Former President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post on Sunday that he won’t testify in his $250 million civil fraud trial in New York on Monday.

“I will not be testifying on Monday,” Trump wrote in an all-caps, multi-part post on Truth Social.

Trump had previously been expected to return to the witness stand this week to testify in his own defense in the fraud trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“President Trump has already testified,” Trump’s attorney Chris Kise said in a statement on Sunday. “There is really nothing more to say to a Judge who has imposed an unconstitutional gag order and thus far appears to have ignored President Trump’s testimony and that of everyone else involved in the complex financial transactions at issue in the case.”

Trump, along with his two adult sons and co-defendants, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, previously denied any wrongdoing when they were questioned on the witness stand by lawyers for the state. James has accused Trump and his co-defendants of falsely inflating Trump’s assets for financial gain.

Posting on Truth Social, the former president assailed the trial, which threatens his business empire as well as his family’s ability to do business in New York in the future.

“I have already testified to everything & have nothing more to say other than this is a complete & total election interference (Biden campaign!) witch hunt that will do nothing but keep businesses out of New York,” Trump, who is running for president again in the 2024 elections, wrote in the social media post.

The trial, which has gone on for more than two months, is entering its final week of testimony and is expected to end in January. Trump had been expected to testify in his own defense to push back on James’ claims that he and his co-defendants falsely inflated Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars to secure tax benefits and more favorable terms for bank loans.

Trump returned to court last week after the former president’s gag order in the case was reinstated after being temporarily suspended while Trump’s lawyers challenged it in appeals court. The order bars him from making public statements about the staff of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the ongoing civil fraud trial. Engoron imposed the gag order after the judge’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, had repeatedly become the target of Trump’s public criticism.

Trump is still allowed to publicly criticize both Engoron and James.

Trump’s attorney, Kise, went on to slam James and what he described as a “rabid and unreasonable pursuit of President Trump” in his statement. “There is no valid reason for President Trump to testify further in this case,” Kise said in the statement.

In her own statement, the New York Attorney General responded to Trump’s decision not to take the stand again.

“Donald Trump already testified in our financial fraud case against him,” James said in the statement on Sunday. “Whether or not Trump testifies again tomorrow, we have already proven that he committed years of financial fraud and unjustly enriched himself and his family. No matter how much he tries to distract from reality, the facts don’t lie.”

Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son and co-defendant of former President Donald Trump, testified Wednesday that he did not remember working on financial statements at the heart of the $250 million New York civil fraud trial of him and his father, brother and business.

Taking the witness stand for the first time, Trump Jr. said that he relied on the expertise of outside accounting firm Mazars, and on Donald Bender, a former Trump family accountant, according to NBC News.

Bender already testified that the information he used to assemble the financial statements was provided by the Trump Organization.

New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges the defendants falsely inflated the values of Trump’s real estate properties and other assets by billions of dollars a year in order to get various financial perks, including tax benefits and better loan terms.

Wednesday’s testimony gave James’ team their first chance in the trial to grill a member of the Trump family about how their closely held real estate empire operates.

Trump Jr.’s testimony in Manhattan Supreme Court was expected to continue Thursday.

Trump Jr. and his brother Eric Trump took control of the Trump Organization as executive vice presidents when their father was elected president in 2017. Ahead of the trial, they both gave sworn depositions in which they downplayed their involvement in creating the financial statements that the attorney general says were fraudulent.

Trump Jr. was the first of four members of the Trump family expected to testify in the trial.

Trump Sr. lashed out at Judge Arthur Engoron in a Truth Social post early Wednesday morning. Engoron will deliver the verdicts in the no-jury trial.

“Leave my children alone, Engoron,” the former president posted at 2:28 a.m. ET. “You are a disgrace to the legal profession!”

In addition to seeking around a quarter of a billion dollars in damages, James wants to permanently bar Trump Sr. and his sons Donald and Eric from running a New York business.

Engoron has already found the defendants liable for fraud and ordered the cancellation of their New York business certificates. The trial will resolve six other claims alleged by James.

Trump Jr.’s testimony will be followed by Eric Trump’s on Thursday, according to a schedule from the attorney general’s office. The former president is expected to testify Monday.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who was removed as a defendant on statute-of-limitations grounds by a New York appeals court earlier this year, is set to take the stand Nov. 8.

In a surprise move last week, Engoron ordered the former president to the stand to be questioned about his remarks outside the courtroom, which Engoron considered to be a violation of his gag order on Trump.

Trump in that brief testimony denied that he was referring to the judge’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, when he complained to reporters about “a very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside him.” Trump had previously been ordered not to make public statements about Engoron’s staff, after he attacked Greenfield in a social media post.

Engoron did not believe him, saying in a written order that his testimony rang “hollow and untrue.” Trump has now been fined a total of $15,000 for two violations of the gag order.

Home prices rose in May for the fourth consecutive month on the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index, but regional differences are widening.

The gains came despite a sharp rise in mortgage interest rates during the month.

Prices nationwide rose 0.7% month over month, seasonally adjusted. The index’s 10-city composite rose 1.1%, and the 20-city composite rose 1%.

Prices nationwide were still down 0.5% from May 2022, but only 1% below their June 2022 peak.

The 10-city composite fell 1%, year over year, slightly less than the 1.1% decline in the prior month. The 20-city index fell 1.7%, the same as the year-on-year decline in April.

“US home prices started to decline after June 2022, and the May data reinforced the case that the last month of decline was January 2023,” said Craig Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI. “It is true that the price gains of the past four months could be capped by increases in mortgage rates or by general economic weakness. But the breadth and strength of the May report dovetails with an optimistic outlook for the months ahead.”

Still, Lazzara noted, “the regional differences are still striking,” with cities in the so-called Rust Belt outperforming the rest of the country. Prices in Chicago rose 4.6%. in Cleveland, 3.9%; and New York, 3.5% — making it the best performer. The Midwest took over the rule of the South as the most powerful region.

“If that sounds like an outlier to you, it does to me, too. It’s been five years a month since a cold-weather city took the lead (and that was Seattle, which wasn’t too cold),” Lazzara added.

Of the 20 cities, 10 saw prices fall in the year ending May 2023 versus the year ending April 2023 and 10 cities saw prices rise.

Cities in the West, where prices inflated the most, were the worst performers in May. Seattle, down 11.3%, and San Francisco, down 11%, were the worst.

Prices are going up again because supply is still so low. Existing homeowners are reluctant to sell, since most of them pay mortgage rates less than half of today’s rates. Demand has returned after the initial jump in mortgage rates, as buyers seem to be getting used to the new normal.

“The housing market remains unaffordable for many buyers, but some areas are seeing high levels of competition as a result of low selling inventory,” said Hannah Jones, Research Analyst for Realtor.com. “The current limited household equity means that many markets are experiencing competition reminiscent of the past few years.”

Correction: Home prices rose in May for the fourth consecutive month on the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. An earlier version misspelled the number of months.

Mortgage rates last week hit their highest level since the end of May, which in turn affected mortgage demand.

Total mortgage application volume last week decreased 4.4% from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Demand is now at its lowest level in a month.

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with matching loan balances ($726,200 or less) rose to 6.85% from 6.75%, with the score increasing to 0.65 from 0.64 (including origination fees) for loans of 20%. low premium.

While that was the average rate for the week, a separate survey from Mortgage News Daily showed that the rate was over 7% last Thursday. It has remained above that level since then, rising to 7.08% on Tuesday of this week.

As a result, mortgage demand to buy a home, which has been rising for three consecutive weeks, fell 5% during the week and was 22% lower than the same week a year ago.

“Rates are still more than a percentage point higher than they were a year ago, and housing affordability remains a challenge in many parts of the country,” Joel Kahn, MBA’s deputy chief economist, wrote in a statement. However, the average loan-to-request size fell to $423,500 – its lowest level since January 2023.

The decline in loan size, according to Kan, is likely driven by lower home purchases in some of the higher-priced markets and increased activity at some of the lower-priced levels.

Home loan refinance applications were down 4% for the week and were 30% lower than the same week a year ago. As the summer progresses, the year-over-year comparison is likely to shrink, as it did last summer when mortgage rates rose dramatically for the first time since before the pandemic, and thus refinancing demand fell off the high slope.

While the 30-year flat rate remained above 7% for the past week, it may be affected by employment data scheduled for release on Thursday and Friday. This could affect the Fed’s next moves, which are likely to include further rate hikes.

When Darius Livingston graduated from UC Davis two years ago, he knew his football career was over. Like most of his former teammates—and most college athletes—he wasn’t a pro.

Instead, Livingston went into commercial real estate, thanks to lessons he learned from a paid internship program that teaches young students the basics of finance, with a special focus on real estate investing.

The programme, Project Destined, is a social impact platform founded by Cedric Bobo, former director of The Carlyle Group.

Bobo made a name for himself in the real estate investment business and then decided to pay it in advance. The funding program was launched in 2016 mainly for high school students. He then expanded it to colleges, seeing the opportunity for both internships and jobs before and after graduation.

Keen to diversify its workforce, some of the largest real estate development, finance, and management companies have signed on to fund internships and student mentors. It includes names like Boston propertiesgraystar, brookfield, CBREAnd Residential propertyFifth wall JLLand Skanska, Vornado, and Walker & Dunlop.

The program has trained more than 5,000 participants from more than 350 universities around the world and has partnered with more than 250 real estate companies.

And now, he directs some of his efforts specifically toward black student-athletes.

After a recent pilot program with student-athletes from UC Davis, Bobo announced a partnership with Black Student-Athlete Summit, a professional and academic advocacy organization, to offer paid virtual internships to 100 student-athletes from nine Division I schools. . Includes 25 hours of training.

According to a statement announcing the partnership, “Program participants will also join CEOs to evaluate real-time commercial real estate transactions in their community and compete in presentation competitions for top industry leaders.” “Training includes scholarship and networking opportunities.”

Livingston went through the UC Davis pilot his last semester of college, then took an internship with Eastdale and Eden Housing. He is now a Partner in Acquisitions and Development of Catalyst Housing Group, a California-based real estate developer and financial backer of the new partnership.

“I think, for me, it was really a realization that I probably wasn’t going to be one of the favorites in the first round, and that’s a good thing,” Livingston explained. “I was really exposed to other opportunities. That’s why I’m so fortunate to be receiving the Destined Project and it introduced me to the commercial and mental real estate industry that I deserve to be an owner of in the communities I live in.”

This property right has always been Bobo’s motto and was the core of his pitch when he announced the new arm of his program to hundreds of students at the USC Black Student-Athlete Summit. He wants them to understand that they can make a difference in their neighborhoods by owning and managing real estate. Most importantly, he wants them to know that ownership is possible.

“Our show isn’t just about how you all see it,” Bobo said of the real estate executives who attended the announcement. “This is how you see yourselves.”

While the graduation rate for black student-athletes is slowly improving, many students who were overwhelmed with resources at school find themselves struggling once they finish their athletic endeavors and join the workforce.

“A lot of these kids might think they’re a first-round draft pick, and that’s a percentage of a percentage of a percentage, so be real with yourself and know that you deserve so much more than you’re simply exposed, and that’s just a sport,” Livingston said. .

Financial support for the program comes from real estate companies including BGO, Brookfield, Catalyst Housing Group, Dune Real Estate Partners, Jemcor Development Partners, Landspire Group, Marcus & Millichap, Virtu Investments, The Vistria Group, and others.

“Expanding this platform is a natural evolution of this team effort and will provide tangible pathways for thousands of black student-athletes to pursue future careers in commercial real estate,” said Jordan Moss, also a former UCLA student-athlete. Davis, founder and CEO of Catalyst.

Project Destined also works with the NBA and WNBA to give professional athletes more options after completing their sports careers.

Livingston said he believes athletes make the best employees.

“We play to win,” he explained. “It’s the competitive nature. We want to take our chances.”

Home prices fell in January, just 3.8% more nationally than they were a year ago, according to the US National Security Agency’s Standard & Poor’s CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. This is down from 5.6% in December.

Prices have been dropping for seven months in a row, but the decline was a bit smaller in January. This was most likely due to a brief drop in mortgage rates and the resulting jump in sales.

The 10-city complex rose 2.5% year over year, down from 4.4% in December. The 20-city composite also rose 2.5%, down from 4.6% in the previous month.

Home prices have fallen due to higher mortgage rates. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage hit more than a dozen record lows during the first two years of the pandemic, falling briefly to less than 2%, but growing sharply. Since the fall, the price has been hovering in the high 6% range, although it has been volatile in recent weeks due to several bank failures and the resulting stress on the banking industry in general.

“Nevertheless, the Fed remains focused on its inflation-lowering targets, which suggests rates may remain elevated in the near term,” Craig Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, said in a statement. So mortgage financing and the possibility of economic weakness is likely to remain a headwind to home prices for at least the next several months.

Prices were down year-over-year in San Francisco (-7.6%), Seattle (-5.1%), Portland, Oregon (-0.5%) and San Diego (-1.4%). It was flat in Phoenix.

Miami, Tampa and Atlanta again had the highest annual price gains among the 20 largest cities. Miami prices increased 13.8%, Tampa prices increased 10.5%, and Atlanta prices increased 8.4%. However, all 20 cities reported lower prices in the year ending January 2023 compared to the year ending December 2022.

Homebuyers may see more flexible sellers this spring, but there are still very few homes available for sale. Mortgage lending may also contract given the stress on the banking system.

“More expensive and less available borrowing, especially with an uncertain economic outlook, is likely to continue to dampen buyer demand. Although home sales are expected to rebound in line with seasonal trends, the pace of spring sales is expected to remain lower. Since last year, Hannah Jones, economic data analyst at Realtor.com said: “Because uncertainty and rising costs limit activity.”

A private island in Palm Beach could become the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, if it gets its asking price of $218 million.

Developer Todd Michael Glaser and Associates purchased 10 Tarpon Island – Palm Beach’s only private island – for $85 million in 2021. They built a brand new home, converted the existing structure into a guesthouse, added a huge pool, tennis courts and other amenities and have now refurbished the property. .

“I paid $85 million without hesitation because there is only one of them,” Glaser said. “You see art, they sell. There’s a Mercedes 300 SLR that just sold for $142 million… That’s what it is… It’s one of one.”

When Glaser bought Tarpon Island, she had a modest 1940s home with a lot of potential.

“I came across the bridge, saw the two trees and said, ‘Guys, let’s tear down the garage and the guest house and the maid’s quarters and build a new house,'” Glaser said.

The new main home is over 9,000 square feet. With the guest house, tennis pavilion, and other buildings, the property now includes over 21,000 feet of living space. There are 11 bedrooms, 15 full baths, and seven half baths.

Unlike many Palm Beach mansions, which are Mediterranean-style behemoths adorned with gold carvings and mahogany, Tarpon Island is a study in modern simplicity, the star of the home commanding water views on all four sides.

The master bedroom suite is a large complex of closets, bathrooms and sitting areas. The two largest bathrooms are a pagoda of white Italian marble covering the floors, worktops and ceiling, and an oversized shower. A large bathtub in front of the windows overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway.

“It’s the best bathroom I’ve ever seen,” Glaser said. “My wife chose it, and it did a great job. I’ve never seen anything like this bathroom.”

Outside, a new 98-foot pool commands water views to the south. The large berth can fit several boats or a huge yacht. The guest house features resort-like amenities, including a spa, massage room, salon, and entertainment area.

“That’s how we designed it,” Glaser said. “When people come to Palm Beach bringing their families, they’re on vacation.”

The man-made island, which was built in the 1940s, has a high seawall, Glaser said. He said that because it is so well sheltered in the Intracoastal and so well elevated, it has easily weathered large storms and tidal surges.

Granted, $218 million is an ambitious price, even for Palm Beach. The pocket record sale was Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s $173 million purchase of billionaire Jim Clark’s oceanfront estate last year.

Palm Beach is the most expensive real estate market in the country, with an average sale price of nearly $13 million, according to Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel. Many homes have seen their prices more than triple during the pandemic as affluent buyers fled the Northeast for Florida, and sought-after Palm Beach real estate in particular.

Interest in the property has been strong, said Christopher Levitt of Douglas Elliman, who lists the property alongside Christian Angel Properties, particularly from hedge fund managers and CFOs looking to move south.

“The buyer of this home is someone who wants Palm Beach’s only private island, which is surrounded 360 degrees by water and accessed by your own boat or private bridge,” Levitt said. “It’s someone who wants that property that no one else has, that memorial property.”

Glaser declined to say what profit he would make if the house sold for its asking price. He added that he and his investors spent “a fortune” on the new home and improvements. But he said the buyer would make a long-term investment.

“Whoever buys this house, in five years they will be very happy with the purchase,” he said. “It is a heritage property that they will own for the rest of their lives.”

The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate fell to 6.57% on Monday, according to the Daily Mortgage News. This is down from a rate of 6.76% on Friday and a recent high of 7.05% last Wednesday.

Mortgage rates loosely track yield 10 years treasurywhich fell to a one-month low in response to the failures Silicon Valley Bank And signature bank The ensuing ripple through the country’s banking sector.

In real terms, for a buyer looking for a $500,000 home with a 20% down payment on a 30-year fixed term mortgage, the monthly payment this week is $128 lower than it was just last week. However, it is still higher than in January.

So what does this mean for the spring housing market?

In October, rates rose more than 7%, and that real slowdown in home sales began. But rates then began to fall in December and approached 6% by the end of January. That caused a surprising 8% monthly jump in pending home sales, which is the National Association of Realtors’ measure of contracts signed on existing homes. Newly built home sales, which the Census Bureau measures by contracts signed, also rose much higher than expected.

While the numbers for February are yet to come out, dealerships and builders said sales took a big step back in February as prices rose. So if prices continue to fall now, buyers can come back in again – but this is a big “if”.

“This small banking crisis has to drive a change in consumer behavior in order to have a lasting positive effect on interest rates. It’s still all about inflation,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer of Mortgage News Daily.

He added that markets now have to deal with the “inflationary impact of consumer fear,” noting that Tuesday brings a new report on the Consumer Price Index, a monthly measure of inflation in the economy.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told members of Congress that recent economic data came out stronger than expected.

“If the totality of the data indicates that a faster tightening is warranted, then we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes,” Powell said.

While mortgage rates don’t exactly track the federal funds rate, they are strongly influenced by the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and its thinking about the future of inflation.