Clio Chang
Clio Chang **distinguishes herself through deeply personal explorations of New York City's housing landscape**, blending practical real estate advice with cultural commentary that reveals how urban dwellers navigate complex living arrangements. As a staff writer for Curbed, part of New York Magazine, she examines the human dimensions of housing that generic market reports overlook.
Apartment Department Advice Column
Chang authors Curbed's biweekly "Apartment Department" advice column addressing specific tenant dilemmas with cultural nuance. She responds to readers facing situations like building owners who are "newly divorced and hot in an older-guy way", noisy neighbors, and co-op board rejections where applicants receive no explanation for denial. Her advice integrates practical housing knowledge with understanding of New York's social dynamics, making complex real estate rules accessible through relatable scenarios.
Financial Realities of Urban Living
Chang consistently documents the economic pressures shaping New York housing decisions through detailed income-rent analyses. She profiles individuals like chefs earning $25,000 annually while paying $2,500 monthly rent, highlighting unsustainable financial arrangements. Her reporting on homeownership emphasizes often-overlooked costs including property taxes, insurance, maintenance (typically 1–2% of home value annually), and condo fees that impact purchasing decisions.
Neighborhood Dynamics and Conflicts
Chang investigates how housing tensions manifest in community relationships, documenting cases like neighbors labeling a Groves home as a "trash house" and the subsequent two-year effort to address the situation. She examines how physical spaces become sites of social conflict, revealing how housing conditions affect neighborhood cohesion and individual wellbeing in New York City. Her reporting connects personal housing experiences to broader urban patterns without losing the human element that defines her approach.
4 more real estate journalists.
Aaron Elstein
Aaron Elstein brings a Wall Street reporter’s eye to commercial real estate. He is a senior reporter at Crain’s New York Business, where he covers large office towers, Midtown corridors, landlords, lenders, investors and regulators. His reporting shows how ownership decisions, bank balance sheets, capital markets and regulation shape property values and risk. He also covers banking, finance and Wall Street, including bank mergers and investment firms. Before joining Crain’s in 2003, he wrote Heard on the Street columns for The Wall Street Journal and covered bank mergers for American Banker. Elstein reports by closely reading footnotes, contracts, regulatory filings and legal documents. His investigative work has examined executive payments, pension funds, tax enforcement and tenant harassment. His coverage places deals, disputes and enforcement actions within broader financial and property cycles.
Aaron Moselle
Aaron Moselle covers housing and community development for WHYY’s PlanPhilly, filing for radio and the web. He stands out for connecting market data and government action to displacement, affordable homes, and the daily questions facing renters and homeowners. His core beat is housing affordability and market strain, including high mortgage rates, rising prices, tax assessments, and what they mean for buyers, sellers, and renters. He also reports on preserving and creating affordable housing, neighborhood rehab efforts, major real estate deals, and the effect of property sales on residents. His work often uses direct sourcing, plain language, and service journalism to make policy and finance clear.
Aarthi Swaminathan
Aarthi Swaminathan is a personal finance reporter at MarketWatch whose distinctive beat connects residential real estate with household budgets. She covers housing prices, affordability, mortgage rates, financing, insurance, remodeling and the costs of owning a home. Her reporting examines overvalued and fast-rising markets, ZIP-code trends, second-home sellers, builders, developers and buyers facing higher borrowing costs. She also follows Gen Z buyers, owners trapped in weakening condo markets and neighborhood conflicts over development. Her work pairs data-driven housing analysis with detailed case studies of buyers, owners and sellers. She explains complex market data in clear, accessible language and writes news features, personal-finance explainers, Economic Report stories, The Big Move and New American Playbook. She won a silver award for Best Collection of Work by an Individual Covering Residential Real Estate.
Abbey Ferguson
Abbey Ferguson stands out for reporting how major commercial moves and redevelopment plans reshape the built environment, especially the real estate deals that reveal what land and retail space are worth. She covers Central Texas commercial real estate and development for KWTX, with recent stories on land valuation, major transactions, retail redevelopment, and infrastructure planning. Her work has tracked an $80 million data center site offer in Hill County, a prospective Trader Joe’s location in Waco, and a planning project using artificial intelligence to predict traffic patterns. She writes as a news reporter, staying close to the numbers, public records, brokers, officials, and landowners. Her stories turn contract prices, appraisal data, and listing history into plain explanations of what buyers are betting on and how those deals affect surrounding property owners and nearby businesses.