From New York’s political battlegrounds to the booming metropolises of North Texas and the dramatic, sun-drenched legal theaters of Los Angeles and Miami, 2025 was a year of seismic shifts in real estate.
As the market navigated complex federal policy changes, widening fraud scandals, high-stakes family dramas and billion-dollar development gambits, The Real Deal delivered stories that truly mattered.
Our reporters dug deep, bringing you unflinching profiles of titans and reclusive developers, providing cinematic accounts of courtroom showdowns and breaking down the cultural and political forces reshaping neighborhoods from Soho to Williamsburg.
Below is a selection of TRD staffers’ favorite stories from 2025.
Rent-Stabilized Losses Have Hit NYC Pension Funds. Will the City Finally Care?
Columnist Erik Engquist highlighted how reporting fellow Quinn Waller’s story took an in-depth look at two investments by New York public pension funds in rent-stabilized housing that were crushed by the state itself, by its passage of the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act. The big conclusion? They lost nearly $400 million. Quinn backed up her premise with strong data and interviews with experts.
Commercial mortgage fraud investigation touches Lakewood, New Jersey
What’s the culture behind the mortgage fraud scandal we’ve been covering? It’s not easy to describe an entire town without resorting to generalities, according to managing features editor Cara Eisenpress, but investigations editor and senior reporter Keith Larsen found the right contacts and saw the right sights to be able to bring the home of the fraudsters to life, sympathetically detailing a world where making a lot of money fast can be an imperative without letting those who broke the law off the hook.
The developer reshaping the fastest growing U.S. city
Eisenpress loved the framing of this story: Princeton, Texas (not New Jersey) is the fastest-growing city in the country. But it quickly became clear, thanks to Isaiah Mitchell’s reporting, that it’s a microcosm of North Texas’ growth. Land developer Ray Johnston seems to encapsulate all of it, captured in a profile of a man who wore many hats before he came to Princeton. The story also says a lot about the larger economic trends and how they play out in the small towns of Texas and other places absorbing rapid growth.
1-800-CALL-LEO: Does Leo Jacobs’ brash talk get results?
Rich Bockmann’s reporting digs deep into both wins and controversies and provides a window into Leo Jacobs’ rise in vivid detail, according to reporter Elizabeth Cryan, one of multiple staff members to single out this story. Cryan described the writing as “cinematic,” blending courtroom drama, great anecdotes and killer quotes.
The mission: PH Realty and Rockledge seek a margin in hard-hit NYC rent-stabilized units
Reporter Jake Indursky noted how former reporter Suzannah Cavanaugh’s story did two things really well: get a lot of access and use it to paint a vivid picture of the people and places in New York City’s difficult world of rent-stabilized landlordship.
Sola Impact, whose affordable housing business attracted praise, faces trouble with its model
Often, it seems like people are who we thought they were. But this story really caught Indursky’s eye, going past the public relations sheath and exposing something “truly surprising.” Of particular note was the on-the-record conversations Larsen had with Martin Muoto, the man at the helm of the Los Angeles real estate firm Sola Impact.
“I really wanted to know what his end game was and this story showed the value of being able to ask that question directly,” Indursky shared.
Los Angeles rising: how the city and the industry we rebuild
The Los Angeles fires were one of the most important real estate and human interest stories of the year. Managing editor of audience engagement Caysey Welton described Cavanaugh and reporter Kari Hamanaka’s tag-team piece as well-researched, crafted and offering smart analysis, while also keeping the humanity at the core of a real estate story.
“This was exactly the right treatment for a tragedy that will take a generation to fully recover from,” Welton said.
Fear of ICE raids creates chilling effect at South Florida construction sites
Another story this year that crossed beats and borders was the effect of immigration enforcement on real estate and construction. South Florida reporter Francisco Alvarado pulled off a difficult feat, according to reporter Lilah Burke: try to wrap your head around what’s happening in a complex scenario without any hard data. Alvarado managed it, interviewing day laborers, union representatives, immigration attorneys and construction industry experts to get a full picture of an industry directly seeing the effects of federal policy changes.
Inside the real estate fight that led to South Shore immigration raid
In a similar vein, reporter Sheridan Wall picked out reporter Emma Whalen’s story about an immigration raid in Chicago because she managed to execute the “everything is a real estate story” concept. Whalen’s coverage balances the human element of the story with the angle that matters chiefly to our audience.
How a multifamily investment ended in neglect, foreclosure and an ICE raid
A month later, Whalen circled back to 7500 South South Shore Drive. The story dove deep into an event that made national headlines, according to reporter Caleb McCullough, exploring the real estate story behind the immigration raid at the building that wasn’t reported elsewhere.
McCullough added that the story did a great job of capturing the people at the center of the building’s problems and telling the story in a narrative way, even though the main players in the building’s ownership and management didn’t talk to Whalen.
With his reality show on pause, who is Joshua Flagg?
Joshua Flagg is one of the country’s most recognizable real estate brokers, but getting to know who he is when the cameras stop rolling isn’t easy. Reporter Alena Botros loved the melding of residential and commercial real estate, highlighting how Hamaka holds the subject accountable, reaching the people in Flagg’s circle to paint a picture of who he is beyond Los Angeles and the Hollywood spotlight.
“Legal extortion”: Real estate scion clings onto starving-artist rent at Soho loft
New York managing editor Cale Weissman was fascinated by columnist Erik Engquist’s yarn about grizzled Soho loft owners fighting a “recalcitrant nepo baby tenant,” flipping the script on the usual landlord-renter drama spilled on TRD’s pages every day.
Paramount CEO directed no-bid contract to firm tied to ex-girlfriend
Weissman nominated Larsen’s deeply-reported scoop about the embattled Paramount real estate investment trust, going beyond the public drama hitting the company and finding juicy details never before reported. Albert Behler certainly proved to be one of the year’s most intriguing figures in the industry.
The Soho-i-fication of Williamsburg
Williamsburg is changing and reporter Elizabeth Cryan is covering it. Weissman pointed to the fun trend story about a neighborhood seemingly everlasting ascendance, a story that went beyond the usual tropes of gentrifying neighborhood reportage. She included great data and details to illustrate just how much the retail landscape in that part of Brooklyn has changed.
Yitzchak Tessler’s last stand
Details are everything — just read how Indursky broke down this scene in Yitzchak Tessler’s drama:
Religious, bearded and heavyset with a thick accent, Tessler chainsmoked his way through the virtual court hearings in the cases related to 172 Madison. His office at 461 Park Avenue was filled with smoke.
“He would light a cigarette, take a few puffs of it, and then whenever he went to make a point, he would lean in, put the cigarette out and make his point,” one agent who worked in the building said. “And then he’d kick back in the chair and take a deep breath, and then pull another cigarette out.”
Sheridan Wall highlighted how Jake Indursky’s story painted a vivid picture of Tessler as a person while hitting a larger thread about how a couple of missteps in the development world can “snowball into a bigger problem.”
Mehrdad Moayedi developed North Texas — and defined DFW real estate swagger
Senior editor Rachel Stone referred to this as one of TRD’s best stories in Texas this year. It’s an unflinching profile of Mehrdad Moayedi, an influential North Texas land developer who is very active but also a bit of a mystery. Texas bureau chief Jess Hardin spent about a year trying to pull this profile together and found that even Moayedi’s biggest public critic, investor Kyle Bass, won’t say anything mean about him.
Steve Ross trades New York state of mind for West Palm Beach
Lots of New Yorkers move to South Florida for retirement, but developer Steve Ross returned to his hometown after the pandemic to start a new chapter, developing in West Palm Beach. This story, reported by TRD’s entire South Florida team and highlighted by Stone, gets into what’s left for the 84-year-old titan to achieve and the challenges of West Palm Beach, including a lack of affordable housing and a crunch on private schools.
Donald Bren disavows embattled son David
In the eyes of senior editor Lauren Schram, this story from content producer Chris Malone Méndez has all of the elements of a good TRD story: a billionaire developer, family drama, a multimillion-dollar scam and lawsuits, topped off with a killer headline.
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