Alejandra Rodriguez-Villamizar is a communications specialist, editor, and researcher based in Medellín, Colombia, with experience working at the intersection of investigative journalism, strategic communications, and multimedia storytelling.
She is currently Editorial Consultant at KeyCrew, where she leads and refines editorial processes, and manages and mentors the editorial team. Before this role, Alejandra coordinated multimedia content production and designed impact metrics. She conducted in-depth research on organized crime across Latin American countries, contributing to investigative reports that inform public debate and policy discussions. Her career also includes work in digital strategy and audience engagement at University College London, where she supported the Anthropology Department’s outreach and career initiatives.
Alejandra holds a BA in Communications and Journalism from Universidad EAFIT and an MSc in Politics, Violence and Crime from UCL, graduating with distinction. Her work is grounded in a people-centered approach that combines rigorous research, clear storytelling, and strategic thinking to generate social impact.
In a tight housing market, it is easy to assume that sellers hold all the cards. Inventory is low, competition for good listings is real, and buyers in Northern Virginia have spent years feeling like they are on the losing end of every offer. But the assumption misses something important about who is actually listing ...
The policies getting the most attention in the national housing affordability debate — credit score competition, restrictions on institutional investors, streamlined credit reporting — share a common flaw: they target costs that are trivially small relative to the two forces actually driving affordability out of reach for most buyers. Those two forces are constrained housing ...
In the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, two houses on the same side of town can have opposite outcomes. One goes under contract in two or three weeks. The other sits for 90 or 100 days with barely a showing. The difference, according to Heather Gill, a residential agent with eXp Realty who works across Carrollton, Plano, ...
The classic first-time home purchase – a young adult saves up, qualifies for a mortgage, and buys a modest house alone – is fading in the Kansas City metro. Out of 14 first-time buyer transactions Shannon Doser closed over the past year, she estimates roughly 12 involved financial assistance from parents or grandparents. Doser, a ...
Out-of-state investors scanning social media for short-term rental opportunities in Salt Lake City are running into a problem on the ground: multiple areas across the valley and surrounding cities are already restricting or banning nightly vacation rentals, and local policy is moving toward more restrictions, not fewer. Nick Booth, a residential agent who works across ...
After years of weekend sales and bidding wars, well-maintained investment properties in strong Indianapolis neighborhoods are sitting for 30, 60, even 90 days, according to Gloria Gear, a realtor who has worked the city’s investor market for a decade. The shift is catching sellers off guard – especially investor-owners who assumed the fast-moving conditions of ...
Central New Jersey’s housing market is no longer moving in one direction. It is splitting by geography, and the dividing line is distance from New York City. A home search that crosses county lines can mean stepping from a bidding war into a market where sellers are cutting prices – sometimes within a 20-mile drive. ...
Today’s mortgage rates in the Columbus, Ohio, metro sit around seven to seven and a quarter percent, according to Barbara Gale, who leads the Gale Group in Dublin, Ohio, and has sold residential real estate in the market for decades. Buyers treat that figure as a dealbreaker. Gale sees it differently: the average mortgage rate ...
When a home seller in Southern California gets sued over a property defect, the assumption is usually that they failed to mention something entirely. But the more dangerous pattern is subtler: sellers who disclose part of a problem, thinking they have covered themselves, while leaving the full scope hidden. That half-measure, according to Zachary Schorr, ...
A nonprofit in Delaware is building cottage-style homes for roughly 25 to 30 percent less than what outside contractors would charge for the same work, according to its founder. That cost advantage drives some of the lowest rents and purchase prices in the state’s new housing pipeline. But the advantage depends almost entirely on one ...
The biggest financial mistake many first-time home buyers in the Pittsburgh area make has nothing to do with interest rates, bidding wars, or neighborhood choice, according to Janette Schafer, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Realty. Schafer, who works extensively with first-time buyers in the greater Pittsburgh market, says too many buyers are still ...
Year-over-year home price declines near 20 percent in Austin, Texas, have made national news, painting a picture of a market in retreat. But that number blends two very different markets, according to Nitin Kumar, a residential agent and investor with eXp Realty in Austin. One is the established suburbs near Austin’s job centers. The other ...
In Warminster, a middle Bucks County township where many homes date to the 1950s and 1960s, a split has opened between properties that are move-in ready and those that need work. According to Tracey Hill, a 20-year real estate veteran who recently opened an office for Innovate Real Estate in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 54% of homes ...
The conventional assumption is that downsizing seniors and young families shop in different price tiers. In Doylestown, Pennsylvania – the commercial center of Bucks County – those two groups are increasingly circling the same listings, according to Deana Corrigan of The Deana Corrigan Team at Compass. The competition is reshaping how homes get priced, how ...
The math on a fix-and-flip in metro Atlanta looks straightforward on paper: buy a distressed property at a discount, renovate it, sell it at market value, pocket the spread. In practice, the spread is shrinking from both directions. Sellers of distressed properties are asking prices that reflect peak-market expectations rather than current conditions, while construction ...
