Dennis Rodkin
Dennis Rodkin covers residential real estate as a senior reporter at Crain's Chicago Business, tying market news to the stories of the properties, neighborhoods and policies behind it. He has been on the residential beat there since 2014, building a body of work that ranges from coverage of luxury home sales to analysis of housing affordability, discrimination and preservation. His reporting stands out for combining market data with architectural history and social context, making individual transactions part of a larger story about how people live and how cities change.
Residential market coverage and luxury home sales
On the core residential market beat, Rodkin tracks both everyday home-price trends and headline-making sales. He writes data-driven stories on shifts in local home prices and their impact on affordability, including pieces that highlight rising Chicago-area prices and the strain they place on buyers.
At the high end of the market, his coverage includes lakefront and estate properties, documenting record-setting deals such as a Lake Bluff mansion that sold for $10.5 million, the highest home price reported so far in 2026.
His reporting on notable listings and sales often follows homes over long marketing cycles, noting years on the market and multimillion-dollar price cuts before a sale, as in his coverage of the “Empire” television series mansion that ultimately found a buyer after extensive reductions.
In broadcast and audio segments, he discusses neighborhoods where renewed high-end activity signals shifts in demand, including coverage of areas like the Gold Coast showing signs of revival through recent luxury transactions. This work gives readers and listeners a clear picture of where money is moving in the residential market and what that means for specific streets and buildings.
Housing affordability, discrimination and policy
Rodkin’s work also follows the pressures that the housing market places on different groups of residents, treating affordability as a core part of the real estate story.
His reporting on rising home prices in the Chicago region has underscored how limited supply and escalating costs exacerbate an affordability crisis for would-be buyers. He connects these trends to concerns about who is being priced out of ownership and which neighborhoods are most affected.
Beyond prices, he has covered housing discrimination, including discussions of discriminatory treatment in suburbs such as Tinley Park, and links such issues to broader debates over fair housing and access.
In feature reporting, he has explored scholarship on how housing has shaped race, profiling work by academics who trace the connections between real estate practices and racial inequality over time. He pays attention to policy responses, writing about legislative efforts around “missing middle” housing designed to expand attainable options and relieve pressure on both buyers and renters. This strand of his coverage positions him as a reporter who treats residential real estate as a policy and equity issue as much as a market one.
Architecture, history and preservation
Rodkin brings a preservationist’s eye to his coverage, often delving into the architectural and historical significance of the buildings he writes about. He has reported on rescued elements from Adler and Sullivan’s demolished Walker warehouse, documenting long-forgotten stones and the work of local preservationists and architectural historians to salvage and interpret them. His stories follow the fate of notable historic properties, such as 19th-century buildings being sold by institutions like the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and examine what those transactions mean for the city’s architectural heritage.
He is described as an architecture sleuth who traces the industrial and commercial past of sites now repurposed for new uses, including facilities once occupied by Ferrara candy makers. In these pieces he draws out the layers of history embedded in structures that now serve very different roles, connecting past and present through the lens of real estate. This preservation-focused reporting complements his market coverage and makes his work distinctive on the beat, giving readers a sense of how deals reshape the built environment and how much of the city’s architectural fabric is at risk or being saved.
Beat role, formats and market explanation
Rodkin is a senior reporter covering residential real estate for Crain's Chicago Business, a role he has held since he joined the publication in 2014. He returned to the masthead in 2015 to resume reporting on residential real estate after a brief departure, continuing a long association with the beat.
Over that period he has built a reputation as a specialist in local housing, with sustained attention to both individual properties and wider market dynamics.
He extends his reporting beyond the page through regular appearances on news and talk programs, where he explains local housing trends, disclosure rules and notable deals for broader audiences.
Broadcast segments have featured him discussing topics such as new real estate disclosure requirements, the latest sales data and issues like housing discrimination. Industry events have highlighted him as a speaker on residential real estate, reflecting how professionals look to him for insight into the market. Across these formats, his focus stays on explaining what market movements mean for buyers, sellers and neighborhoods, rather than presenting real estate as a series of isolated transactions.
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.