Wachter, Susan M.

Susan M. Wachter is the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate, and Professor of Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Director for the Wharton GeoSpatial Initiative and Lab, and the co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She also co-directs the Spatial Integration Laboratory for Urban Systems at the University of Pennsylvania. As an economist, she is frequently sought for comment on real estate market trends in well known media outlets—a recent interview with the International Monetary Fund summarizes her views and research. Wachter is noted for developing a model that explains why real estate is subject to booms and busts. The model is based on the inability to short sell homes and real estate more generally. Wachter's model incorporates banks' mortgage lending based on market comparables, which can be disconnected from market fundamentals. Because financial entities compete for market share by undermining lending standards procyclically, thereby creating a systemic risk externality, Wachter's additional work points to the need for what has become known as macro prudential policy and specifically the regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises as utilities. Wachter helped to found Wharton's Real Estate Department with the goal of using economic models, including finance and urban economics, to improve the understanding of how real estate markets work. She is also known for her early work on redlining and for her work on the impact of lending constraints on homeownership. A 2021 study found Wachter to be the second most cited author among academics who publish in real estate economics journals globally. Wachter was featured on a list of "notable women in real estate" published by Bankrate in March 2025.