Matt Mckenzie
Matt Mckenzie is a business journalist at The West Australian who connects real estate and construction stories to the wider economic and regulatory forces driving investment and housing supply. His coverage focuses on how policy, corporate decisions and market cycles translate into pressures on homes, projects and businesses, and who is accountable when those pressures spill over. He combines breaking news with analysis and commentary, using data, industry voices and concrete case studies to explain what is happening on the property beat and across the business landscape.
Housing supply and the building bubble
Mckenzie’s real estate work tracks the strain in housing supply and the consequences of rapid construction booms. In coverage of bank analysis on the home shortage, he highlights the States with the weakest performance on housing supply, framing shortages as an outcome of policy, finance and market behaviour rather than a single factor.[input] In a column on the building bubble, he examines who will be accountable for the surge in construction activity and the risks that come with inflated pipelines and stressed builders. His reporting in this area emphasises the chain from planning rules and red tape through to delivery on the ground, and the impact on buyers, tenants and the broader economy.
The through-line is that housing pressure is treated as a systemic business story, not a narrow property-market update.
Business of property, retail and major projects
Mckenzie’s property coverage sits inside a broader business brief, and he often uses individual companies and projects to show how investment trends play out in real time. In the property section, he has profiled a Perth-raised sports, beer and burger chain preparing to enter a crowded east coast market, tracing how its expansion strategy fits into competition, site selection and brand positioning.
His author biography highlights longstanding work on major projects and insolvencies, which gives his real estate reporting a focus on the viability of developments and the financial health of firms behind them.
He brings the same approach to technology-linked property stories, such as coverage of plans for a $67 million data centre to ride the AI megatrend, where land use, infrastructure and investment appetite intersect. Across these pieces, the consistent angle is how property, retail and large projects reflect wider business conditions and strategic choices.
Economy, energy and regulation
Mckenzie’s background on economics and energy gives his real estate coverage a strong regulatory and policy dimension. His work has explored how workplace exposure limits for a key pest control chemical threaten export trade and cloud an otherwise positive crop forecast, tying a technical regulatory change to business continuity and regional economic performance. His biography points to years of reporting on energy and major projects, and that experience feeds into stories where planning approvals, environmental rules and infrastructure decisions shape property outcomes. He often focuses on red tape delaying investment, explaining how compliance and approval processes affect project timing, risk and capital allocation.
This blend of sector detail and macro context distinguishes his reporting from narrower transaction-focused property coverage, positioning real estate within a wider economic frame.
Accountability, courts and powerful figures
Accountability is a recurring theme in Mckenzie’s work, cutting across business, property and justice stories. His biography emphasises holding the State’s most powerful to account, and this is visible in reporting where he confronts elusive business figures outside court as they avoid questions on high-stakes matters. The building bubble column explicitly asks who will carry responsibility for the consequences of an overheated construction market, moving beyond numbers to examine stewardship and governance. His approach treats courtrooms, regulators and boardrooms as connected venues where commercial decisions are tested and explained to the public. Taken together, these pieces show a reporter who uses the real estate and business beats to scrutinise decision-makers rather than simply relay market movements.
4 more real estate journalists.
Aleisha Dawson
Aleisha Dawson covers property where prestige deals, hard market data and lifestyle stories meet, with a particular focus on high-profile apartments and new projects in South East Queensland. She is a regional real estate editor within News Corp’s property network, overseeing property coverage for the Gold Coast Bulletin and contributing to Realestate.com.au’s property news. Her beat spans record-setting penthouse sales, off-market prestige deals, new apartment releases in landmark projects, and one-off high-value homes used as case studies in buyer behaviour. She tracks land and apartment markets with a data-led approach, using specific price points, volume figures and suburb lists. Dawson also reports on quirky homes, celebrity property, pop culture-linked locations and technology-shaped renovations, and her stories are widely republished by developers, agents and project marketers.
Blair Jackson
Blair Jackson explains housing through money: how prices, policy and banks shape the way people buy, sell and live. He is a reporter with the national wire service NewsWire, covering real estate and household finance across Australia. His work follows housing downturns, price movements, negative equity, mortgages, first-home buyers and existing borrowers. He reports on renters, poor housing conditions, high rents, repairs, affordability and housing inequality. He examines zoning, supply targets, tax changes, construction limits, development decisions and efforts to fix housing shortages. His finance coverage includes mortgage fraud, bank risk, interest rates, household costs and windfalls used to pay off property. He also covers auctions, listings, luxury homes, renovations and major developments. Jackson combines data, policy analysis, expert warnings, open-home and auction detail, and personal examples to show how financial decisions affect households and communities.
Bonnie Campbell
Bonnie Campbell is a luxury property reporter for The Australian Financial Review who focuses on the very top of the residential market, where big-ticket homes, mega-mansions and high-profile sales set and test price records. She covers trophy properties, record-breaking deals and prestige streets, using individual sales as case studies in how wealth, status and grand houses move through the market. Her stories track extreme price movements, large-scale renovations, unusual features and multi-million dollar listings, and link them to high-net-worth buyers, business leaders and public figures. She repeatedly returns to prestige coastal, resort and lifestyle markets, explaining how scarcity, views and amenity support multi-million dollar valuations. Alongside single-property features, she produces roundups of major luxury deals to show patterns in where the biggest money flows and which houses define the top end.
Caroline Delaney
Caroline Delaney is a senior property and features journalist at the Irish Examiner whose work links individual homes, damaged houses and outdoor spaces to the wider housing landscape. She covers residential listings with clear, price‑led pieces on specific homes coming to market, highlighting core details such as guide price, size, house type and a plain sense of location. Her property features look at fire damage and repair, treating house fires as a structural issue for the housing market and following cases through court proceedings and the process of putting homes right. She also reports on outdoor spaces and synthetic lawns, including environmental experts’ views on plastic turf in domestic gardens. Her news and features background keeps the tone fact‑led rather than promotional and gives her coverage a practical focus on aspiration, risk and everyday use of housing.