Shawn Raymundo
Shawn Raymundo follows how development decisions, business openings and local politics reshape the built environment in Phoenix, Scottsdale and the rest of Maricopa County, with a focus on real estate, land use and city accountability. He works as a city watchdog reporter for The Arizona Republic, concentrating on city halls, county offices and the concrete changes they drive on the ground. His coverage combines deal-level detail on specific properties with close scrutiny of the public processes and power dynamics behind those changes.
City development and commercial real estate
Raymundo’s real estate reporting tracks what is moving into familiar sites and how those changes alter neighborhoods, traffic and local business mix. His work on midtown Phoenix’s Los Olivos car wash looks at what is replacing a long-standing operation, explaining the new use, ownership and context rather than treating the change as a simple business item.
He applies the same approach in Scottsdale, where he has reported on the restaurant Quiriego taking over the former Carrabba's Italian Grill location, tying the new tenant to broader trends in dining, redevelopment and corridor identity. Coverage of a surf-and-turf restaurant project in Phoenix similarly situates the construction timeline and concept in the surrounding area’s evolution, illustrating how individual projects contribute to a broader pattern of investment and change.
Across these stories, he treats commercial real estate as both business news and city news, tying openings and closures back to zoning decisions, permitting, and the people living around the properties.
Local government, elections and policy scrutiny
Beyond individual parcels and projects, Raymundo closely follows local government decisions that set the rules for growth, taxation and everyday city life. He has fact-checked claims from Scottsdale City Council candidates, testing statements about water, roads and other civic issues against available data and city records to give voters a clear view of where rhetoric diverges from reality.
Ahead of the Scottsdale council runoff, he produced an explainer on a public candidate forum, outlining the stakes of the race, the format of the event and how residents could engage with the process. His reporting on the crowded Phoenix City Council field walks through the slate of contenders and the issues defining the campaign, showing how council outcomes influence development and service priorities across the city. At the county level, he has covered delayed Maricopa County property tax bills, clarifying why notices went out late, what deadlines still apply and how residents can respond without being penalized.
He has also unpacked Proposition 319, which asks voters to decide the future of photo radar cameras, explaining the ballot language, the practical impact of a yes or no vote and how the measure fits into wider debates over enforcement and civil liberties. In Scottsdale, his coverage of the city’s choice of a new trolley operator and the resulting court fight illustrates how procurement decisions ripple through transportation services and local business relationships.
Together, these stories show a reporter who treats city and county policy as something residents need translated into plain terms, with attention to who benefits and who carries the cost.
Accountability and public safety in community stories
Raymundo also reports on public safety and high-stakes incidents when they intersect with government responsibility and community trust.
His work on a state senator’s social media post spreading 9/11 conspiracy content captures both the political fallout and the norms being challenged, connecting an online statement to questions of public judgment and representation. In coverage of two dogs rescued from a house fire in southwest Phoenix, he frames a human-interest event within the response of public safety agencies and the conditions that led to the incident, treating it as part of the broader fabric of city life rather than isolated spectacle. A co-reported story on the family of an Arizona State University hockey player seeking a criminal investigation after the athlete collapsed during a team training exercise examines how institutions respond when a serious injury raises questions of oversight and accountability.
Across these pieces, he focuses on the systems around individual events - officials’ decisions, agency responses and procedural gaps - rather than relying solely on personal narrative.
Background in government and community reporting
Raymundo’s current beat builds on years reporting on government, politics and local communities in different regions.
Earlier in his career he covered Guam’s legislature and governor’s office as a government accountability reporter, following policy decisions and political dynamics in a small but complex jurisdiction. He later worked in South Orange County, California, reporting on local government, environmental and education issues while helping oversee a newsroom focused on community journalism. That background shows in his current work at The Arizona Republic, where he brings a mix of document-driven reporting, attention to ordinary residents and familiarity with how small policy shifts can have outsized effects on specific neighborhoods and business corridors.
His social profile describes him as a Phoenix and Scottsdale city watchdog reporter, underscoring his focus on holding local institutions to account while explaining the tangible impacts of their decisions on land use, taxation and everyday civic 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.