Thad Wong is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of @properties | Christie’s International Real Estate. Along with business partner, Mike Golden, Wong has successfully built a portfolio of companies that includes real estate brokerage, prop-tech, mortgage lending, and title services, creating one of the fastest growing and most innovative real estate brands in the industry.
Wong and Golden met in the mid-1990s at a small brokerage firm in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. They teamed up to sell loft conversions and new-construction developments, and quickly became the city's top producing agents. In 2000, recognizing a need among fellow agents for more service and support, they established @properties. The idea for the name came to Wong as he rode a department store escalator past a giant Christmas tree with ornaments featuring the @ symbol. In less than two decades, Wong and Golden grew @properties into one of the nation’s top 10 brokerage firms.
In recent years, Wong and Golden have led the acquisition of billion-dollar brokerage firms Ansley Real Estate in Atlanta and Sereno Real Estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. They also launched Proper Title, now Illinois’ 2nd largest independent title agency, and formed a joint venture with Guaranteed Rate to establish national mortgage lender, Proper Rate.
In 2021, they acquired Christie’s International Real Estate, the world’s premier luxury real estate brand. Today, Wong oversees a network that includes more than 13,000 real estate agents in nearly 50 countries and territories, handling over $100 billion in annual transaction volume.
Wong is also the driving force behind pl@tformä, @properties’ proprietary brokerage technology software offering agents a complete, single-dashboard solution to digitally manage all aspects of the client relationship and real estate transaction.
Wong has been honored as the Inman Innovator of the Year; Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Midwest; is a 12-time honoree of Inc. Magazine’s “Inc. 500/5000;” and is a recipient of the Lincoln Park Builders Club Impact Award and the Merrick Momentum Award from the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center at 1871.
He is active in several charities, including @gives back, his firm’s non-profit foundation. Wong is a native of Minneapolis and graduate of Loyola University of Chicago. He and his wife, Emily, also a successful REALTOR, have four children.
