Real Estate Editor Steps Down to Write About “The Real World”

In the first 30 years of my life, New York City struggled to keep its taxpayers. In the following 25 years, it has struggled to accommodate their demand to be here.

The real estate industry has moved with the city’s shifting currents the way a rowboat does in a turbulent sea — able to steer enough to mostly avoid the rocks but still at the mercy of the ocean and weather, that is, the economy and politics.

That will be the focus of my new column, The Real World, as I make a shift of my own. After 1,933 days as senior managing editor at The Real Deal, I am devoting myself to writing full-time.

That was my job for 20 years in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Manhattan until the late, great Xana Antunes promoted me to politics editor at Crain’s New York Business. Before long, I was writing the masthead editorials and editing all the real estate and economy stories.

Amir Korangy and Stuart Elliott brought me to TRD in 2019 to edit, not to write. But I sensed that we were missing the kind of voice that only a columnist can bring, so I started filing point-of-view pieces when I could find the time.

The response from readers was terrific because the industry’s perspective is generally absent from media coverage of real estate.

Most reporters and editors at general-interest outlets have little idea how the business works. How could they? Industry people don’t make time to explain it to them. And too many journalists don’t seek out the information, despite real estate’s huge role in the future of the metro area and its 20 million people.

Having transitioned from covering community news and politics to writing on real estate, I know how confusing and esoteric the industry is to people outside it. It took me years at TRD to start understanding it, and I still have a lot to learn.

Many elected officials and advocacy groups are simply uninformed about the industry and especially housing economics. They don’t know what they don’t know, but they know just enough to mess things up.

I am calling my column The Real World because it aims to tell these folks how real estate really works.

Many New Yorkers do not seem to live in that world. On their imaginary planet, developers can build whatever they want and always make money, landlords can charge as much rent as they please, and new housing does not absorb people but displaces them.

Other false notions abound. Profit is blamed for high prices and regarded as an unearned windfall, not as a necessary motivation to build or a reward for working hard and taking risks. Nonprofits are viewed only as mission-driven charities, not as businesses reaping fees and drawing salaries. Rising tax revenue is seen as inevitable, not something the government needs to encourage with pro-growth policies.

While holding elected officials and advocates accountable for their legislation and rhetoric, this column will do the same for the real estate industry.

Credibility comes from seeing every side of an issue. I was reminded of this by one major developer’s response to my piece on the collapse of the state’s housing plan in 2023.

“You were the only one who got it right,” he said. “You threw everybody under the bus.”