Don Baker is a full-time staff reporter for RealtyWire, where he covers residential real estate, commercial real estate, multifamily housing, market trends, finance, construction, rental data, and regulatory issues affecting the real estate industry.
Before joining RealtyWire, Don worked as an investor relations director for a multifamily private equity fund, where he wrote investor updates and reporting materials on the performance, operations, and outlook of investment properties. That role gave him hands-on experience analyzing real estate trends, rental statistics, construction activity, financing issues, multifamily operations, compliance matters, and the legal and regulatory factors that shape property ownership and investment.
Don brings a broad understanding of both residential and commercial real estate to his reporting, with a particular focus on helping readers understand how market data, policy changes, capital markets, and local property trends affect buyers, sellers, investors, brokers, developers, and property owners.
He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business from Southern Illinois University and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Don Baker 
The governor gave the Texas Department of Insurance until Sept. 14 to recommend further changes, and ordered five immediate actions including a ban on price optimization and a prohibition on non-renewals based on a home’s age.
Morgan Stanley Investment Management raised its 2026 U.S. commercial real estate transaction volume forecast 12% to $635 billion, citing constrained supply and repriced assets as an attractive entry point.
Zurich-based Lookthrough and Berlin-based BuildingMinds are combining to build an AI decision-intelligence platform covering more than 100,000 buildings across 64 countries.
Redfin data shows Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth have all tipped into buyer’s-market territory, with Houston posting the widest seller-buyer gap in the state.
RealReports’ redesigned Business Momentum Engine expands its Aiden AI assistant to proactively surface prospecting and past-client opportunities as existing-home sales sit near a 30-year low.
San Jose’s City Council directed staff to draft rules raising Residential Neighborhood density from 8 to as many as 32 units per acre. The mayor’s memo cites the risk of losing Housing Element certification.
Unframe says Cushman & Wakefield reduced lease abstraction from as long as three days to minutes and has expanded to more than 15 active AI projects. Cushman & Wakefield has not issued its own announcement.
Californians for Homeownership and the California Housing Defense Fund filed three suits Aug. 20 alleging San Diego, San Francisco and Montebello unlawfully narrowed Senate Bill 79, the state’s transit-oriented housing law.
Deere & Company reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $1.379 billion, with Construction & Forestry sales up 18% and segment operating profit up 84% β a read on where U.S. building activity is actually concentrated.
Home discounts peak in late August across much of California, Austin and New York suburbs, and in September across Texas, Houston, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., a Redfin analysis found.
About 15,000 single-family built-for-rent units started construction in the second quarter, down from 18,000 a year earlier, with the four-quarter average off 16% as financing costs bite.
Oxford Properties bought the 99%-leased One Marina Park Drive in Boston’s Seaport District from Clarion Partners for $435 million, about 10% less than Clarion paid in 2019.
Bedrock Robotics said it has begun running fully autonomous, operator-less excavators on live U.S. construction sites β a first for the machines β as the AI startup pushes to ease a persistent shortage of skilled equipment operators.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.65% for the week ending Aug. 20, 2026, down from 6.67% a week earlier and the second consecutive weekly decline, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey.
New American Funding, one of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders, said it is deploying Kastle’s Voice AI to handle customer phone interactions across both its origination and servicing operations.
Mortgage applications for new home purchases fell 5.7% from a year earlier and 1% from June, and the MBA estimated new single-family home sales ran at a 647,000 annual pace in July, down 3% from June.
Toll Brothers shares climbed after the luxury homebuilder posted fiscal third-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates on both the top and bottom lines, even as profit and deliveries fell from a year earlier in what the company’s new chief executive called “a challenging market.” The Horsham, Pennsylvania-based builder reported diluted earnings per share of … Read more
Eagle Point Credit Management LLC has led a new holding-company loan for Nexus Data Centers’ sprawling Hubbard, Texas, campus — the AI data center project being built for anchor tenant Anthropic — pushing the development past a key milestone known as Final Investment Decision, the companies announced August 19. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the … Read more
Housing starts fell 12.4% from June as single-family construction dropped to a 15-month low, even as building permits rose, new Census Bureau data shows.
Rexford Industrial Realty has agreed to sell a $1.2 billion Southern California industrial portfolio to EQT Real Estate, pushing the REIT’s 2026 dispositions to $1.5 billion as it recycles capital into its core holdings.
HUD spent more than $460 billion on 18 housing programs from 2015 to 2024, but the gap between home prices and incomes narrowed by a statistically insignificant 2.75%, a new Open The Books analysis finds.
A full-floor residence at the gated Enclave at Park Shore sold for $8.6 million to lead the five highest-priced home sales reported in the Naples, Florida metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026.
A Bradley Creek Point waterfront home sold for $8.4 million, leading the top five reported home sales in the Wilmington, North Carolina metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026.
A Harwich house on Long Pond sold for $3.48 million to lead the five highest-priced home sales reported in the Barnstable Town metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026.
Home sales in the Daphne, Alabama metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026 combined for $11.13 million, led by a $5.5 million closing on Scenic Highway 98 in Fairhope.
A restored 1934 farmhouse on six acres in Tremont led the five highest-priced home sales reported in the Peoria metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026.
A custom ranch house in Moosic sold for $1.10 million to lead the five highest-priced home sales reported in the Scranton, Pennsylvania metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026.
A Buckhead estate on 3.4 wooded acres and a 2020 Ashford Park residence each sold for $3.90 million, topping the five highest reported home sales in the Atlanta metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026, a group that combined for $14.15 million.
The five highest-priced home sales reported in the Springfield, Massachusetts metro area for the week ending August 16, 2026, led by a $915,000 Cape in Longmeadow’s Blueberry Hill neighborhood.
A four-bedroom house on five fenced acres in Grand Bay sold for $680,000, the highest of five Mobile, Alabama metro area home sales totaling $2.72 million for the week ending August 16, 2026.
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