Jake Indursky
Jake Indursky tracks how money, technology and policy collide in residential real estate and what that means for owners, tenants and brokers on the ground. He is a reporter at The Real Deal covering high-end deals, tenant upheaval, corporate strategy and regulatory shifts across multiple U.S. housing markets. His work leans on deep access and narrative detail, using individual buildings, executives and lawsuits to explain broader changes in the business of housing.
Residential markets under pressure
Indursky’s core beat is the residential market, especially the points where pricing, policy and tenant experience pull against each other. He covers questions of affordability and public support directly, including the debate over whether New York City’s rental voucher programs actually save money for the public purse.
He reports on displacement in high-end neighborhoods, such as his work on the exodus of wealthy tenants from 800 Fifth Avenue after its sale to a condo developer, tracking how a single ownership change can unsettle a building full of long-term residents.
His coverage of a crypto billionaire behind the Upper West Side’s priciest townhouse trade shows the same focus on how new sources of wealth enter established residential corridors, and how those deals reset price expectations around them. He follows regional turning points as well, charting how boomtown markets around the U.S. have shifted into buyer’s markets and where new opportunity might emerge when rapid growth cools.
In that work he explains slowing home price growth and rising days on market through interviews with brokerage leaders, grounding macro shifts in the day-to-day business of agents.
Indursky also reports on the mechanics of new development sales, looking closely at opaque or “quiet” dealmaking in Manhattan condo projects. His coverage of secret deals at 80 Clarkson and other new developments examines undisclosed pricing, discount practices and how top brokers match units with buyers without traditional marketing campaigns.
Across these stories he distinguishes himself by treating luxury and middle-market housing as parts of the same system, tying individual deals and buildings to the larger balance of supply, demand and leverage.
Technology, iBuyers and AI in dealmaking
Technology’s impact on residential real estate is a recurring thread in Indursky’s reporting. He has written in depth about Opendoor and its CEO Kaz Nejatian, producing an inside story on the company’s reboot after an investor uprising that earned a top industry award for residential trade coverage.
In that work he draws on investor chatter and internal signals to explain how an iBuyer tightens its belt, returns to its tech-focused roots and attempts again to scale a model for buying and selling homes online.
His stories also probe how artificial intelligence has entered dealmaking. He has written about homeowners who rely solely on tools like ChatGPT to guide pricing and sales decisions, and how that changes expectations on both sides of the transaction. In coverage of a major brokerage’s AI overhaul, he documents how agents see AI infiltrating the process in frustrating ways, including clients leaning on automated valuations that misstate likely sale prices or appropriate bid levels.
Across these pieces, Indursky strips away hype to show where technology is genuinely reshaping workflows and where it is simply adding noise or pressure for brokers.
Power players, lawsuits and high-stakes drama
Indursky often focuses on the people driving major shifts in the industry and the conflicts that surround them. He has charted Compass CEO Robert Reffkin’s course after the acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, examining how a multibillion-dollar deal fits into a push to turn the company into a leading national real estate destination. His work on developer families in transition looks at how a third generation inherits and reshapes a legacy enterprise, moving from “world-building” projects to careful brand management and financial strategy.
He covers legal battles with real business consequences, including a RICO lawsuit against developer Michael Shvo that accuses him of using condo projects and club ventures to enrich himself and associates at the expense of investors and residents. Colleagues’ write-ups of his story on developer Yitzchak Tessler highlight his ability to paint a vivid portrait of a central figure while showing how missteps in development can quickly snowball into larger problems. Indursky’s engagement with stories about rent-stabilized landlordship and controversial operators reflects a consistent interest in how personal ambition, legal risk and capital flows intersect in residential real estate.
He extends that lens to markets under political strain, contributing reporting to coverage of San Francisco’s mall collapse, RICO turmoil and broader political shake-up. In each case he anchors complex disputes and restructurings in the lived experience of investors, residents and business partners, rather than treating lawsuits and restructurings as purely abstract events.
Format: narrative features and on-air analysis
Indursky works across formats, combining long-form features with on-air analysis. His editors frequently point to his pieces as examples of access-driven reporting, noting his ability to gain the confidence of executives and then use that access to tell inside stories that reluctant subjects would prefer to keep controlled.
His writing leans on scene-building and specific detail, breaking down pivotal moments in projects or careers to explain how individual decisions accumulate into major outcomes.
He also appears on The Real Deal’s “Deconstruct” podcast, where he discusses stories from his beat in real time. On one episode he describes the tenant exodus at 800 Fifth Avenue and the pressures facing residents as a rental tower converts to condos, situating the building’s experience within a crowded Upper East Side market.
On another he joins a conversation about Sunnyside Yards, exploring whether a long-discussed Queens megadevelopment can actually move forward and using segments to update listeners on everything from the “Commie Corridor” to new ventures by prominent executives.
Across print and audio, Indursky’s work is marked by a consistent focus on how decisions by powerful actors ripple through residential markets. He combines market analysis, policy detail and human stories, making his coverage useful for understanding both headline-grabbing luxury trades and the quieter structural shifts in housing and brokerage.
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.