Kate Kealey
Kate Kealey reports on how growth, real estate projects and business decisions reshape the built environment and daily life, with a focus on clear detail and the direct impact on residents. She covers real estate, development and business activity for the Des Moines Register as a growth and development reporter. Her work combines project-focused coverage with service pieces that answer practical questions about places, infrastructure and local change.
Real estate projects and urban growth
Kealey’s core coverage tracks new construction and redevelopment projects, especially those that change skylines or repurpose prominent sites.
She writes about major residential developments, including an exclusive on Iowa’s tallest residential tower as it tops out, highlighting design details, construction milestones and what the project adds to the housing market. She reports on new corporate headquarters, such as a planned five-story, 75,000‑square‑foot mass‑timber building for a hospitality and real estate company in the East Village, explaining the rise of mass‑timber construction and how this project extends that trend.
Her reporting on the redevelopment of the former OfficeMax site on Ingersoll Avenue into a senior day care facility shows the move from retail to care services, outlining square footage, proposed uses and associated tax agreements under consideration.
Across these stories Kealey ties architectural and planning choices to business strategy and public incentives.
She details city‑owned parcels, preliminary development agreements and tax break structures, clarifying how public policy supports or shapes private projects. Her coverage treats large real estate moves as part of a broader pattern of urban growth, with attention to timelines, council actions and the surrounding neighborhood context.
Business closures, corporate shifts and economic impact
Kealey also reports on business contractions and closures, tracking how companies adjust operations and what those decisions mean for workers and longtime customers. Her coverage of layoffs at a dog food plant in Independence after a public incentive package connects job cuts to earlier financial support, laying out the scale of the investment, the number of affected employees and the company’s explanation for the change. In a story on the closure of a West Des Moines restaurant after 20 years in the same location, she records the end of a familiar venue and situates it within broader retail and dining churn.
These pieces place individual decisions within local economic trends, using concrete numbers and dates to ground broader themes.
Her background includes reporting on local government and community news for a smaller newspaper, which informs the way she reads corporate decisions against public commitments and community expectations. The business and employment stories keep the focus on tangible impact rather than abstract market commentary, emphasizing how specific plants, restaurants and employers are woven into everyday routines.
Service reporting on infrastructure, events and environment
Kealey maintains a steady stream of service pieces that address practical questions about transportation, utilities, weather and local events. She explains Iowa State Fair parking and shuttle options with maps and step‑by‑step guidance, helping fairgoers navigate lots, routes and schedules. When a major internet provider suffers an outage affecting thousands, she documents where service is down and what customers can expect, with a clear breakdown of impacted areas.
Her coverage of haze and orange moons over Iowa links unusual skies to wildfire smoke and air quality concerns, translating meteorological information into direct, understandable explanations.
She also writes seasonal and event‑based service pieces, such as guides to frost dates around Iowa and vendor counts at the Downtown Winter Farmers’ Market. These stories blend historical data, schedules and simple how‑to details so readers can plan planting, shopping or outings around reliable information.
The service orientation extends her growth and development beat into everyday life, treating infrastructure and environmental conditions as part of the lived experience of local residents.
Breaking news and public safety
Alongside her development and service work, Kealey contributes breaking news coverage focused on public safety incidents and sudden disruptions. She has reported on shootings that injure multiple people, providing immediate information on locations, police presence and the status of the investigation. In coverage of a homicide in Runnells, she sets out confirmed facts from law enforcement and notes the ongoing nature of the inquiry without speculation.
Her story on a fire causing significant damage at Linn’s Haunted House details the estimated $20,000 in losses and the possible delay to the attraction’s opening.
These pieces share the same plain, direct style as her development coverage, emphasizing verified facts, timelines and official statements. Together, they show a reporter who moves between planned projects and sudden events, keeping attention on how both shape community spaces, businesses and daily life.
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.