Latrice Williams
Latrice Williams covers the growth pressures and development decisions reshaping communities in Bryan and Effingham County, with a focus on how large-scale housing projects and related infrastructure change daily life for residents. She reports for Savannah Morning News on real estate, land use and community impact, often following a project from early approval to the first families moving in.
Housing expansion and master-planned communities
Williams’ core coverage tracks major residential projects as they move from concept to construction and occupancy.
Her reporting on the Heartwood development, including the milestone of reaching 1,500 residents and the addition of new homes and a church, shows how she treats master-planned communities as long-running stories rather than one-off announcements, returning to them as they grow and add amenities. She highlights what each phase brings - from single-family homes to luxury multifamily units - and ties those changes to questions about capacity, community character and demand for housing.
She brings the same lens to smaller towns facing sudden growth.
In Springfield, she reports on approval of a new housing subdivision and explains how a single project can alter a “tiny town” as it scales up to hundreds of homes. Across these pieces, she treats residential development as a structural force, not just a business transaction, and keeps attention on who will live in these neighborhoods and how they will experience them.
Local government, zoning and infrastructure
Williams frequently reports from public meetings where local officials weigh the tradeoffs of growth.
Her coverage of Effingham County commissioners reviewing new housing developments alongside a proposed $289,500 transportation study shows how she connects real estate decisions to roads, traffic and public investment, rather than isolating them as stand-alone projects. She pays close attention to rezoning, permitting and infrastructure planning, explaining how these decisions either clear the way for development or attempt to manage its side effects.
In community posts and outreach, she identifies herself as a reporter for Savannah Morning News and actively seeks input from homeowners and residents dealing with development-related issues, such as disputes with builders or property managers. That engagement feeds into stories that examine not only the formal decisions made by commissions and councils, but also the lived experience of people subject to those decisions.
Community impact and homeowner experience
A distinguishing feature of Williams’ work is her focus on the people inside the developments she covers. She uses social channels to invite homeowners facing problems with specific housing providers to share their experiences, signaling that resident concerns are a key driver of her reporting rather than an afterthought.
When she revisits large projects like Heartwood, she does so with an eye on how amenities, housing types and growth targets affect current and future residents, not just investors or developers.
Her stories often surface tensions between rapid growth and quality of life, whether through coverage of traffic studies tied to new neighborhoods or the approval of subdivisions in small towns that are still adjusting to higher densities. By consistently centering homeowners, commuters and families, she positions real estate coverage as a form of community reporting, following both the promises and the frustrations that come with living in fast-growing areas.
Bryan and Effingham County beat reporting
Williams is a general assignment reporter focused on Bryan and Effingham County, and she carries that geographic focus into her real estate coverage. She reports across topics within those counties but returns repeatedly to housing, new developments and related public infrastructure, building a running record of how these communities manage growth.
Her beat work is grounded in attending local government meetings, tracking developer announcements and maintaining open lines of communication with residents through dedicated community channels.
This mix of development coverage, government reporting and resident outreach gives her stories both a regulatory and human context. Projects are documented not just as numbers of units or phases on a site plan, but as decisions made in specific counties with specific consequences for the people who live there.
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.