale. A mistake can cost a huge percentage of the investment, if not wiping out the investment on specific properties.

Or the economy crashes to the point where prices drop and the fed lowers interest rates to try to stimulate the economy, but the economy is so bad that you don’t have a job to be able to qualify for a loan.

It’s low key in the sense that Trump seems to have been prepared to disobey the order, but it never took effect. The order was “pay people what you owe them by Wednesday at 11:59pm,” and the Trump admin got an order from the Supreme Court pausing that requirement until further notice.

What’s notable is that Trump’s lawyer said “yes we know we have to comply with court orders but this one is literally impossible to comply with in time,” which is the type of position that makes a token gesture towards complying, while also showing that they weren’t going to comply in time.