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 
Zillow is eliminating over 500 roles, about 7% of its workforce, in a restructuring CEO Jeremy Wacksman says is about cost discipline — its second and largest round of cuts this year, coming a day before Q2 earnings.
Macerich posted a company-record $919 in trailing 12-month sales per square foot and a narrower net loss in Q2 2026, as the mall REIT pointed to its Path Forward turnaround plan and rising occupancy.
BLS JOLTS data show construction job openings rose to 305,000 in June, up 36% from a year ago, as nonresidential and data center projects compete harder for skilled labor than a slowing housing sector.
A new NAR report finds 6.9 million U.S. homes are now valued at $1 million or more, up from 2% two decades ago, as sellers increasingly price listings at $999,999 to dodge mansion taxes.
Dream Finders Homes named former Lennar co-CEO Rick Beckwitt co-chairman of its board and banking veteran Steve Fischer an independent director, as its $32-per-share hostile bid for Beazer Homes continues.
New construction is giving homebuyers more negotiating leverage across the South, including Florida, even as many sellers hold out for full asking price, a HomeServices of America report finds.
Better Home & Finance Holding Company named board member Daniel Lewis interim CEO, succeeding founder Vishal Garg, as the online mortgage lender reports preliminary Q2 results and accelerates cost cuts.
Gov. Greg Abbott directed the PUCT and ERCOT to audit every data center in Texas’s 474-gigawatt interconnection queue before granting grid connections, pausing the state’s Batch Zero review process.
OriginPoint has hired loan officers Erin Halliday and Jon Levin, a $165 million-a-year production team, from New American Funding to grow its presence in California and Hawaii.
Kairoi Residential, PGIM Real Estate and Germany’s Helaba Bank broke ground on a 420-unit ultra-luxury apartment development in Denver’s LoHi neighborhood, pairing a San Antonio developer with international institutional capital.
A record 242 U.S. cities now have typical starter homes worth at least $1 million, up from 226 in 2025 and just 80 in February 2020, according to Zillow. California accounts for 105 of them. The national typical starter home is worth $198,649 — a figure that, placed beside the $1 million threshold, describes two … Read more
Census Bureau data show U.S. construction spending fell 3.2% year over year in June to a $2,166.5 billion annual rate, as residential building cooled while nonresidential construction, led by data centers, held up.
Security Properties, partnering with RGA ReCap on behalf of Reinsurance Group of America, acquired the 134-unit Langara apartment community in Issaquah, Wash., for $55.1 million.
Zions Bancorporation completed its acquisition of Basis Investment Group’s agency lending platform, gaining Fannie Mae DUS and Freddie Mac Optigo multifamily lending licenses and the team behind them.
Compass, Midwest Real Estate Data and Zillow have filed competing post-hearing briefs in the Chicagoland MLS dispute, sharpening the disagreement over private listings, MLS access and whether the challenged rules protect cooperation or suppress competing brokerage models, according to HousingWire. The filings followed arguments over preliminary relief. Zillow alleges an unlawful group boycott; Compass and … Read more
Seattle’s City Council passed legislation eliminating Hearing Examiner appeals for environmental review of zoning and comprehensive-plan decisions, aiming to remove a process officials say has delayed housing development for years.
The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge fell 0.1% for the month in June, the first monthly decline in six years, even as annual PCE inflation stayed at 3.7% and the personal saving rate dropped to its lowest since 2022.
VICI Properties President John Payne disclosed on the REIT’s Q2 earnings call that VICI and Caesars Entertainment are developing plans for an NBA arena on 50 acres of jointly owned land behind three Las Vegas Strip resorts.
Miami developer Neology Group closed an inaugural $175 million capital raise, giving it nearly $1 billion in transactional capacity to pursue mixed-use and district-scale projects across the Southeast, including a Rubell Arts District partnership.
The OCC and FDIC proposed amendments to Community Reinvestment Act rules that would exempt banks under $10 billion in assets from certain reporting requirements and narrow which retail banking services count toward CRA credit.
Housing’s contribution to U.S. GDP slipped to 15.8% in Q2 2026, the lowest since 2019, as NAHB data show residential investment turning positive while housing services growth softened.
LPT Aperture Holdings, parent of LPT Realty, has acquired Speculo, an AI database-engagement startup whose Remi assistant flags when past clients are ready to re-engage, adding intent detection to LPTA’s growing AI toolset.
Procore Technologies is buying construction robotics and visual intelligence platform DroneDeploy for approximately $845 million in cash, aiming to combine the two companies’ jobsite data into AI tools the company calls digital coworkers.
Ventas is boosting its 2026 senior housing investment target to $4.5 billion, up 50% from its prior $3 billion goal, after closing $2.2 billion in deals during the second quarter.
EMCOR Group’s Q2 2026 revenue hit a record $5.15 billion and backlog jumped 44% to $17.14 billion, as the electrical and mechanical contractor raised full-year guidance on strength in data center and AI-infrastructure construction.
Manhattan residential sales volume exceeded $8.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 19.4% year over year, according to figures attributed to Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel in market reporting on the quarterly Douglas Elliman market reports. The gain was led by higher-end transactions, and it indicates that Manhattan’s closed-sales market held up through … Read more
The 30-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to 6.66% this week, its highest level in a year, as Freddie Mac’s weekly survey showed borrowing costs extending a multi-week climb.
Redwood Trust finalized a joint venture giving its Aspire mortgage banking platform up to $8 billion in purchasing power, as the company’s overall mortgage production topped $8 billion for a second straight quarter.
BXP closed a $1.2 billion construction loan for its 46-story, 930,000-square-foot office tower at 343 Madison Avenue near Grand Central Terminal, already about half pre-leased ahead of a 2029 delivery.
Mid-America Apartment Communities lowered its full-year revenue guidance after second-quarter same-store results slipped, as new supply continues to pressure rents across the Sunbelt REIT’s Southeast and Southwest markets.
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