Jonathan LaMantia

It’s amazing what you can learn by picking up the newspaper.

I’ve been learning from Newsday since I was an elementary school student in Oceanside cutting out articles from its pages for projects on current events. I got my first bylines writing about sports in Oceanside High School’s Sider Press, and The Daily Tar Heel at UNC-Chapel Hill, but I’ve spent my professional career covering the business world.

My goal is to explain how major economic trends and policy changes affect the housing market, not just nationally, but in your neighborhood.

Before joining Newsday as a real estate reporter in 2021, I covered the business of health care at Crain’s New York Business and spent a year as a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University learning my way around reporting on companies’ financial statements. The health care and real estate industries can seem worlds apart, but I’ve found New Yorkers follow both closely, probably because they both cost —and make — people serious money.

In addition to covering the buying and selling of homes, I write about the costs of living here, such as property taxes and flood insurance. My goal is to explain how major economic trends and policy changes affect the housing market, not just nationally, but in your neighborhood. I do that by analyzing data and speaking with experts on topics from interest rates to housing discrimination.

When it comes to housing, often the experts are the people that “do most of the working and paying and living and dying” around here, to quote George Bailey. I’ve written about Long Islanders who finally landed a house after losing multiple bidding wars, and those who prevailed after years of facing foreclosure.

Whether you’re new to the Island or have lived here for decades, I hope you’ll pick up a thing or two from my reporting — and keep coming back to read us online, watch us on NewsdayTV or pick us up in print.