Few real estate agents can say they’ve sold multiple Frank Lloyd Wright houses or the boyhood home of Ernest Hemingway. But Steve Scheuring, a broker with Compass and local expert on the Oak Park and River Forest areas, has done both. Scheuring and his wife, Julie, are raising their three children in Oak Park, the same village that four generations of his family have called home.
After college, Scheuring built a diverse resume. First, he was a case manager supervisor for the Jane Addams Hull House Association, helping wards of the state build independent living skills. Scheuring left the nonprofit world to sell luxury cars and then computers.
“Car and computer sales taught me how to negotiate and how to sell,” says Scheuring, who also holds an MBA. “Social services taught me how to listen. Life is always teaching me to keep listening.”
Then Oak Park real estate professional Tony Iwersen suggested Scheuring might excel at real estate. Two months later, Scheuring became licensed. He started his career with boutique firm Gagliardo Realty Associates before switching to Baird & Warner.
Iwersen was right about real estate being a good fit. Scheuring was recognized by Baird & Warner as the top agent in his office from 2014 through 2018 and regularly ranked in the company’s top 1 percent of agents for dollar volume and number of units sold from 2012 on. Scheuring recently joined Compass to take his listing marketing to the next level.
“I learned early on that being an educator to your clients is the best service you can provide,” he says. “Give buyers as much information as possible, so in the end, they can make the best decisions for themselves.”
The highlight of Scheuring’s year in 2018 was selling the home of Oak Park living legend Virginia Cassin. Scheuring previously had the privilege of working with the longtime community organizer and village clerk on the sale of Hemingway’s boyhood home as Cassin was a long-standing board member of The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park.
“Selling Virginia’s home and getting to work with her and her family was amazing,” Scheuring says. For those who don’t know Cassin, he adds, “Just Google her. You’ll get it.”
