Carolyn Ireland
Carolyn Ireland is a real estate reporter at The Globe and Mail whose work links housing-market analysis with closely observed portraits of individual homes and the way they are designed and lived in. Her coverage centres on Canadian real estate trends, buyer and seller behaviour and the visual and architectural character of properties, rather than treating housing purely as an abstract asset. Over a long tenure on the real estate desk, she has developed recurring franchises that combine data, news and feature writing, including market roundups that fold in Home of the Week profiles and a regular column on moving decisions.
Canadian housing market and investment trends
Ireland writes frequently about the state of the Canadian housing market, with a particular focus on how economic conditions, policy changes and investor sentiment filter down to buyers and sellers.
Her real estate news packages track issues such as investors pulling back from preconstruction condominiums, regulatory changes to mortgage rules and forecasts from Bay Street on when a sluggish market might rebound. In these pieces she highlights how expectations about seasonal slowdowns can be upended by shifts in financing or regulation, and how those shifts affect transaction volume at the end of the year. She has covered stories ranging from a former child actor’s real estate holdings coming under police investigation to the cooling of the Toronto market amid tariff and economic uncertainty, tying individual narratives to broader trends.
Profiles and professional write-ups describe her as specializing in construction and real estate and note that she often cites data and offers investment-oriented analysis, which reinforces the analytical spine of her beat.
Home of the Week and design-focused features
Alongside market coverage, Ireland is closely associated with The Globe and Mail’s Home of the Week franchise, which showcases standout properties within the context of the wider housing market. These packages routinely pair a news digest on real estate developments with a detailed feature on a single home, giving equal weight to price dynamics, neighbourhood context and the character of the property itself. Her house profiles include reporting on renovations, interior design and the experience of working with architects and designers, as seen in her feature on a couple’s home and their collaboration with a design studio in the real estate section.
In that piece she situates the owners’ comments about design meetings and sketches within a narrative about how the finished home functions, reflecting an interest in both process and outcome. Beyond urban properties, her bylines also extend to stories on cottage-country markets, such as how a late spring can stunt activity in Ontario recreational areas, blending seasonal insight with a feel for local settings.
The confirmed Home of the Week on a once “beaten up” home brought back to shine fits this pattern of using a single property to explore craftsmanship, persistence and the lived reality behind listing photos.
Reader Q&As and service journalism
Ireland plays a visible role in reader-facing coverage, regularly joining panels that answer audience questions about housing and mortgages.
She is one of the real estate reporters tapped to field queries on topics such as whether it is a good time to buy or sell a home, how spring buyer confidence is holding up and how geopolitical tensions might feed into the housing outlook. In these live and written Q&A formats she addresses practical concerns about fixed versus variable mortgages, the health of preconstruction condo markets and the most interesting real estate pockets across the country, framing answers around real-time market conditions.
The emphasis on direct reader interaction and clear, explanatory responses underlines a service-journalism strand in her work, complementing her more narrative and analytical features.
Regional markets, seasonal dynamics and lifestyle coverage
Ireland’s reporting ranges across different parts of the Canadian market, with particular attention to Toronto and its surrounding regions. She has written about the Toronto real estate market turning “to ice” amid tariff and economic uncertainty, using that metaphor to capture how policy and macroeconomic shocks can suddenly stall activity. Her cottage-country coverage, including an article on how a late spring stunts the Ontario recreational market, shows a sensitivity to how weather and seasonal patterns shape buying and selling beyond major urban centres.
In regular real estate news roundups, she weaves together items on family gifts helping young homebuyers, the motivations of sellers and the performance of preconstruction investments, suggesting an interest in both generational dynamics and investor strategy.
Professional profiles note that she writes about architecture, design and market trends for the real estate section and also contributes features and photography to the travel desk, which aligns with the lifestyle and visual emphasis evident in her home features. Across these strands, her work is distinguished by a combination of markets-focused reporting and attention to how people inhabit and shape the spaces they buy.
4 more real estate journalists.
Addie Morfoot
Addie Morfoot covers how real estate, culture and media meet, focusing on people, rules and the way homes shape a life. She reports for The New York Times on housing and lifestyle, from personal narratives about finding a home after loss to features on how short-term rental policy affects everyday owners and renters. She writes real estate stories that connect laws and regulations to the choices available to ordinary residents in specific towns and cities. She is a regular contributor to the Sunday Routine franchise, following actors, comedians and designers through a typical day and showing how settings like homes, studios and subway cars shape daily experience. She also has a long track record covering documentary film and the entertainment business, including legal questions around fair use, changing docu-series formats, festival premieres and financing. Her portfolio spans more than two decades of work for The New York Times, Variety, The Wall Street Journal and Crain’s New York Business.
Alcynna Lloyd
Alcynna Lloyd is a real estate reporter and economic journalist at Business Insider whose work is distinct for treating housing as a core economic system people must navigate. She covers how housing markets, costs, and mobility shape everyday life decisions, connecting data on rents, home prices, and city trends with stories of people managing debt, multigenerational living, and moves abroad. Her beat centers on housing costs, renters, and household strategies, following renters pushing back against landlords and tracking “desperate home sellers” using concessions in unaffordable markets. A second strand of her coverage focuses on relocation, remote work, and cheap cities as everyday economic strategies. She regularly uses rankings and lists, such as best and worst states to buy a home and Rising Stars of Real Estate, and reads city housing and migration shifts as signs of broader economic change.
Alec Lazenby
Alec Lazenby covers how provincial politics and government decisions shape housing, real estate and the wider social fabric. He reports for The Vancouver Sun from the provincial legislature. His work examines HousingHub, middle-income rentals, affordability, stalled projects, empty condos, developer layoffs, municipal housing targets and land use. He also covers health, addiction, safer supply, involuntary care, water rights, resource management, Indigenous rights and Crown land. Lazenby connects policy language to specific buildings, rents, projects, services and people. He explains financial, regulatory and market pressures, then follows how institutions, professionals, developers, municipalities and affected communities respond. His reporting tests government goals against practical outcomes and shows how policy reversals, construction costs, interest rates and political accountability shape housing and public life.
Amir Ali
Amir Ali links housing, disputes, and oddball neighbourhood stories in case-based, street-level reporting for Daily Hive. He holds a senior editorial and writing role, listed on the masthead as part of Vancouver leadership and described as a staff writer. His core beat is real estate, especially the rental market and housing affordability, tracking rent ranges, market shifts, and how pressures land on people trying to stay housed. He also covers crime, civil tribunals, and mental health, explaining decisions and conflicts in plain language that focuses on timelines, behaviour, and outcomes. Ali writes offbeat hyperlocal features, traffic and transport disruptions, business, food, and general local news, often turning infrastructure, small businesses, and civic systems into tangible stories. A former radio producer, he brings tight pacing and clear stakes to written pieces and maintains an active social media presence as a broadcaster and writer.