Licensed since 2016
Real Broker LLC Christopher Kelly
An owner-operator who has bought and sold more than 60 properties with his own money, now running one of the Metro East's highest-volume brokerage practices.
Christopher Kelly
Illinois & Missouri Broker
The record
Top Real Estate Agent Madison County IL by the numbers
- Lifetime sales volume
- $70M+
- Closings, last 12 months
- 87
- of 34,000 REAL agents worldwide
- Top 20
- Properties personally owned & sold
- 60+
- FastExpert Top Agent — Belleville, Highland & Fairview Heights (2026)
- Top 20 agent at REAL Broker LLC, Q4 2025, of 34,000 agents worldwide
- Top 30 of all local Illinois brokers by sales volume
- Best of Zillow
- 133 verified Google client reviews
How he got here
A firefighter's son who bought the block before he sold it
- Age 18
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Chris's father was a firefighter who sold real estate part time. A copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad at eighteen turned the side hustle into a plan: own the asset, don't just sell it.
- 2008-2015
$15,000 and a foreclosure market
He started buying distressed homes with $15,000 in capital — including a $1 East St. Louis property he later took to auction for $23,000. Sixty-plus deals later, he still underwrites everything himself.
- 2016
Licensed, and a finance degree from SLU
A Saint Louis University finance background plus an Illinois broker license turned instinct into a repeatable process for clients, not just for his own portfolio.
- Today
REAL Broker LLC, Metro East focused
87 closings in the last twelve months, $70M in lifetime volume, and a deliberately tight service area: Madison and St. Clair County, Illinois.
133 Google reviews