Steve Thompson is a staff reporter for RealtyWire, where he covers residential real estate, mortgage trends, home sales, housing market data, real estate finance, industry regulation, and the issues affecting Realtors, buyers, sellers, lenders, and property owners.
Before joining RealtyWire, Steve worked as a mortgage broker, giving him direct experience with the financing side of real estate transactions. His background in the mortgage business gives him valuable insight into how interest rates, lending standards, affordability, buyer demand, and regulatory changes influence the broader real estate market.
Steve brings a practical understanding of home sales, market analysis, real estate trends, financing issues, and the laws and regulations that shape residential real estate. His reporting focuses on making complex market and mortgage-related topics clear and useful for readers across the real estate industry.
He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business from the University of Central Florida and currently lives in Orlando, Florida.
Steve Thompson 
A 12-acre estate in Hillsborough, Calif., has sold for $70 million, doubling the exclusive Peninsula town’s previous price record, to a buyer who works in the artificial intelligence industry, according to reporting confirmed Aug. 7. The sale ranks as the highest-priced Northern California home transaction of 2026. The property, known as Villa de Verano, sits … Read more
More than 2.5 million properties across the 10 most wildfire-exposed Western states face moderate or greater wildfire risk, with a combined reconstruction cost value of $1.4 trillion, according to a 2026 Wildfire Risk Report released Wednesday by Cotality. The findings underscore how wildfire exposure has spread well beyond California’s borders and into fast-growing metros across … Read more
The five highest-priced home sales publicly reported in the Baltimore metro area for the week ending August 9, 2026, were led by a $2,199,999 waterfront closing in Severna Park.
The five highest-priced home sales publicly reported in the Nashville metro area for the week ending August 9, 2026, led by a $7,995,000 estate sale in Brentwood.
The five highest-priced home sales publicly reported in the Savannah, Georgia metro area for the week ending August 9, 2026, combined for $11.00 million, led by a $3,800,000 closing at The Ford Field and River Club in Richmond Hill.
Mortgage applications fell 6.6% in July and posted their first year-over-year decline in two years, according to MBA’s monthly composite data, as the average 30-year fixed rate climbed to 6.70%.
Texas homeowners insurance premiums rose 30% between 2019 and 2024, roughly 10 times faster than income growth, pricing nearly two-thirds of the state’s households out of their county’s median-priced home, a Rice University report finds.
The five highest-priced home sales publicly reported in the Charlotte metro area for the week ending August 2, 2026, led by a $5.965 million estate in the Myers Park area.
Capital Group is expanding its Midtown Manhattan office footprint at 345 Park Avenue with a roughly $38 million investment expected to create 200 jobs, backed by up to $3 million in New York state tax credits.
AECOM reported an $86.7 million fiscal Q3 net loss tied to a $337 million charge on a 2019 project, even as the engineering giant’s backlog climbed to a record $27.8 billion.
The More Homes on the Market Act would raise the capital gains exclusion on home sales to $500,000/$1 million, up from limits set in 1997. Two bipartisan bills are now in committee with a combined 174 cosponsors.
All seven residential mortgage categories saw weaker demand in Q2 2026 even as lending standards mostly held steady, new Federal Reserve survey data analyzed by NAHB shows, with subprime the lone category still tightening.
New Realtor.com research finds data centers have spread into more rural, lower-income communities and now sit near 1.5% of home sales nationwide, but the company’s economists found no statistically significant hit to nearby home prices in the two years after a center opens.
CrossCountry Intermediate HoldCo priced $750 million of 7.750% senior notes due 2031, the third such offering in under a year aimed at paying down CCM’s mortgage servicing rights credit line.
TPG Mortgage Investment Trust will acquire Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corp. in a stock-and-cash deal valued at $117.5 million, creating a combined residential mortgage REIT with about $9 billion in assets.
Wentworth Institute of Technology is building a $200 million, 18-story residence hall in Boston to house its entire first-year class, developed by Balfour Beatty Campus Solutions and financed through MassDevelopment.
Ferguson Enterprises raised its full-year guidance after Q2 net sales rose 4.6% to $8.8 billion, with non-residential building-product sales up 8% and residential sales returning to growth.
Redfin data shows pending home sales dropped 3.7% in a week, the steepest decline since 2022, as mortgage rates hit nearly a year-high and sellers offer more concessions.
Virginia’s State Corporation Commission will require data centers to pay for transmission infrastructure built for their facilities, following Gov. Spanberger’s push to shield ratepayers from rising costs.
U-Haul Holding Company grew self-storage revenue 6.8% and expanded its owned storage footprint to 1,642 locations, even as occupancy softened and overall profit declined.
A federal judge in Chicago granted final approval to $28.5 million in combined settlements from RE/MAX and Keller Williams in the Batton 1 homebuyer commission lawsuit, with no class objections or opt-outs and claims due Aug. 25.
CareTrust REIT closed roughly $291 million in new healthcare property deals over the past week, pushing its 2026 investment total to approximately $1.5 billion, the real estate investment trust announced Aug. 6. The pace underscores how aggressively the skilled-nursing and senior-housing REIT has been deploying capital across both the U.S. and U.K. this year. The … Read more
Zillow Group’s revenue climbed 18% to $772 million in the second quarter, topping the high end of its own guidance, even as the company posted a small net loss and saw site traffic decline for a second straight quarter, the company reported Aug. 5. The results land one day after Zillow disclosed cutting more than … Read more
Barry Gosin, who has run Newmark Group for nearly 47 years, will step down as chief executive at the end of this year, the commercial real estate advisory firm announced Aug. 7. Gosin, who became CEO in 1979, will leave the role effective Dec. 31, 2026, but will remain with the company as Chairman of … Read more
The typical Realtor now has 13 years of experience, and only 11% of members have one year or less in the business, according to NAR’s latest member profile. Median 2025 transaction sides were nine, and median gross income was $59,200. Affordability was the leading client obstacle, cited by 27% of respondents. Key facts Nine sides … Read more
Move Inc.’s Realtor.com posted its seventh straight quarter of revenue growth even as unique visitors fell, a strategy that puts it in sharp contrast with Zillow’s traffic-first super-app approach.
Realty Income posted 3.8% AFFO growth and raised its 2026 outlook while disclosing a $6 billion hyperscale data center joint venture and a new institutional private-capital fund.
NYC’s Department of Buildings inspected 180 sites tied to the July Pfizer building near-collapse, finding 65 violations and issuing 19 stop-work orders, but no evidence conversions are inherently unsafe.
Realtracs, the multiple listing service covering Nashville and markets across Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, has signed a new data licensing agreement with Zillow that sets explicit rules for how the portal can use broker-created listing data in artificial intelligence products, according to an announcement posted to Realtracs’ own site on … Read more
Banks led by Morgan Stanley have assembled roughly $15 billion in debt for a 2,000-acre Anthropic-leased data center campus in Hubbard, Texas, backstopped by Google — and are already moving to offload the exposure via bond sales, according to CNBC, Bloomberg and the Financial Times.
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