Meta Platforms, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, is in violation of European data privacy rules in Norway despite being fined nearly $100,000 per day, according to the country’s data regulator.

Hanne Inger Bjurstroem Jahren, a lawyer representing regulator Datatilsynet, told a court Wednesday that Meta is not in compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and thus should continue paying the fine, Reuters reported.

“There is no discussion on whether the company is in violation of these rules … Today Meta breaks GDPR rules,” she told the court during the last day of a two-day hearing.

The giant tech company has been ordered to pay a fine of one million crowns (just over $94,000) per day since Aug. 14 for breaching users’ rights to privacy.

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Datatilsynet determined Meta was violating regulations by harvesting user data and using it to target advertising at them. The practice, known as behavioral advertising, is fairly common to Big Tech, but doing so without the consent of users violates the European rule, Reuters reported.

During the first hearing on Tuesday, Meta told the court it had already committed to ask for consent from its users but did not specify when or how it would do so.

According to Reuters, the owner of Facebook and Instagram is seeking a temporary injunction to prevent having to pay the daily fee, which will remain in effect for at least the next three months, as it argued Datatilsynet used an “expedited process” and did not sufficiently provide the company time to answer.

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The Norwegian regulator argued that despite the apparent change in policy — that Meta would now seek consent from users — the company still remained in violation until the change was implemented as users’ rights continued being violated.

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Datatilsynet suggested the fine could be made permanent if it were to refer its decision to the European Data Protection Board.

According to Reuters, the board has the authority to make the fine permanent should it agree with the regulator’s decision. However, Datatilsynet has yet to take this step.

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Sales of new U.S. homes climbed more than expected in July even as continued to confront high mortgage rates.

New single-family home purchases rose 4.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 714,000 units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected new home sales – which account for a small percentage of total sales – to come in at a rate of 705,000 units.

Sales are up about 31.5% from a year ago.

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“Despite affordability being at record lows, driven by historically high mortgage rates and recovery of prices this year, the new home market has continued to gain momentum as the lack of resale inventory has turned buyers to new construction,” said Crystal Sunbury, a real estate senior analyst at RSM. 

At the current pace of sales, it would take roughly 7.3 months to exhaust the inventory of existing homes. Experts view a pace of six to seven months as a healthy level. 

The spike in sales indicates that buyers are still eager to buy homes, despite steep borrowing costs and elevated prices. That demand is keeping the housing market uncomfortably hot. 

The median price for a new home jumped to $436,700 from $416,700 the previous month – a nearly 5% increase. That is also far higher than the typical pre-pandemic level. 

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The Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest-rate hike campaign sent mortgage rates soaring above 7% last year for the first time in nearly two decades, cooling the red-hot housing market. 

Rates on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage are currently hovering around 7.09%, according to Freddie Mac, well above the 5.13% rate recorded one year ago and the pre-pandemic average of 3.9%.

With rates slow to retreat, sellers who locked in a low mortgage rate before the pandemic have been reluctant to sell and buy another house at a steeper borrowing price. 

The lack of inventory has weighed on existing home sales, in particular. 

Sales of previously owned homes fell 2.2% in July from the previous month to an annual rate of 4.07 million units, according to data released Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). 

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On an annual basis, existing home sales are down 16.6% when compared with July 2022. 

“Two factors are driving current sales activity – inventory availability and mortgage rates,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR. “Unfortunately, both have been unfavorable to buyers.”

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