Susan Mender | Northwest Indiana Realtor

Susan Mender is a Northwest Indiana Realtor, licensed in Indiana and Illinois, and co-owner of Listing Leaders MVPs, a real estate brokerage in Crown Point, Indiana. A former high school math teacher and pension actuary, Susan began selling real estate in 2018 and has since sold more than 375 homes throughout Northwest Indiana and Chicagoland.

I originally wanted my entire real estate bio to say one word: LOVER.

My team vetoed that idea because they were pretty sure people would make it weird. They were probably right because, you know...the internet.

But I've always been accused of loving everything. I love people. I love houses. I love teaching. I love math. Real estate turned out to be a pretty perfect combination of all of those things.

I started selling real estate part-time while I was still teaching high school math at Crown Point High School. After 14 years in the classroom, I eventually left teaching to do real estate full time, but the teacher in me remains.

My job is to tell you the truth, explain your options, anticipate problems, and make a complicated process feel a whole lot less complicated. I want you to understand what's happening and why, not just have me tell you what to do. And there are no dumb questions. Ask me anything. If it matters to you, it matters. I promise.

The math and analytical parts of my brain never went away, either. I love the numbers, but more importantly, I know how to make sense of them. The market isn't my opinion. My job is to look at the data, break it down in a way that makes sense, and help you understand what it's telling us. Sometimes the data tells us something we don't really want to hear. I'm not afraid to have that conversation with you because good advice isn't always about telling you what you want to hear.

After more than 375 home sales, I've learned that experience doesn't mean everything always goes perfectly. It means when something doesn't, I know how to navigate it. We'll figure out what needs to happen next and work through it together.

Today, I co-own Listing Leaders MVPs with my business partner, Sarah Verpooten. We're both former teachers, which probably explains a lot about how we run our brokerage. We also founded MVP Real Estate School, so apparently I wasn't quite ready to leave education behind either.

I help buyers and sellers throughout Northwest Indiana, including Crown Point, Dyer, St. John, Munster, Schererville, Cedar Lake, Merrillville, Valparaiso, and surrounding communities. I'm also licensed in Illinois and work with clients throughout Chicagoland.

I especially love helping people who need to sell one home while buying another. There are a lot of moving pieces, and I genuinely love figuring out how to make them all work together. Timing, financing, contingencies, possession, closings...this is the kind of real estate puzzle my brain loves. I've navigated this process many, many times, and experience matters here. I know where things can get tricky, what we need to think about ahead of time, and how to build a plan that gives us the best chance of making all those pieces line up.

Whether you're buying your first house, selling one you've loved for decades, doing both at the same time, relocating, downsizing, or you're not even sure what your next move is yet, you don't need to have it all figured out before you call me. That's kind of the point.

At the end of the transaction, if you tell me it was easier than you expected, I've done my job.

If I get an "Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy," even better.

And since apparently my bio still needs to include something I love drinking, Diet Dr Pepper has officially lost its longtime spot to a 7 Brew Pink Paradise Energy.

Things change.