Tim Grant
Tim Grant covers the financial side of housing, focusing on how real estate decisions intersect with personal finance, retirement planning and consumer risk. He writes for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where his reporting links everyday choices about mortgages, homebuying and homeownership to broader trends in the housing market and the economy.
Housing market and real estate business
Grant reports regularly on the regional housing market and the business of real estate services. Recent work examines how the local housing market is adding value while other areas struggle, tracking price movements, demand and inventory through data-driven stories aimed at homeowners and buyers.
He covers the expansion strategies of major real estate brokerages, including mergers and growth moves that reshape competition and affect how consumers find and finance homes. His housing coverage often looks at structural factors - interest rates, supply constraints, corporate decisions - and connects them to what buyers and sellers experience on the ground.
Personal finance decisions around housing
A distinctive part of Grant’s beat is the practical, decision-focused personal finance writing he brings to housing. He has explored whether households are better off paying down their mortgages early or investing instead, laying out trade-offs such as debt reduction versus market returns, liquidity, and long‑term retirement security in accessible terms. He writes service pieces that walk readers through complex choices they face as homeowners, including how mortgage strategy fits into wider financial planning. This work often blends explanatory reporting with interviews and data, giving readers clear scenarios rather than abstract theory.
Retirement, Social Security and withdrawal strategy
Grant extends his personal finance lens beyond housing into retirement and income planning, frequently tying those issues back to the realities of owning a home. He has reported on how much retirees can safely withdraw from their portfolios, explaining guidance such as a 3.7% withdrawal target in 2025 and how it differs from more familiar rules of thumb. In related coverage, he writes about when it makes sense to claim Social Security benefits early, outlining conditions under which earlier income can outweigh the advantages of waiting.
These stories are framed for readers balancing fixed incomes, housing costs and long‑term risk, reinforcing his focus on the financial pressures facing ordinary households.
Education finance and youth savings
Grant also covers education-related finance, particularly where it intersects with family budgeting and long‑term savings. In a Sunday business feature built around a national youth survey, he reported on how high school students think about college costs, debt, and the value of a traditional campus experience, using survey findings to show shifts in attitudes toward saving for education and the role of credentials in future earnings. This strand of his coverage underscores his interest in how young people and their families plan for major life expenses - housing, college, retirement - and the financial tools they use to do it.
Environment, public health and everyday risk
Alongside his core finance and housing work, Grant occasionally reports on local events that carry economic and health implications for residents.
His coverage of wildfire smoke drifting into the region documented how poor air quality sent people indoors, highlighting practical responses and public health concerns tied to environmental conditions. Pieces like this show his willingness to cover immediate, lived risks - from air quality to weather - that affect household decisions and comfort, complementing his longer-view reporting on financial and housing stability.
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.