Housing Advocate Don DeBat: An Authority

On Real Estate for More than Four Decades

 

     on DeBat is a veteran author and nationally-known journalist, a housing advocate, real estate investor and media consultant who served as an award-winning real estate writer and editor of the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times for a combined total of 27 years.

 

DeBat is co-author of “Escaping Condo Jail: The Keys to Navigating the Risks & Surviving the Perils of the ‘Carefree’ Community Lifestyle.” The myth-shattering 2014 book offers a never-before-seen look inside the inner workings of America’s condominium and community associations.

 

DeBat was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for “The Home Repair Trap,” a six-part front page Sun-Times investigative series on home repair and remodeling rip-offs. Under his leadership the Daily News and Sun-Times won the Best Real Estate Section in the nation award four times. He has written hundreds of newspaper columns on condominium living and mortgage finance and has authored four books on real estate and finance.

 

In 2014, the Chicago Headline Club cited “The Home Front,” DeBat’s real estate news column for a Peter Lisagor Award in the weekly newspaper category. The column unravels the complexities of home buying, mortgage shopping, homeownership, urban development, renovation and remodeling with a Midwest point of view. The consumer-oriented real estate column syndicated by DeBat Media Services, currently is published in several weekly neighborhood newspapers in the Chicago area including the Skyline, Booster, News-Star, and online, in the North Loop News.

 

DeBat has written about trends in housing, mortgage finance and business for more than four decades. He is an inductee of the coveted Court of Honor of the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago for his extensive editorial support to the Chicagoland home-builder community over a 40-year career. DeBat is the first media professional to be inducted into the HBAGC’s “Hall of Fame.”

 

DeBat recently was inducted in to the Chicago Journalists Hall of Fame and is listed in the 2015 edition of Who’s Who in America. View Don DeBat’s professional profile on LinkedIn.