In a housing market defined by what wasn’t available, Chicago’s top real estate agent this year had to chase down business.
“I’m talking to everyone all the time,” said Emily Sachs Wong, the @properties Christie’s International Real Estate broker who was the top-producing agent in Cook County in the 12 months ending in October, based on data compiled by The Real Deal. “When people tell me they’re thinking of selling, in my mind I’m like, ‘Who do I have for this?’”
Sachs Wong played the role of matchmaker more than ever this year. She leveraged her connections to seek out properties for her buyers before they hit the market and find buyers for her clients’ listings, she said, navigating low supply in Lincoln Park to close deals.
Chicago’s tight inventory was a consistent challenge for the top performing brokers this year. Homeowners with mortgages below 3 percent aren’t selling, especially in the desirable neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, Bucktown and Lakeview, where many top agents make most of their deals.
Still, Chicago’s top 20 agents managed to increase their collective sales volume this year compared to last, thanks in part to rising home prices. The top 20 made a combined $3.2 billion in deals this year, which is up more than 14 percent from the $2.8 billion in volume by last year’s top 20. That total was spread over 3,338 deals, about 100 fewer than the top 20 brokers made last year.
The list counts both buy- and sell-side deals recorded in the Chicago-area multiple listing service from October 2024 to October 2025, excluding any off-market transactions. The ranking includes only Cook County sales and only residential properties over $100,000.
Sachs Wong’s specialty in Lincoln Park — one of the nation’s most sought-after neighborhoods — provides a window into dealmaking in the highest level of Chicago’s real estate market, where connections are everything and exclusivity is prized. As listing authorities like the National Association of Realtors and Zillow push for more publicity in listings and transactions, much of the work of Chicago’s top real estate agents is done by word of mouth.
“I have probably $50 million in sales that I’ve offered that they just couldn’t get so they re-signed their lease.”
“Knowing that I have specific requirements for certain clients and trying to find them before they hit the market because when they hit the market, it’s just so much more competitive,” said Sachs Wong.
Sachs Wong and her team at @properties completed $338.3 million in sales in the last year across 174 transactions — a 72 percent increase from $196.6 million in 2024, vaulting her from third place to first in this year’s rankings. As one half of what’s likely Chicago’s most powerful couple in residential real estate — Sachs Wong is married to @properties co-founder and co-CEO Thad Wong — she tapped into relationships within an influential social network to aid in dealmaking.
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Buyer, meet seller
The one-to-one matching Sachs Wong described is allowed under both NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy and Zillow’s Listing Access Standards. But MRED’s Private Listing Network, a tool used by some luxury sellers to keep their offerings off of public platforms like Zillow, has come under scrutiny, though Zillow hasn’t yet begun to enforce its standards to exclude such listings once they do hit Chicago’s standard MLS.
Nancy Tassone, a luxury broker with Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty who made her debut on TRD’s 2025 rankings at No. 9, said she uses the Private Listing Network often for sellers who want privacy. If Zillow tightens restrictions on how private listings can be marketed, Tassone said luxury brokers would need to adapt.
“It is definitely a tool that I use and that a lot of my colleagues who operate in the same price points do for a variety of reasons,” she said. “It’ll be interesting how all of that plays out and how we have to pivot our strategies to conform, and also decide how important it is being on Zillow.”
Carrie McCormick, the @properties agent who jumped from No. 6 in 2024 to take the second spot this year, said she rarely employs private listings, preferring instead to give sellers full exposure. She sometimes uses the private network when a client wants to “dip their toe” in the market without full publicity.
“If they took away the private [network] it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it’s nice to have now because it’s a nice option for sellers to have if they are not fully ready yet,” she said.
Making multimillion-dollar deals was tough this year, especially in Sachs Wong’s primary neighborhood of Lincoln Park, where available houses are rare and buyers with deep pockets line up to make offers.
“There are so few people leaving their homes,” Sachs Wong said. “Lincoln Park has become more popular than ever.”
Some of Sachs Wong’s biggest sales this year were four penthouse condos in the Gold Coast that were owned by billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin — two of which sold to Gov. J.B. Pritzker. The condos, which she listed alongside Tassone, sold for a combined $34.9 million between November 2024 and April, a steep cut from the $58.75 million Griffin paid for them in 2017.
Luxury swell
Coming in second behind Sachs Wong, McCormick made $310.9 million in sales on 162 transactions this year, a sharp rise from her $193.7 million in volume in 2024.
This year’s top sellers were helped by the strength of the luxury market, which blew past previous sales records this year. There were 105 sales of properties worth more than $4 million during the covered time period.
“The luxury market has definitely gone up this year. The stock market’s been doing well, a lot of people deployed some of their assets into real estate,” McCormick said. “And people are flocking to quality construction, quality properties.”
The priciest sale in the rankings was a $31.5 million deal for a lakefront estate in Winnetka, which was the most expensive single home resale in Chicagoland history until late November, when the record broke again. @properties agent Jena Radnay represented both the buyer and the seller on the deal. She also represented both sides in the new record deal, an off-market sale also in Winnetka, for $32.5 million. Radnay landed in sixth place in the rankings, with $213 million in sales across 41 transactions.
“It was obviously a career high moment,” Radnay said of the sale. “This property is an iconic lakefront property that can never be duplicated.”
Inventory shortage takes toll
Matt Laricy of Americorp came in third, sliding from first place in TRD’s 2024 rankings. The Laricy Team had a transaction volume of $273.1 million, a slight bump from the $269.5 million in volume the team did in 2024. Laricy’s team was hit with tragedy early this year when his founding partner, Catherine Holbrook, died at 40 shortly after giving birth.
In fourth place was Grigory Pekarsky, managing broker at Vesta Preferred Realty, followed by Jeff Lowe of the Lowe Group at Compass.
All of them said the inventory shortage was a challenge this year. Lowe, who dropped from second place in 2024 to fifth place this year, said his sales were hurt by low inventory and a drop in new condo buildings coming online. Lowe tallied $240.9 million in volume, compared to $247.6 million in the 2024 ranking.
“There just aren’t that many homes,” Lowe said of Northwest Side neighborhoods. “And when people don’t sell, you get bidding wars left and right. So there’s four to six buyers for every property you put on the market right now.”
That’s a plus for the broker who has the listing, but it means buyers have a harder time making a deal, and it pushes costs up, pricing out some buyers. Laricy said he had dozens of buyers this year who couldn’t land a deal on the right house and decided to re-up their rental leases, dropping out of the market for another year.
“I have probably $50 million in sales that I’ve offered that they just couldn’t get so they re-signed their lease,” Laricy said. “The biggest thing that hurt me is just, there wasn’t enough inventory to meet the client demand.”
Pekarsky’s team at Vesta Preferred Realty increased its sales from $193.7 million in 2024 to $260.1 million this year. Pekarsky said his growth was helped by pushing his agents on outreach and contacting clients, and more carefully tracking their interactions.
“If you contact 10 people the right way, one of them will eventually fall into your lap,” he said. “We’ve just been doing that on a much grander scale and learning how to do a bigger and bigger flow of communication.”
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