Joni Hess
Joni Hess covers how New Orleans neighborhoods change on the ground, with a focus on real estate stories that center residents, small property owners and the public agencies that shape redevelopment. Her reporting often follows what happens after big plans and incentives are announced, tracking whether investment, public policy and basic services reach long-neglected corridors and communities.
Redevelopment and disinvestment in New Orleans East
Hess spends significant time on New Orleans East, documenting the gap between its commercial potential and the reality of vacant sites, slow-moving projects and strained infrastructure. In her coverage of property owners calling for help with redevelopment in the area, she digs into why plans stall, what kinds of incentives or zoning changes are on the table, and how long-time owners weigh selling, holding or reinvesting. She highlights the interplay between city hall, council members and economic development agencies, but keeps the story anchored in what it means for landowners trying to recover value after years of disinvestment.
Her work in this corridor often surfaces specific parcels, proposed uses and timelines, giving a granular picture of what “revitalization” looks like beyond press conferences.
Policy, incentives and the machinery of redevelopment
Across her real estate beat, Hess returns to the mechanics of how projects get financed and approved. She covers public authorities, incentive programs and redevelopment tools as live factors in whether a corridor turns around or remains stuck. When city officials push new plans for blighted commercial centers or large tracts of underused land, she tracks how those commitments evolve, what conditions are attached and how they intersect with broader city priorities like hurricane preparedness or infrastructure upgrades.
Her stories tend to explain who controls key decisions, where bottlenecks occur and what options property owners have within the current policy framework, rather than treating redevelopment as an abstract trend.
Community impact and the lived experience of growth
Hess treats real estate as a community story as much as a business one. In covering rising housing costs and redevelopment pressures, she draws out how shifts in property values, insurance, taxes and rents affect families’ ability to stay in place and maintain stability. Her work often connects the cost of living to the health of neighborhood institutions, from small businesses along commercial corridors to the social fabric that makes specific areas feel like home. Even when she writes about large-scale plans or major sites, she threads in resident concerns about displacement, safety and quality of life, showing how policy decisions play out block by block.
Service journalism on preparedness and local systems
Alongside development pieces, Hess contributes service-oriented coverage that helps residents navigate local systems, particularly around seasonal risks and city planning. In advance of hurricane season, she distills what residents need to know from official briefings, response plans and infrastructure updates, clarifying how emergency preparations intersect with ongoing issues like drainage, building standards and neighborhood vulnerability. These pieces keep her close to city agencies and utility providers while reinforcing a consistent theme in her work: the connection between long-term investment, everyday resilience and the safety of homes and properties.
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.