Li Khan
Li Khan reports on how growth, development, tourism and real estate are reshaping Hilton Head Island for The Island Packet. She focuses on the way new projects, market shifts and local policies affect people who live and work on the island, rather than treating real estate as only transactions or listings. Her coverage blends data, on-the-ground reporting and historical context, giving readers a clear picture of how the island is changing and why it matters.
Hilton Head housing projects and real estate market
Khan’s core work tracks the island’s housing pipeline and property market, from workforce projects to luxury offerings. She highlights major developments in explainer pieces that map out multiple projects at once, such as a rundown of five Hilton Head housing projects residents should watch over the year, detailing locations, unit counts and construction timelines.
She also covers individual proposals, including new multifamily plans like a 250-unit apartment complex on an abandoned condo site, paying attention to how these projects reuse existing land and fit into broader growth patterns.
Market reporting is a regular part of her beat.
When detached home prices fell in March on Hilton Head Island, she broke down shifts in median sale prices and condo and villa trends using data from the local Realtors association, framing what the numbers mean for buyers and sellers. Her real estate coverage ranges from attainable housing to high-end offerings, such as a feature on a $15 million private island for sale near Hilton Head that combines listing details with a visual “take a peek” format.
Across these stories, she treats real estate as both an economic indicator and a practical concern for residents looking for housing, investment or stability.
Policy debates, short-term rentals and local governance
Beyond the market, Khan closely follows the policies and political decisions that shape how property can be used on Hilton Head Island. Her reporting on short-term rentals examines tensions between realtors, residents and town officials during council discussions about pausing new permits, capturing the arguments on all sides and clearly outlining what a 90-day pause would mean in practice.
She reports meeting details with precision, noting motions, time extensions and statements from individual council members to show how decisions are made.
She applies the same attention to transparency and process in coverage of town-owned properties. In a piece on “potential litigation” surrounding plans for the former Wild Wing Cafe site, she explains how council members discuss legal questions and personnel matters behind closed doors and then walks readers through the specific allowances for executive sessions under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act. By quoting the statute and connecting it to a concrete property dispute, she shows how real estate, law and public access intersect. Her work also extends to regulatory fights beyond land use, such as a story about a Beaufort County man who helped ignite a statewide red light camera fight, where she follows one resident’s campaign into broader policy debate.
History, culture and a sense of place
Khan often situates present-day growth within the island’s longer history, using narrative features to deepen readers’ understanding of Hilton Head. In coverage of the 1893 Hilton Head hurricane, she revisits an era before modern storm prediction to show how the disaster exposed the need for better forecasting, connecting archival material and expert explanation to the island’s vulnerability today. Another feature on Hilton Head’s “forgotten” Revolutionary War clashes with Daufuskie brings to light little-known local skirmishes, combining historical research with clear storytelling about geography and conflict.
Her interest in history and memory extends beyond strictly real estate topics. A Charlotte Observer column on new scholarship about Harriet Tubman in South Carolina uses first-person narrative and reporting from a local talk to explore how updated historical accounts can arrive at crucial moments for the state. She also writes arts and culture pieces rooted in community voices, such as a rainy-day reading guide built from recommendations by Hilton Head librarians, reinforcing her focus on how residents experience the island’s cultural life.
This blend of historical and cultural reporting gives her real estate and growth stories a distinctive backdrop: Hilton Head is treated as a place with deep layers, not just a market.
Infrastructure, tourism and visual storytelling
Khan covers growth-related infrastructure alongside housing and property, often using video and visual formats. Her story on construction around a South Carolina home bought by Tyler Perry for a Hilton Head grandmother includes video that shows how the surrounding area is changing, turning a celebrity-linked property into a lens on local development. In another piece, she gives readers a guided look at the new Hilton Head airport terminal through a video walkthrough, emphasizing upgrades and design changes that matter for travelers and tourism.
These visual stories sit within her broader beat on growth and tourism while making complex projects accessible.
Her professional background reinforces this focus on watchdog-style and community-centered reporting. Khan covers Hilton Head Island for The Island Packet and previously served as editor in chief of The Peralta Citizen, a watchdog student-led news outlet.
She describes herself as an early-career journalist covering growth and development, tourism and real estate on Hilton Head Island, and her body of work aligns with that description, consistently tying development and infrastructure back to everyday life on the island.
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.