Susan M. Wachter is the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at The Wharton School and Co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania. Wachter helped found Wharton's Real Estate Department and served as its Chairperson from 1997 to 2000. Wachter served as co-editor of Real Estate Economics from 1997–1999. Wachter was nominated and confirmed by the Senate as the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration, serving from 1998–2001. At HUD, Wachter was responsible for the New Markets Tax Credit, the major legislative initiative for urban revitalization with the goal of attracting private capital into low-income communities. During her tenure, Wachter established international outreach and GIS program offices, with the latter responsible for the first federal release of GIS HUD housing data. Wachter also served on the White House Interagency Taskforce for E-Government and the White House Interagency Taskforce on Livable Cities from 1998–2001. 

Upon returning to Wharton, Wachter was appointed the Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management. She founded the Master of Urban Spatial Analytics program and the Wharton GIS Lab and co-founded the Penn Institute for Urban Research with Eugenie Birch. Wachter now serves on the Board of Editors for various publications and has been recognized as a most cited author among academics who publish in real estate economics journals globally. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Homer Hoyt Institute.

Wachter is the recipient of the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award and the John M. Quigley Medal for Advancing Real Estate and Urban Economics by the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA). The Celia Moh Visiting Professor at Singapore Management University in 2004, Wachter currently serves on the Board of the Institute for Real Estate and Urban Studies at the National University of Singapore.

Wachter has authored over 200 publications, co-authoring or co-editing 20 books, including The Great American Housing Bubble (Harvard University Press 2020). Wachter previously served on the Office of Research of the Department of Treasury and is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce. Wachter frequently testifies to Congress and frequently appears in national media, including Bloomberg, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.