Grant Welker
Grant Welker is a journalist at the Boston Business Journal who covers commercial and residential real estate, with a focus on how individual deals and projects connect to broader housing and development trends. His beat blends transaction reporting, policy coverage and special projects work, drawing on a background in data journalism and long-running business stories. He joined the publication in 2021 as a projects reporter, bringing experience from business and daily newsrooms and extensive work on major retail and development sagas.
Commercial and residential real estate deals
Welker’s core coverage centers on significant property transactions, both commercial and residential, with close attention to pricing, financing and changes in asset values. His recent work includes stories on Cape and Islands affordable housing projects breaking ground, a Fenway residential building refinanced for $132 million, and new filings putting the cost of a planned Cambridge development at $4.5 billion. He reports on city decisions and market dynamics through pieces on Boston residential projects winning key votes and a West End office tower selling for $28 million, less than half its previous sale price. On the residential side, he covers high-end deals such as a combined condominium unit across from the Public Garden that sold for $21.5 million, detailing square footage, outdoor space and the building’s place among luxury properties.
He also writes on major apartment tower sales, such as a Boston tower changing hands for $234 million, situating individual transactions within shifting valuations across the market.
Housing production, zoning and affordability
A distinguishing strand of Welker’s real estate coverage is his sustained attention to housing production targets, zoning reforms and the politics of affordability. In a recent piece on the state housing chief, he reports that 35,000 new homes have been built while a 220,000-home goal remains far off, and highlights milestones under the MBTA Communities law and an accessory dwelling unit overhaul. He connects those programs to specific production figures, such as 10,000 units under one law and 2,000 under another, tying policy design directly to the pace of new housing creation. His reporting on a starter-home ballot proposal explains how minimum lot sizes of two or three acres in a wealthy town would be reworked to allow lots of roughly a tenth of an acre, and frames the issue through the backing of top statewide elected officials. Across these stories, he consistently anchors debates about zoning and ballot questions in concrete numbers, statutory goals and examples from individual communities.
Conversions, waterfront sites and special projects
Welker spends notable time on redevelopment stories, particularly conversions and waterfront sites where the built environment is being substantially reimagined. His coverage of a downtown Brutalist office tower at 133 Federal Street traces the building’s history under different names, notes its design by architect Paul Rudolph, and explains how city tax incentives are helping owners convert it into 155 apartments. In another piece, he reports on a dilapidated office building on Commercial Wharf, damaged in a 2011 fire and long seen as an eyesore, that is now proposed to be demolished for a boutique hotel with 35 to 45 rooms and a first-floor restaurant after a developer bought the site for $4 million.
These stories show a pattern: he combines architectural context, regulatory levers and developer plans to explain how underused properties are repositioned in the market.
Beyond core real estate, Welker’s special projects work extends into sports business and other sectors, often with the same emphasis on valuation and rankings. A recent article on the Bruins notes that the team is now the fifth most valuable in the NHL, that its value has risen 10% to $3.3 billion, and that it slipped in the league ranking behind another franchise. His background includes covering retail, higher education and sports business for business publications, along with extensive reporting on the Market Basket grocery chain dispute that led to a prolonged employee and customer boycott. He co-authored a book on that saga that has been recognized as a leading business title by outlets such as Forbes and Porchlight, reinforcing a track record of deep, narrative-driven business reporting that now informs his approach to real estate and development coverage.
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.