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 
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.
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.
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