Susan M. Wachter is Professor of Real Estate and Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of City and Regional Planning at the School of Design.

From 1998 to 2001, Dr. Wachter served as the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. In this position, Dr. Wachter was the principal advisor to the Secretary on the Nation’s housing and urban policy. The responsibility of Dr. Wachter’s staff of over one hundred analysts was to evaluate prospective legislation and departmental policy, programs, and regulations, and to provide economic analysis of housing and urban markets and research for the regulation of financial institutions. Additionally, Dr. Wachter was a Member of the White House Interagency Task Force on Livable Communities and the White House Interagency Task Force on New Markets.

Dr. Wachter is recognized for her studies on mortgage markets, land use decision-making and housing price outcomes. Prior to her appointment as Assistant Secretary, Dr. Wachter was Chairperson of the Wharton Real Estate Department and Professor of Real Estate and Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She founded and currently serves as Director of the Wharton School’s Geographic Information Systems Lab, a leader in development of geospatial business and community decision support systems. Dr. Wachter has pioneered work on homeownership affordability, including the first-time identification of the impact of borrowing constraints on homeownership, and the development of real estate price indices.

An author of over 100 articles and books on homeownership, mortgage and housing policy and real estate markets, Dr. Wachter serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals and, from 1997 to 1999, was co-editor of Real Estate Economics, the leading academic real estate journal. Dr. Wachter served as the President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association from 1988 to 1989 and is currently a Faculty Fellow at the Homer Hoyt Institute, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an Academic Fellow at the Urban Land Institute.