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 
Builders FirstSource, the largest U.S. building-materials supplier to homebuilders, posted an 8.8% sales decline and a GAAP net loss in Q2 2026, then lowered its full-year guidance as housing demand softened across single-family, multifamily and repair-remodel channels.
MasTec has agreed to acquire Superior Group for approximately $1.65 billion, adding roughly 3,000 employees and specialized electrical and infrastructure capacity aimed at data center construction, the company announced. The consideration is about $1.175 billion in cash and $475 million in stock. This is an acquisition agreement — closing conditions had not been reported as … Read more
JLL posted record second-quarter 2026 results, with revenue up 11% to $6.9 billion and adjusted EPS up 59%, as leasing and capital markets activity rebounded and the firm raised its full-year guidance.
Aligned Data Centers closed a $1.183 billion asset-backed securities deal, upsized 30% on strong demand, backed by four campuses and 14 enterprise tenants, as capital markets keep underwriting the AI data center buildout.
Henry AI raised $16.5 million in a Series A led by FirstMark Capital, with RXR’s venture arm among the backers, to expand an AI platform that has already generated more than 20,000 deal documents worth $150 billion for commercial real estate brokerages.
M/I Homes booked a second-quarter record of 2,387 new contracts even as deliveries and profit declined, with the homebuilder pointing to a sharply improved cancellation rate and record book value per share.
CBRE’s second-quarter revenue climbed 16% to $11.2 billion as leasing activity and data center-related infrastructure work drove growth, prompting the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm to raise its full-year earnings outlook.
A West Philadelphia renter’s class-action lawsuit against property manager Willow Bridge and software firm RealPage is reportedly the first case testing Philadelphia’s year-old ban on algorithmic rent-price coordination.
PennyMac Financial Services posted an 84% year-over-year drop in second-quarter net income as elevated mortgage rates weighed on loan production, even as the company’s servicing portfolio and total revenue both grew.
Essex Property Trust raised its full-year guidance after second-quarter results showed San Francisco-area rents climbing 7%, far outpacing the West Coast apartment REIT’s more moderate Southern California markets.
Denver-based Speed Bay Warehouse Solutions paid more than $84 million for an eight-building, 488,936-square-foot light industrial portfolio spanning suburban Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, marking its entry into the Northeast.
Virginia has enacted a temporary tax on electricity consumption of $0.011 per kilowatt-hour, under budget language that takes effect July 1, 2026 and runs until before July 1, 2028. The provision includes refunds if annual collections exceed $600 million. For the largest data center market in the world, this converts a policy debate into a … Read more
U.S. mortgage applications dropped 6.4% for the week ending July 24 as the 30-year fixed rate climbed to 6.76%, its highest level since August 2025, MBA data show.
Lone Wolf Technologies launched Talent, an AI-powered addition to its BrokerMetrics platform that flags agents at risk of leaving a brokerage and helps build the case to recruit new ones, built around an AI teammate the company calls Aspen.
Fannie Mae reported Q2 2026 net income of $4.0 billion, up 20% year over year, as single-family purchase acquisitions rose $17.9 billion and multifamily delinquencies improved.
Welltower reported normalized FFO per share of $1.60, up 25% year over year, as its senior housing operating portfolio posted a 15th consecutive quarter of 20%-plus same-store NOI growth, prompting a 15% dividend increase and higher full-year guidance.
Gov. Whitmer signed a law barring institutional investors owning more than 100 Michigan homes from buying single-family houses, part of a package adding housing tax credits and zoning reforms.
Trademark Property Company and Harrison Street Asset Management will break ground Aug. 3 on Anthem, a $135 million-plus redevelopment of Arlington, Texas’s former Lincoln Square shopping center.
Cotality’s Q1 2026 Homeowner Equity Insights Report shows mortgaged U.S. homeowners hold a record $17.9 trillion in equity, with HELOC borrowing rising 10% year over year even as mortgage rates climb.
A federal judge dismissed a class action alleging Zillow steered homebuyers to its own mortgage unit, ruling plaintiffs lacked standing, but gave them until Aug. 17 to refile.
MIAMI REALTORS merged with Martin County REALTORS, its second merger in two months, creating a single association and MLS covering five Southeast Florida counties.
California brokerage FirstTeam Real Estate is deploying Purlin’s AI operating platform to unify contracts, negotiations, and client communications for its agents.
Reuters: Switch has engaged banks for a possible IPO valuing it up to $80 billion — the public market’s biggest AI-infrastructure test yet.
ABC’s Construction Backlog Indicator fell to 8.8 months in June, down from May but still above last year’s level, as data center work continues to outpace the rest of the commercial construction market.
Public filings and a rejected regulator request show Meta holds only a 20% stake in its own Louisiana data center campus, alongside a multibillion-dollar incentive package and unresolved questions about ratepayer risk.
Stillwater Development LLC has filed rezoning and state regional-impact requests for a data center campus of up to 1.25 gigawatts in Lovejoy, Clayton County, Georgia, about 25 miles south of Atlanta.
Rocket has sued United Wholesale Mortgage for at least $100 million, alleging UWM violated a non-solicitation agreement tied to mortgage-servicing rights on loans Mr. Cooper bought from UWM in 2024. UWM calls the suit baseless.
Saronic Technologies will build a $3 billion-plus autonomous vessel shipyard at the Port of Brownsville, Texas, with the company projecting up to 10,000 jobs over the next decade.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced $109.6 million in Proposition 1 funding for 278 permanent supportive homes statewide, including 103 units reserved for veterans, through California’s Homekey+ program.
LandBridge and PowerBridge have signed a lease development agreement for a 2-gigawatt data center campus on roughly 3,400 acres in Reeves County, Texas, near the Waha natural gas hub.
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