Alex Douglas is a business and real estate writer based in suburban Chicago, bringing together professional newsroom experience, firsthand brokerage knowledge, and a practical interest in property investing. He earned a BS from Arizona State University and went on to report for multiple newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, where he covered business and real estate.
Before focusing on real estate journalism, Alex spent five years as a Realtor in Phoenix, giving him direct insight into buyers, sellers, agents, negotiations, and the day-to-day realities of local housing markets. Today, his reporting draws on both his journalism background and his real estate experience to explain market trends, housing developments, and industry changes with clarity and authority. As a novice multifamily real estate investor, Alex also brings a hands-on perspective to coverage of property ownership, investment strategy, and long-term market opportunities.
Alex Douglas 
New listings climbed 8% year over year to the most since August 2022, but demand stayed flat as mortgage rates crept back toward 7%, according to Redfin data for the four weeks ending Aug. 30.
The Scion Group and funds managed by Ares Real Estate acquired four off-campus communities serving Texas State, Georgia and Tennessee from SCHENK+ affiliates, the pair’s second student housing portfolio together this year.
MBA’s survey for the week ending Aug. 28 showed applications up 0.8% as the 30-year conforming rate hit a four-week high of 6.79%, refinancing fell and the ARM share rose to 8%.
Gail Liniger, who co-founded RE/MAX in Denver in 1973 and served as its chief executive from 1991, has died at 81 — three days after the franchisor became a subsidiary of Real REMAX Group.
NIC MAP’s updated Senior Housing Market Outlook says the industry needs more than $1 trillion in cumulative investment through 2050, with construction starts down about 67% since 2021 as the 80-plus population enters its steepest growth in U.S. history.
EQT Real Estate’s Industrial Value Fund V sold a 46-building warehouse portfolio across 10 Southeast markets to an LBA Realty affiliate, days after national industrial vacancy fell for the first time since 2022.
The FDIC, NCUA, OCC, CFPB, HUD, DOJ and FHFA jointly withdrew the 2022 interagency statement that encouraged lenders to offer special purpose credit programs, effective immediately upon Federal Register publication Tuesday.
Two years after the May 2024 derecho and Hurricane Beryl, the city began taking applications Monday for repair grants of up to $100,000 and full reconstruction of up to $300,000.
Closed sales dropped to roughly 11,700 from 13,000 in June, and the statewide median slipped to $330,000 — though prices remain 4.7% above a year ago and listings are still tighter than last summer.
Builders who started five or fewer homes last year reported a 9.1% median increase in material costs, while builders with 100 or more starts reported 1.8% — a gap that helps explain why consolidation keeps accelerating.
Access Point Financial and TMGOC Ventures co-originated $120 million in bridge financing and preferred equity for Kailas Companies’ office-to-hotel conversion in downtown New Orleans.
BevyHouse is testing whether factory-built homes can cut Altadena’s wildfire rebuild timeline from 18 months to six, delivering a five-module house near Fair Oaks Avenue.
Ten states led by Oregon and New York sued the OCC over rules that would let national banks stop paying interest on mortgage escrow balances in 14 states and territories.
California Regional MLS launched REcore Workspace, a customizable hub replacing its static dashboard for more than 100,000 subscribers across Matrix, Paragon and Flexmls.
The Data Center Coalition agreed to comply with Gov. Greg Abbott’s five development standards, and at least one operator ended a Texas project rather than meet them, as ERCOT works through a 474-gigawatt interconnection queue.
More than 40 homeowners sued in Newport Superior Court over Rhode Island’s $5-per-$1,000 surtax on second homes assessed above $1 million, arguing it targets owners who cannot vote in the state.
Austin-based Boom raised a $15 million Series A led by S3 Ventures and launched BoomCRM, an AI leasing platform built on its applicant screening data. The company says it screens for more than 400 operators covering over 500,000 units.
The Real Brokerage and RE/MAX Holdings expect to close their combination Aug. 24 as Real REMAX Group, releasing preliminary results of the RE/MAX stockholder election on merger consideration.
Amazon will build a multibillion-dollar robotics manufacturing facility on about 300 acres in East Austin, anchoring the newly annexed Dog’s Head development with 300 to 500 jobs.
The Southern Environmental Law Center asked a South Carolina court to stop construction of a $2.8 billion, 457-megawatt data center in Spartanburg County, saying the project improperly skipped planning commission review.
The New York metro area counted 394,300 tech talent workers in 2025 against the San Francisco Bay Area’s 375,730, the first time New York has led in the 13 years CBRE has tracked the measure.
CoStar Group has closed its $800 million all-cash purchase of homebuilding data provider Zonda, pushing the commercial real estate data giant deeper into the $400 billion new-home construction market.
The share of mortgaged U.S. homes considered equity-rich fell to 41.1% in the second quarter, down from 43.3% in the first quarter and 47.4% a year earlier — the fourth straight quarterly decline, according to ATTOM.
The National Association of Realtors has launched a quarterly Commercial Real Estate Demand Index measuring the economic forces driving demand across 306 U.S. metro areas, with St. George, Utah, ranking first nationally.
Amazon Web Services said Tuesday it is increasing its planned investment in Northwest Louisiana to $18 billion, adding a third data center campus in Shreveport and pushing the total commitment $6 billion above the $12 billion figure the company announced in February, according to Amazon’s newsroom. The new campus will rise at Resilient Technology Park … Read more
WHITESTOWN, Ind. — JLL Income Property Trust has paid roughly $137 million for a 1.1 million-square-foot industrial distribution facility here that is fully leased to Subaru of America Inc., marking one of the largest single-property commercial real estate sales in the Indianapolis area this year. The Chicago-based, non-traded real estate investment trust acquired the property, … Read more
Skanska will build four data centers in the U.S. Southeast under a $1.2 billion contract, one of its largest American data-center orders as the AI buildout accelerates.
NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index fell 2.3% in July to its lowest level since January, as the summer’s mortgage-rate spike pulled back contract signings in every U.S. region.
Los Angeles County built a record 10,230 accessory dwelling units in 2025, more than six times 2018’s total, as new state laws stripped away local zoning barriers, a USC Lusk Center report finds.
Property data giant ATTOM has introduced three specialized AI agents that let users query its nationwide property database, analyze markets and generate client-ready reports using plain-language questions instead of code or dashboards.
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