I know that you know the answer, but I will take a guess. In a bad inflationary or collapsing economy, real property (commodities, land/houses, barter items) maintain their value. OTOH, owning debt is a disaster.
This has some truth. However, what they often do, is wait for the economic collapse to hit, and then buy up the homes for pennies on the dollar.
The fact that they are doing this now — must have some additional motivation — and to take a whole neighborhood—that happens when they know of some “future project” that is going to be even more profitable than just a regular transaction.
So I don’t KNOW, but I ponder various scenarios.
I noticed it was reported that Russia is now divesting of all dollars, and will no longer accept dollars as payment for it’s products/oil etc. Euro, Yuan, Ruble(RUB), but no USD. They also have stockpiled a lot of Gold-as have most of the Central Banks these last few years.