Ruth Ryon

Ryon's tenure at the Los Angeles Times dates back at least to the 1970s. Her first byline with the paper was on November 20, 1977.^[1]

Later on, while reading Parade magazine, Ryon got the idea to write a column with short, pithy items about celebrities buying and selling houses, and she received the go-ahead from her editors to do it. Ryon's first "Hot Property" column appeared on November 25, 1984, and was about Johnny Carson paying $9.5 million for a house in Malibu, California.^[2] Ryon went on to write more than 1,300 more "Hot Property" columns, with the column eventually being moved to Page One of the Los Angeles Times' Real Estate section in 1987 and with it also becoming syndicated.^[2] Ryon also spent five years on KNX (AM) radio discussing celebrity real estate.

The column was the first of what eventually became a small stable of regular celebrity real estate columns or features in newspapers and magazines across the country, including "Private Properties" in the Wall Street Journal, "Manhattan Transfers" in the New York Observer, "Upper Bracket" in the Chicago Tribune (from 1998 until 2004), "Gimme Shelter" in the New York Post and "On the Block" in People. Online features that have been created in the image of "Hot Property" include Big Time Listings,^[3] the Real Estalker^[4] and "Real LI" in Newsday.^{[citation needed]}