David Robinson
David Robinson is a business and real estate journalist and editor at The Buffalo News, leading coverage in the Buffalo Next section. His work follows how housing markets, development projects and consumer industries connect to the regional economy, with a consistent emphasis on concrete data and policy details. He has worked at The Buffalo News since the mid-1980s, giving his business coverage long-range context across multiple economic cycles.
Housing market trends and affordability
Robinson covers the Buffalo Niagara housing market as an evolving system, tracking how a previously overheated market has cooled while remaining highly competitive for buyers and sellers. He reports on metrics such as days-on-market, using sources like Realtor.com data to show that local homeowners are selling significantly faster than the typical U.S. seller.
He brings federal data into the beat, citing home price indices from the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency to quantify year-over-year price gains and put local appreciation in a national frame.
Affordability is a recurring angle in his real estate coverage. He has reported on downtown apartment projects that raise questions about the lack of affordable housing, such as the St. Paul’s development that drew concern over how much new supply serves higher-income tenants. In these stories he connects individual projects to broader debates about who benefits from growth in the urban core and how policy choices shape the mix of market-rate and affordable units.
Development projects and public incentives
Robinson often treats real estate as business investment, closely following projects that convert existing buildings into new residential and retail space.
His coverage of a Main Street redevelopment into high-end apartments and ground-floor retail details both the size of the project and the nearly $930,000 in tax breaks approved by the Amherst Industrial Development Agency. He consistently highlights the dollar amounts, investors and public financing tools involved, making clear how much public money supports private development.
This focus on incentives extends to how projects fit into broader economic strategy. By situating individual developments within local industrial development policy, he shows how tax breaks, subsidies and regulatory decisions influence what gets built and where. The result is real estate reporting that does not stop at design or amenities, but follows the money and governance behind new construction and adaptive reuse.
Retail, tourism and the regional economy
Robinson’s brief as Buffalo Next editor includes retailing and tourism, and he treats these sectors as part of the same economic story as housing and development. His business coverage spans consumer-facing industries and their role in regional growth, drawing lines between where people live, where they shop and how visitors experience the area.
He has a long background as a business reporter and columnist covering publicly traded companies, the local economy, energy and personal finance, which informs how he reads corporate decisions against local conditions.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics appears in his work on wages and earnings, such as pieces noting changes in average weekly earnings for private sector workers. These stories help situate household finances alongside housing costs, showing whether paychecks are keeping up with price increases and how that balance affects demand in retail, tourism and real estate.
His approach keeps business coverage tied to everyday economic realities rather than abstract market commentary.
Data-driven business reporting with editorial oversight
As editor of the Buffalo Next section, Robinson combines editorial leadership with regular reporting and column writing. His beat choices and story framing show a preference for quantifiable trends, whether he is using national indices, federal statistics or industry reports to underpin local narratives. He frequently spells out specific figures - tax break amounts, price changes, earnings shifts - so that readers can see the scale of developments and economic movements rather than rely on vague characterizations.
Decades on the business desk give his coverage continuity; he has written through multiple economic cycles, energy transitions and shifts in the local corporate landscape. That experience shows in an ability to place current housing and development stories within longer-term patterns in investment, employment and consumer demand. His work stands out on the real estate beat for its blend of project-level detail, economic data and attention to how policy and incentives shape the built environment.
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.