Mike Golden

Co-Chief Executive Officer, @properties Christie’s International Real Estate

Golden came to real estate by way of human resources, a background that shaped his focus on operations, systems and scale.

After working alongside Thad Wong at another brokerage, the two struck out on their own and built @properties into one of the country’s largest residential firms. The brokerage ranked first in The Real Deal’s 2025 Chicago residential brokerage rankings, posting $7.9 billion in Cook County sales volume. Over more than two decades, the firm has closed more than $40 billion in transactions and expanded beyond residential brokerage into commercial real estate and development services.

Golden has often described a division of labor between the founders, crediting Wong with shaping the firm’s brand while Golden focused on execution and infrastructure, “making sure the train stays on the tracks.”

In 2018, Wong and Golden sold a stake in the firm to private equity investor Quad-C. Three years later, @properties acquired Christie’s International Real Estate, combining the two brands. The biggest inflection point came in 2024, when Compass agreed to buy @properties in a $444 million cash-and-stock deal. Golden framed the sale as an opportunity to gain scale without losing identity.

“Our company can really benefit from being able to tap into that scale as long as they were willing to leave us who we are,” he said. “Because we didn’t feel like it would have been in our or their best interest for us to all of a sudden become Compass.”

— Caleb McCullough