Annette Haddad dies at 46; real estate reporter for The Times’ Business section

Annette Haddad, a Business section reporter for the Los Angeles Times who covered the volatile Southern California residential real estate market, has died. She was 46.

Haddad died Wednesday at her home in Pasadena of complications from ovarian cancer, which was diagnosed in November 2007, according to her husband, Scott Doggett.

Although she had spent much of her career at The Times as an editor, she embraced the idea of covering real estate when offered the chance in 2004.

During her time on the beat, she had 17 Page 1 stories on a variety of aspects of the market, including a sharp Column One feature that provided an early look at the impending foreclosure crisis.

Annette Marie Haddad was born in Long Beach on Jan. 20, 1963. She double-majored in political science and journalism at USC, graduating in 1985.

She started her journalism career as a reporter intern for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner before moving on to United Press International, where she covered a number of high-profile stories, including the Rodney King beating and some of the resulting legal action.

She joined The Times in 1992 as an assistant editor in the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service. She also worked for a time on the paper’s National desk before moving to the Business section in 1995.

Versatile and engaged, Haddad performed many editing functions in Business over the next nine years, including assignment editor for the airline, tourism, retailing and agriculture beats.

In reporting on residential real estate, she focused her coverage from a financial perspective looking at market trends, housing economics and home-building companies.

She loved her assignment, her husband said.

“After a long week of work, she thought nothing of spending her weekend covering open houses and loved talking to actual buyers,” Doggett said.

After her diagnosis in 2007, she underwent surgeries and chemotherapy before returning to work coordinating Business coverage on the paper’s website. But a return of the cancer a few months later forced her to quit.

In addition to her husband of 11 years, she is survived by her mother, Marie Haddad of Alhambra; a sister, Chris Haddad of Concord, Calif.; and a brother, George Haddad of Santa Fe, N.M.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Humane Society of the United States.

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