Chairs’ Corner

Meet NAREE’s 2024 Board Chair and 2023 President, Jason Hidalgo of the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Hidalgo covers business, technology and key topics for the Reno Gazette-Journal newspaper and website. He has won multiple journalism awards for his reporting and also spent time as a Fulbright scholar in Japan, working for three months to research aging-related issues. Besides the eight fellowships under his belt, he’s also a polyglot who speaks Filipino, Pangasinan, and Japanese in addition to English.

THE AI AND I
By Jason Hidalgo
Reno Gazette-Journal

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

Those were the chilling words from HAL9000 in the sci-fi classic "2001: A Space Odyssey" after the artificial intelligence goes rogue and turns against its human masters.

As an avid technology geek and science fiction lover, it's a quote that frequently comes to mind amid the ongoing Al frenzy fueled by ChalGPT. The Al chatbot initially started making waves for its surprisingly in-depth and humanlike answers to all sorts of queries from dinner recipes to romantic poetry. Some quick-witted students even started using ChatGPT to write school essays for them.

Today, Al and machine learning are seeing increasing use in a lot of settings.

In some cases, it's just harmless fun. Earlier this year, I watched a popular gamer interview Al versions of well-known Twitch and YouTube influencers and I laughed so hard, I was literally in tears. Not only did the Al do a solid job of mimicking the influencers' voices and tendencies it also acted like virtual alcohol by stripping them of their inhibitions. This resulted in some crazy Al-driven dialogue that amped up some of the influencers' traits to comedic effect.

It's a reflection of the unintended consequences that come with Al. It also shows Al's limitations in grasping human nuance as well as some of the potential dangers of using Al as a tool.

While Al can have benefits for humankind – increased productivity and accelerating research comes to mind – it also comes with risks. Today's Al may not be at the level of sophistication or adoption where it can decide to unilaterally nuke humanity like Skynet from the Terminator movies. But it can still have real-world consequences such as impacting your ability to get a job or a mortgage.

Al is already garnering strong interest within the mortgage industry, for example, for enhanced risk assessment and underwriting. In addition to helping speed up the process, Al is also seen as an unbiased judge compared to humans. Unfortunately, several cases have shown that Al can still reflect the same prejudices existing in society today.

Amazon, for example, nixed an internal Al-based recruiting tool because it discriminated against women. In looking at historical data, the Al noticed that men dominated the number of positions in the industry and taught itself that male candidates were preferable.

A study published in the journal Science also found that one algorithm used for deciding access to healthcare showed bias against black patients because it deemed that they were at higher risk for getting sicker than white patients.

As Al sees increased adoption, it's also increasingly important for journalists to be vigilant of its impact on the public. Like any technology, Al can be a force for good. But it can also reflect society's own biases and imperfections. When it does, it's important for us all to shine a light on it so today's prejudices don't continue to be tomorrow's inequities.

The first work conference I went to was one for reporters in Arizona. I won’t mention the year. It was somewhat helpful on the first day and less the second. By the third day, my colleague and I found it difficult to pull anything from it that applied to our work, so we skipped the afternoon session and went to the zoo. The prairie dogs were adorable. The alligator pit at the entrance? Not so much.

Anyone will tell you that I am a stickler for the rules – sometimes annoyingly so. News that I ditched a conference would shock them. So when I decided to attend the NAREE conference in New Orleans in 2016, I didn’t know what to expect. I came away from it with a notebook full of story ideas and expert insight, new connections with freelancers, so many friends, and a renewed sense of mission. Every year since has had the same results, thanks to Mary Doyle-Kimball and the many volunteers who put together such an engaging lineup of speakers and panel discussions. From residential and commercial real estate coverage, market analyses, and forecasts to tips for honing one’s craft as a reporter or an editor, there is so much to learn and so much that inspires. As Jeff Collins, NAREE chairman and former president remarked recently about the 2021 conference: “Seventy-five speakers had participated in 29 panels.”

From that December conference in Miami, I found two freelancers to hire, heard from the editor of The Miami Herald about what it was like to run a newsroom as a woman of color, learned how to comb documents for information about condo associations, got an inside look at what it was like to cover the collapse of Champlain Towers, and completely revamped how I handle photos and hyperlinks after learning how people with disabilities use specialized readers. Experts on the economy, the housing market, apartments, single-family rentals, build-for rent, the commercial landscape, mortgages, foreclosures, vacation homes, luxury markets, digital nomads, social justice issues in real estate, and more offered engaging insight. Not a moment was wasted. It is a lot to ask of a conference, but somehow NAREE delivers – and with a camaraderie that is a relief now more than ever.

I remarked at the conference that in your work life there are people who leave you thinking: “I’m glad I don’t have to sit across from them at the dinner table every night.”  I have yet to find someone at NAREE like that. A NAREE member reached out to me last week to tell me that he feels the same way and that my remarks resonated with him. This made me cry. (I am a stickler for the rules and a weeper.) He had gone to the conference feeling like “an article factory” that churns out story after story about COVID and the real estate market. The conference reminded him that he is not alone and that the work we do makes a difference, he told me.

We were in Atlanta Oct. 11-14, at the Westin Buckhead, with new content, new members, and new awards to celebrate. The same welcoming spirit and passion for journalism was there, too. Please reach out to me with questions or just to talk. And look for our NAREE University webinars throughout the year.

A reminder: NAREE’s journalism competition portal opens Feb. 1. each year with a March 1 entry deadline. NAREE isn’t a once-a-year deal. We are always home.

To quote one of my favorite advertising slogans, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

NAREE Miami Conference Takeaways and Links Include Story Fodder for Build to Rent, Digital Nomads, Social Justice Issues in Real Estate

I’m starting to panic.

My panel on the Surfside condo tower collapse is about to begin, and one of the speakers is missing.

David Haber, a construction and condo association lawyer, was supposed to meet us in the green room, but hadn’t turned up. I called his administrative assistant.

"Where’s David?" I asked.

She couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t reach him either.

So, I walked into the conference room, ready to go on without him. That’s when I saw Haber, standing by the stage.

“I was inside,” Haber said. “I was listening to the conference. It’s really interesting.”

Such was the nature of the NAREE conference in Miami, real estate journalism’s first in-person gathering in 2 1/2 years. I noticed that soon after their panels ended, many of our industry speakers joined the audience and stuck around to hear what other speakers were saying.

The conference took place Dec. 7-10 at the Kimpton Epic Hotel in downtown Miami, with panels ranging from single-family rentals to new ways to finance home purchases. Speakers explored lasting changes to suburban home and downtown office design wrought by the pandemic.

Mortgage rates, economic outlooks, foreclosures, apartments, hotels, vacation homes and Caribbean luxury markets all were discussed.

As one conference attendee put it, “I feel like we’re getting all of real estate.”

Yet, the most remarkable thing about the 2021 gathering was none of this was truly remarkable at all. It’s pretty much standard fare for a typical NAREE conference.

What was remarkable was that it took place at all given the uncertainty of COVID and its variants.

But it did. And by the time #NAREE2021 wrapped up on the morning of Dec. 10, 75 speakers had participated in 29 panels.

That didn’t include the tour of Miami’s Wynwood Arts District, where public art and real estate intersect -- or the annual book and journalism awards ceremonies honoring our best work of 2020.

You can learn a lot more about what transpired by searching the conference hashtag: #NAREE2021. And by going to NAREE’s Members Only Tab and clicking on the conference sessions recordings.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

— Build for rent: Landlords will need to build at least 1.7 million new single-family rentals in the next decade to accommodate explosive growth in demand from the millennials needing a house but unable to buy one, RCLCO’s Todd LaRue said. Millennials are reaching a stage where they’re adopting pets, getting married and having children, and they need more space than an apartment. As Todd Wood of single-family home builder Christopher Todd Communities put it, they need “a private backyard and a doggie door.”

— Digital nomads: The apartment industry has been considering a rental housing membership program giving renters the ability to move between communities while working remotely, said Rick Haughey of the National Multifamily Housing Council. A new NMHC survey unveiled at #NAREE2021 showed almost half of all tenants would consider signing up for such a plan.

— Foreclosures: Foreclosures are at their lowest level in 40 years, thanks to rapidly rising home prices and an “unbelievable buildup in equity,” said Michael Fratantoni of the Mortgage Bankers Association. That equity acts as a cushion for homeowners still struggling with finances due to the pandemic. “Foreclosures are not happening now,” Fratantoni said.

— Equity is no guarantee: Surprisingly, while foreclosures are rare, 87% of homeowners now in the foreclosure process have equity in their homes, RealtyTrac data show. “Having equity doesn’t prevent a borrower from defaulting on a loan,” RealtyTrac’s Rick Sharga said.

— Home prices: The year of record-low mortgage rates is ending, meaning the pace of home-price appreciation will slow in 2022. But prices won’t decrease, they’ll just rise more gradually. The National Association of Realtors’ Lawrence Yun predicted home prices will rise 2.8% next year, down from nearly 15% this year. CoreLogic’s Frank Nothaft expects a bigger gain: 7% in 2022, down from 18% as of October.

— Self-storage: The biggest surprise of the pandemic was the performance of self-storage REIT’s, said John Worth of Nareit. Self-storage REIT’s outperformed all other sectors with a 70% return during the pandemic. “As people start to move in the pandemic, some are up-sizing, some are down-sizing,” Worth said. “All the activity we see in the housing market, that drives self-storage demand.”

— Industrial space: Supply chain backlogs and an increase in online shopping have boosted demand for industrial space to stockpile goods. “We’re seeing a real uptick in demand for current customers looking for space in the market right now,” Duke Realty’s Stephanie Rodriguez said.

— Surfside tragedy: Lessons from the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside, Fla., show reforms are needed in how condo associations operate. Because of pressures to keep HOA fees low, condo boards can’t be trusted with the duty to raise adequate maintenance reserve funds to keep building safe, a panel of experts said.

— Palm trees in the air: As the conference was underway, construction continued next door on Miami’s newest residential high-rise, the 66-story Aston Martin Residences. The Real Deal’s Katherine Kallergis posted a photo on Twitter showing a crane hoisting a palm tree “to (what I’m assuming) is the top floor of the Aston Martin Residences in downtown Miami for the official topping out.”

— Investigative reporting tips: The ICIJ and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project have free online databases to help real estate reporters working on investigative stories. Sites include a vast archive of government records and an archive of leaked material. Among them: aleph.occrp.org, offshoreleaks.icij.org and id.occrp.org

— Finding award-winning stories: Boston Globe real estate writer Tim Logan shared a bit of wisdom about how to be a front-page, award-winning writer. Asked how he decides what stories to cover and which ones to ignore, he said relies on his editors to juggle what to do and what not to do. Said Logan: “You get the big stories by doing the small stories.”

2021 President’s Notebook

My wife and I had a long-running argument in early 2015. 

She wanted me to do an article on EB-5, the immigration program that grants green cards to foreigners who invest at least $900,000 in a U.S. enterprise. Most of the investments were in real estate, she said.

“It’s a real estate story,” said my wife, who is also my newspaper’s immigration writer.

“No,” I said. “It’s an immigration story.”

And so it went, over and over again, until I attended the NAREE conference in Miami and listened to an EB-5 panel discussion. With foreign real estate investments rising exponentially in recent years, it was one of the hot topics at that year’s conference.

OK, I thought. Guess she was right. 

I lined up some sources before the conference ended, and soon started on my EB-5 story. My wife pitched in, and we produced our first joint byline in 20-plus years of marriage: “Dollars for Green Cards.” It won first place for business news at the Los Angeles Press Club. 

The EB-5 article was one of dozens of story ideas I’ve gotten from NAREE.

At a NAREE dinner during NAR’s 2011 conference in Anaheim, I heard Randall Bell, the Orange County-based “Appraiser of Doom,” speak about his business assessing property that had been the scene of a crime or a disaster. My subsequent lede: “Few things hammer property values more than murder.”

In 2018, I had been working on a story about the growing number of single-family rentals when I ran smack dab into Diane Tomb at NAREE’s Las Vegas conference. She was executive director of the National Rental Home Council, an organization for rental house builders I didn’t know existed.

I could go on and on. 

For me, this is what NAREE is all about. Expanding our horizons, meeting new sources and rubbing elbows with some of the best real estate journalists in America. 

How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted real estate news coverage? 

NAREE had an online roundtable on that in May 2020 and followed up with a panel of top reporters at our first virtual conference the following December. 

How did last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests affect real estate news? During our online conference, “Color of Law” author Richard Rothstein discussed the history of housing segregation in America, followed by a panel of reporters who discussed their coverage of present-day housing inequality.

How are real estate journalists coping with news cuts and staff layoffs? Meeting during NAR’s conferences in Boston and San Francisco, members shared stories from the trenches about dealing with diminishing resources. Wall Street Journal real estate columnist Beth DeCarbo saw the glass as half full: This is a super-exciting time to be a journalist, she said.

“There are a lot of issues that are interrelated, and people rely on journalists to explain that to them,” she said. “No one else is going to do it. It’s really up to people like us.”

From my first conference in 2010, I was struck by NAREE’s uncanny ability to string together panels that keep me glued to my seat. Economists, researchers, entrepreneurs and corporate execs line up to share their insights on developments in commercial and residential real estate, the mortgage industry, homebuilding and multi-family housing.

The budding issues of the day are regular topics as well: Green-building, high-rise living, the explosion of new food halls and the appearance of iBuyers. 

Through NAREE U, members get how-to instruction in parsing data and learn about new developments in digital news and social media and. Through our new Office Hours program, senior members are mentoring younger reporters, offering guidance for writing and for their careers.

This past year, NAREE had to shift its plans continually as COVID-19 shut down travel and conventions around the world. We ended up holding one of our most successful conferences ever, all of it online.

We plan to meet again — hopefully in person — at NAREE’s next annual conference, which has been shifted to the fall. And we’ll have more virtual sessions throughout the year to give our members more opportunities to meet, confer and share insights.

Who knows what you will learn at NAREE’s next meeting? It may land you your next award-winning story idea. And it might just keep you out of hot water with your spouse.