Michael Cole
Michael Cole is the founder and lead analyst at Mingtiandi, an independent platform for Asia real estate intelligence, and his work focuses on how investors, developers and executives shape commercial property markets across the region. He uses executive move coverage, market analysis and event reporting to trace how strategy, regulation and operating performance translate into transactions and portfolios. Mingtiandi publishes Asia real estate news and research on a daily cycle and reaches a large audience of industry professionals, which keeps his reporting closely tied to live market activity.
Executive moves and leadership changes
Cole devotes a significant share of his output to senior appointments and departures under Mingtiandi’s People banner, tracking how leadership changes reshape major real estate investors and operating platforms. His pieces follow individual moves such as a private markets head leaving a global pension fund or executives stepping into new roles at industrial and logistics specialists, setting each transition against the organisation’s broader capital and growth plans. He also produces People in the News roundups that bring together multiple executive changes across the region, giving short, factual summaries of who is moving, where they are going, and what part of the property market they oversee.
This focus on personnel combines deal-focused real estate reporting with boardroom detail, making leadership and governance a recurring lens in his coverage of the sector.
Market trends, capital flows and policy
Alongside personnel coverage, Cole writes on market conditions and capital flows in key Asian real estate hubs, with stories that quantify shifts in rents, values and investor sentiment. His reporting on Hong Kong’s top retail district has documented steep declines in shop rents in areas such as Causeway Bay, using expert commentary to show how structural and cyclical pressures filter through to landlords and tenants.
Cole’s work on China’s investment rules explains regulatory changes in cross-border transactions, detailing how new frameworks affect property investors and the forums where these policies are debated. He also brings this policy and capital perspective to conferences such as the PERE Asia Summit, where he has taken the analytical side of debates on the future of outbound investment by mainland buyers and the risks embedded in their overseas acquisitions.
Across these pieces, he treats regulation, pricing and capital flows as practical questions for owners and fund managers, rather than abstract macro themes.
Sector reports on retail, proptech and living
Cole has led and authored research-driven features that examine specific segments of the Asia property market, particularly retail, proptech and new living formats. In Mingtiandi’s China Mall 2020 retail report he analyses how rapid mall development and widespread smartphone use are reshaping the country’s retail property landscape and marketing practices, tying digital behaviour directly to the performance of shopping centres. His proptech work, including a study on how COVID-19 accelerated technology adoption in Asia, shows how developers and investors are reworking processes and systems in response to operational stress, with an emphasis on practical applications rather than theory.
Cole’s coverage extends to co-living and student housing, where he explores business models and expansion plans through both written reporting and research projects that look at how these formats fit into institutional portfolios. These sector pieces sit between news and white paper, combining transaction detail, operator strategy and consumer trends into concise narratives about where growth is happening.
Event-driven interviews and forums
Cole often turns Mingtiandi’s own events and external conferences into editorial content, using interviews and panel discussions to surface detailed views from senior industry figures.
Spotlight interviews, such as his session with the chief executive of Scape Australia, give room for executives to lay out expansion plans into markets like Japan, as well as operating strategies for student living platforms. Coverage of Mingtiandi’s proptech and co-living forums captures how developers, investors and service providers are responding to structural changes, with Cole shaping the discussion through targeted questions and then distilling the key points into accessible write-ups. His presence as a chair and moderator at major industry events aligns with his written work, which consistently treats conference stages as sources of substantive insight rather than promotional platforms.
Across these event-driven pieces, he maintains a strict focus on investment rationale, operating performance and market implications, reinforcing the analytical tone that runs through his broader reporting.
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.