Investigating Real Estate Developments: Lessons from an Award Winning Project in Mexico

Investigating real estate developments and the trusts that finance these projects can lead reporters to powerful figures, stories linked to acts of corruption, and reports of construction projects that bypass the rights of people and communities.

This type of investigation demands data analysis, visualization, and the participation of a multidisciplinary team, which is what the Mexican media outlet N+Focus pulled together for the project City Without Water: A Town Against a Concrete Giant, which won best multimedia project at the Ortega y Gasset Awards this year.

The story narrates how the community of San Sebastián Xoco, in the south of Mexico City, has been pitted against powerful real estate conglomerates when it comes to access to a basic service: water. As office buildings grew higher and higher, and shopping centers sprawled to surround the community, a lack of planning related to urban expansion forced the displacement of some members of the community, and led to questions about who owns the area’s natural resources.

As the reporter Jennifer Gonzalez Posadas described it to El País, the story revealed how water, a public good, “has been commercialized.”

Her co-author, Alejandro Melgoza Rocha said theirs became a tale of “gentrification, land speculation, but also about the revolving doors between the authorities and private companies.”

In an interview for IJNet, the authors shared tips from the project, as well as the lessons learned during the course of the investigation, which they share so that other journalists can investigate stories that give the people affected by real estate developments a voice.

N+Focus trawled through hundreds of documents to set out water consumption levels linked to big developments. Image: Screenshot, N+Focus

Tip 1: Put Together a Work Plan

All in-depth journalistic work requires a work plan and this investigation took almost a year. The first three months revolved around planning: the construction of hypotheses, the preparation of a timeline, and finding out what documents they could get their hands on.

The next five months saw the team conducting and recording interviews, photographing the relevant sites, and reviewing documents obtained via transparency laws. The last few months were dedicated to multimedia production, and the final stages of writing up the investigation, including data verification.

A total of 16 people participated in the project, with a team made up of editors, journalists, filmmakers, drone recorders, data analysts, multimedia designers, and programmers.

Tip 2: Gather Key Planning Documents

These vary by country, but in Mexico, without a feasibility report nothing can be built, so this is a key document. It reveals the name of the person who is going to build, and whether the local authorities have the capacity to distribute water and sewer systems in the area. Without this permit, it is not possible to build. One thing that the document doesn’t show, González points out, is whether there is enough water for a development — it shows only whether there is the relevant infrastructure.

Melgoza points out that documents like this can change by state or country, depending on local urban development laws. But these kinds of planning documents can give reporters a real insight on the type of construction being planned, the volume, how many floors a development might have, plans for parking, and the impacts certain developments will have on population density.

Tip 3: Build Databases and Map Your Results

A key part of the investigation saw the team comparing a map showing water availability in Mexico City with a map pinpointing the areas with the greatest number of construction permits, which was provided by the Mexico City Water System, a government agency.

This led to one of their key findings: areas where the greatest number of construction licenses had been granted already had low water availability levels.

In addition, Melgoza mapped more water-thirsty real estate developments after reviewing the record of complaints against real estate megaprojects from the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office. By cross referencing administrative and legal documentation, it was possible to create a database of 211 mega developments in Mexico City that had been beset by complaints.

The journalists also created a timeline in Excel with data obtained from financial reports, complaint files, and responses to information requests, and included data tracking companies’ announcements on social networks.

The team mapped subterranean water availability across the metropolitan area, pointing to how continued extraction puts the ecosystems in the area under threat. Image: Screenshot, N+ Focus

Tip 4: Confront Opacity When Investigating Real Estate Trusts

Although real estate trusts are involved in urban development and infrastructure in a city — which by definition involves permits and public space — in Mexico their operations can be anything but opaque, from access to information to the search for direct answers.

But despite these barriers, González points to one advantage when digging into their operations: trusts are listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange, which makes it possible to access data on income, sales, and property reports. It can also give reporters clues to a company’s interests, people profiles, and help detect if they are running or purchasing buildings like warehouses, shopping malls, or industrial parks.

Melgoza shares these tips for keeping track of real estate developments.

• Keep up to date with — and map — the mega plazas and mega-developments in your city.
• Contact neighborhood groups, committees, or associations that have been involved in certain developments. This will allow you to know how the landscape or environment have been modified, and to know about how irregularities and complaints were handled.
• Trawl through newspapers to find any records there are about developments and problems related to them.
• File freedom of information requests about any developments you are investigating to the environmental authority and relevant prosecutor’s offices.
• Explore annual investor reports, where companies are obliged to report any controversies in which they have been involved. “There you begin to follow the footprints” adds González, although keep an eye out for linked companies registered with different corporate names which can also provide clues.
• Report on administrative justice proceedings which follow up on the cases of investors and real estate agents involved in legal processes.

Tip 5: Real Estate Traps: A Thousand-Headed Hydra

Having previously investigated real estate developments and construction trusts, González and Melgoza knew about strategies like presenting projects in stages, which force journalists to generate various requests for information and dig into each stage. It can be like battling a “hydra with a thousand heads,” said González.

“You cannot be totally exhaustive and understand everything because if not we will never finish… But the timeline helped us not to get lost and not to follow all the heads of the hydra,” González added.

Another complexity faced when investigating this topic is how the corporate names under which developments are registered can change, said Melgoza.

Sometimes, that is “so as not to leave fiscal or legal traces… We might think that if we find 105 complaints they correspond to the same number of companies, when perhaps they belong to the same conglomerate,” he said.

Tip 6: Information Requests

This investigation required a bumper 1,876 requests for information, since reporters wanted to dig into developments that fell under the remit of 16 different mayor’s offices in Mexico City. For each, they looked at administrative and criminal files, fines, permits, and authorizations in addition to the origin and background of real estate developments.

Sometimes the reporters’ information requests were refused, with confidentiality rules or the lack of information given as an excuse. The denials were appealed. “They delivered information in dribs and drabs,” said Melgoza, adding that they were surprised by the requests that failed “given that water is a public interest.”

Eventually, though, the team decided not to spend more time battling for information and to work with what they had. It helped that early on they had considered two possible scenarios: one in which they got all the official information they asked for, and another, where they didn’t.

Melgoza’s advice for reporters is to consider the deadlines by which you can receive documents and data. He recalled how it took eight months to draw out water consumption data by development from reviewing the relevant documents.

Takeaways for Reporters Who Want to Dig Into Construction Projects

Both González and Melgoza shared these lessons learned.

• Be thoroughly multidisciplinary: From the conception of the hypothesis through development, post-production, and verification, they suggest projects like this work best when the entire team knows what you are working on, no matter how complex the research is.
• Set limits: Reporting on real estate developments requires a lot of work and there can be traps set by the companies themselves, which is why it is important to set limits on what you will do based on the hypothesis.
• Track down the powerful: Finding out who the big players are helps ground the investigation.
• Take advantage of the team’s capabilities: Trust in the abilities of each team member.
• Listen: Journalists should listen to the people or communities affected by a problem, not only to tell their stories but also because reporters leave once a story is published, while those affected stay.

This article was originally published, in Spanish, by IJNet, and is republished with permission. You can read the original here. The author of the original piece worked on this translation. There have been some additions and minor edits for style.

Lucero Hernández García is a freelance journalist and digital consultant from Mexico, and GIJN en español collaborator. She has a master’s degree in Communication and Digital Media, with a specialism in multimedia production. She runs workshops and teaches data, visualization, digital tools, and online journalism to university students. Her work has been published by IJNet, and she has received scholarships from Cosecha Roja, Sembramedia, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.