When Susan Braudo-Maman joined @properties in 2010, she was attracted to the company’s infrastructure support for brokers, including innovative marketing, advertising, and technology. “There is no comparison [to other real estate firms],” Braudo-Maman says. “The attitude of everyone from top on down is ‘What can we do to help you as an agent?’ It’s a pleasant and energetic culture!”

In her early career, Braudo-Maman was a senior account executive in the publishing and advertising industries. She grew up in Glencoe, lived in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a time, and returned to live in downtown Chicago before coming home to Glencoe.

After raising her children full-time for a while, a friend with Coldwell Banker encouraged her to get her real estate license, which she did. “Growing up here put me on the real estate map very quickly, and I knew my capacity as a business person,” Braudo-Maman says.

“The market was amazing,” she recalls. “Within two years, I was selling $10 to $12 million dollar homes, and I was named Rookie of the Year.” She also completed two successful new home projects of her own.

And then Braudo-Maman was diagnosed with breast cancer, which meant she had to take time off to focus on her treatment and recovery. During that period, she founded her own not-for-profit, A Million Tomorrows, to raise money for breast cancer research.

“But I was addicted to real estate,” she laughs, and she got back into representing sellers and buyers, earning status as a 2006 Coldwell Banker Award Winning Agent.

Braudo-Maman feels that she brings her own unique approach and attitude as a broker to her clients. “I love marketing and advertising,” she explains. “I work well with other agents because I tend to have good chemistry with people and have earned their trust. I apply the same fighting spirit from my battle with breast cancer to negotiating for my clients and overcoming the challenges of our current real estate market.”

For one, Braudo-Maman adopts a proactive approach to selling properties. She provides homeowners with a detailed calendar, agenda, and strategy for the first four weeks of the process. She does extensive targeted research, hosts a lot of open houses, and sends out frequent direct mailers. As an added personal touch, she asks sellers to write a letter to prospective buyers describing what they loved about living in the home, neighborhood, and town.

As they move through the selling cycle, Braudo-Maman provides clients with full monthly reports, showing activity and feedback from prospective buyers and other agents. Based on this information, she “changes up the plan” when necessary.

Braudo-Maman also seems to have a knack for successfully helping people through the “short sale” process that currently represents 30 percent of the North Shore marketplace.

In her personal life, Braudo-Maman is proud to donate a portion of her income every year to breast cancer research. Perhaps most of all, it is her warm, optimistic, and energetic personality that contributes to her success in life and in real estate.

To contact Susan Braudo-Maman, call 847-878-5235 (cell) or 847-881-0200 (office), or email her at [email protected].