Susan Campbell
Susan Campbell focuses on how housing market trends and consumer issues affect everyday people, turning complex real estate data into clear takeaways for buyers, sellers, and renters in Arizona. She covers the housing market as a consumer reporter at Arizona’s Family, with a steady drumbeat of stories on home prices, sales activity, mortgage costs, and scams tied to homeownership and travel.
Tracking Arizona’s housing market month by month
Campbell provides regular, data-driven snapshots of the Metro Phoenix and statewide housing markets, with repeated coverage of home prices, inventory, and sales activity. Recent stories include pieces on how the metro Phoenix housing market has seen a seller advantage, how home prices tick up while pending sales drop, and how the market shifts while home prices level off.
She follows changes in listings and closed sales, reporting on drops in new listings and closed deals and examining periods when pending sales increase while prices stay flat.
Her coverage often ties local conditions to broader trends and forecasts. She reports on Arizona home prices jumping 5% year over year, the state posting the second-highest home price growth in the country since 2019, and home prices picking up pace as mortgage rates fall. She also explains projections from market analysts, with stories on Arizona home prices expected to rise modestly over the next year and predictions that prices could drop modestly instead, using forecasts from sources such as Zillow.
These pieces rely on hard numbers and charts while staying focused on what changes mean for people trying to buy or sell in the current climate.
Mortgage costs, affordability, and who can buy
Beyond headline price movements, Campbell highlights how financing and affordability shape access to housing. In her reporting on most homebuyers overpaying on their mortgage, she uses a Bankrate analysis to show how interest rates and loan choices can lead to higher long-term costs for buyers.
She breaks down what those findings mean for consumers entering the market and where they risk leaving money on the table.
She also covers rental and ownership affordability with an emphasis on specific demographic groups. One recent story looks at how rental costs in Arizona remain affordable for most residents, drawing on statewide data to assess the pressure on renters and where costs are rising. Another examines how the millennial homeownership rate in Arizona tops the national average, connecting survey and housing data to the experiences of younger buyers trying to get into the market.
Across these pieces, she uses external reports and expert analysis to frame who is managing to buy, who is renting, and how policy or market shifts might change that balance.
Consumer protection in housing and beyond
Campbell’s consumer beat extends into frauds and schemes that intersect with housing and financial decisions.
She reports on a fake visa lottery scam that swindles immigrants, detailing how the scheme operates and the risks for people seeking legal residency. In another investigation, she covers how investigators shut down a suspected timeshare scheme in Sedona, explaining the tactics used to lure customers and the enforcement actions taken against those involved.
These stories fall under a watchdog approach, warning viewers about emerging scams and highlighting the work of regulators and law enforcement.
She also addresses broader money-saving and consumer topics, such as holiday travel tips to save time and money, where she focuses on practical strategies for cutting costs and avoiding common pitfalls. Through the Arizona’s Family “On Your Side” franchise, she appears as part of a team that offers guidance on housing, car buying, avoiding scams, cheap travel, and general ways to save money, including in the “On Your Side” podcast with Gary Harper and other colleagues. Her television work includes “On Your Side: The Home Edition,” where she takes viewers inside Valley homes and breaks down the housing market on a recurring program devoted to real estate and consumer issues.
Role and background as a consumer reporter
Campbell is a consumer reporter for Arizona’s Family, covering real estate and consumer topics with an emphasis on the Phoenix and Arizona markets. She joined the station after several years reporting for television stations in Texas, bringing broadcast experience to her current mix of daily housing reports, investigative consumer pieces, and service journalism.
Across her work, she keeps the focus on what market data, forecasts, and enforcement actions mean for people making big financial decisions, particularly around buying a home, choosing a mortgage, signing a timeshare, or planning travel.
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.