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Lee Price III shares his transformative journey from being a college student to a successful real estate entrepreneur. After making a significant profit from a wholesale deal, he decided to drop out of college and fully commit to real estate, transitioning from wholesaling to fix and flip projects.
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Lee Price III (00:00)
So yeah, so from there I went into ⁓ from wholesaling obviously we’re doing wholesaling I remember I started in Texas Southern University when I was 16 went to college I was making so much money flipping properties at the time and I remember like Yesterday I had to go to an English 131 class I had just did a wholesale deal made my biggest check ever $70,000 and the professor was so upset with me being late to class andThat day, he telling me I’m going to be a college dropout, and the average salary a college dropout makes is $40,000 a year, and how he’s a professor, and he makes $70,000 a year at that time being a professor. And I had a check from Title Company for $72,000. And I said, you know what? I quit. This is over. So quit college, went full-fledged in real estate, went from wholesaling to the fix and flip.
Kristen (02:26)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Lee Price III, who is the founder of Create and Capital LLC based out of Houston, Texas. He has amazing experience in this industry and he really helps people get into the investing space and he has a lot of knowledge on the market. So we’re going to get into all of it. Thank you for being here, Lee.Lee Price III (02:30)
Okay.Thank you for having me.
Kristen (02:47)
Amazing. So I mean, you have a really impressive background. I’d love to go back to the beginning and kind of talk about how you got into this industry and the experience you have.Lee Price III (02:56)
Well, the beginning, think 2006, 2007, the market went crazy as everybody knows, right? I’m 16 years old kid learning about real estate. think I was reading like Trump University books and all those Trump real estate 101 and everything and just got the real estate bug in me. And so didn’t have been too much money, obviously 16. So what I started doing is jumped into wholesaling.At the time, driving my mom’s car, I ordered the We Buy Houses Now signs, put my phone number on it, magnetics, put it on the side of her car, put ⁓ yard signs everywhere. I remember it’s funny, in the area that ⁓ my mom lived in, we lived in, I used to get calls from the police in the city, and they were like, hey, stop putting these signs everywhere, da-da-da-da-da, right? And so, yeah, so basically just became the middle man, taking properties, a lot of distressed homeowners, getting those properties under contract.
start going to different real estate meetup groups, seminars, meeting actual investors that had the money and just flipping the contracts to them, flipping the properties to them, making a couple grand each deal.
Kristen (03:59)
How do you getpeople to respect you?
Lee Price III (04:06)
Yeah, so I mean, my thing was that I knew the image and how people perceived you was number one, right? And so I tried to educate myself on a lot of different topics, right? So I wanted to know a little bit about investing, a little bit about homeownership, a little bit how finance works, how mortgage works, how lending works, right? So when I reached out to these people or these people reached out to me, I was able to respond and talk to them on a level of their understanding, right? Obviously these people are 30, 40, 50 years old.And so I wanted to always be able to be able to relate to them and their problem in their situation People are in distress. I mean people were like listen. I have this home I’m about to go on the foreclosure or this XYZ happen. I need out right so really people were looking for a solution So I say hey listen, let me be the solution for your problem
I went and bought every Burlington Co. factory suit I could. I couldn’t afford high-end suits back then, so I was just going to spend $100 bucks getting a suit. I always stayed in a suit. I brought my image. I had business cards. I had everything that I needed to have to make me be credible on the level and take away my age. That’s what I’ve learned, that people cared about the deal. Are you giving a good service? Are you going to be able to help me? Can you deliver on what
Kristen (05:05)
Yeah.Yeah.
Lee Price III (05:26)
you say and I delivered.Kristen (05:28)
Absolutely. mean you must be such a sponge like at that age to I feel like wholesaling in general is sort of a complicated Concept and for you to not only grasp that but be able to deliver great deals to people. I that’s so impressive to meLee Price III (06:32)
Yes, absolutely. ⁓ I think it just boils down to educating yourself on it, right? And trying it. mean, no school, no college can teach this, right? ⁓ You have to get out there, get in front of people, and do deals. That’s how you learn, right? ⁓Kristen (06:44)
pain.Lee Price III (06:50)
I don’t care what, you can go to Harvard or whatever, have an MBA. And I’ve actually negotiated with some of the best, right? And you cannot teach this in school. You can’t teach when somebody is going through a divorce and they have to get out of their home that they’ve been in for the last 20 years. Or going through foreclosure because they got laid off from their job, right? Or one of these fixed rates that then skyrocketed, their payment went from $2,000, now it’s $4,200 a month, right?that they’re going on losing their home. You can’t teach that, right? So you have to get out there and start doing deals and getting in front of people. And as I was just trial and error, you know, I tell people, hurry up and try it so you can fail, learn, and let’s do the next thing, right? So yes, I had some setbacks, but ⁓ just getting out there doing deals, getting in front of people, that’s really where the knitting grit comes from and the education comes from.
Kristen (07:42)
Absolutely, and then from there, talk about kind of what you built from there as you got a little older.Lee Price III (07:48)
Soyeah, so from there I went into ⁓ from wholesaling obviously we’re doing wholesaling I remember I started in Texas Southern University when I was 16 went to college I was making so much money flipping properties at the time and I remember like Yesterday I had to go to an English 131 class I had just did a wholesale deal made my biggest check ever $70,000 and the professor was so upset with me being late to class and
That day, he telling me I’m going to be a college dropout, and the average salary a college dropout makes is $40,000 a year, and how he’s a professor, and he makes $70,000 a year at that time being a professor. And I had a check from Title Company for $72,000. And I said, you know what? I quit. This is over. So quit college, went full-fledged in real estate, went from wholesaling to the fix and
buying properties, rehabbing them up. Obviously at that time it was still the market was crazy going down. ⁓ We ended up scaling from fix and flip to actually got into real estate brokerage. ended up buying a brokerage, ⁓ bought a brokerage, set my agents up on, it’s called Luxdoor Realty Group, set my agents up on, hey look, we’re not gonna pay you based on commission.
We’re going to have a different system. We’re going to handle all the marketing, bringing in all the leads, all the complex issues that real estate agents have, they can’t bring in the business. And so we’re going to pay you bonuses based on production. That started skyrocketing, taking off. ⁓ We end up buying a mortgage brokerage called Model Mortgage. ⁓
bought that in so we had where we can get you a loan. ⁓ We had the real estate agents. We went into single family development, building single family, and we scaled into multifamily. So we had a one stop shop where anything that you needed in real estate, we can ⁓ cater to you. Sold that company off and kind of now we’re nitting grit is new construction, single family development, and buying apartments.
That’s our bread and butter. That’s what we do. That’s the core. The exit route is the apartments, but right now new construction is booming. And so that’s what we’re excited about right now.
Kristen (10:10)
Yeah, definitely talk about the single family development in Houston, kind of the opportunity there right now.Lee Price III (10:16)
So yeah, so Houston is crazy. As a lot of people know, have the medical center with MD Anderson Cancer Center here. I think it’s one of the largest medical centers in the world. ⁓ So with that, and plus the oil market, a lot of the top oil companies are all located here in Houston. The area is booming. Houston’s growing like crazy. And so yeah, so single family development is, I think,really exciting if you drive around Houston, you see new construction everywhere. ⁓
with the market of real estate right now with people locked in at 2 % interest rates and 3 % 1 % interest rates, nobody’s selling their home. So everybody wants to buy new construction. It seems like new construction is the bread and butter. I talk to real estate agents every day, their clients, everybody wants to go straight to new construction, right? And so that’s what we’re focused on is getting that new construction. ⁓ As rates start coming down, more properties might come back on the market. But I think that people with first time buy
It’s something about being in the first person to live in the home, right? And then if you get it new enough, you can pick certain things out and kind of feel like it’s a custom home build, right? And so, ⁓ yeah, new construction is going crazy. Everybody’s building. We’re excited about it. ⁓ And they’re flying off the market. mean, our average days on market is 30, 45 days right now. And I think that’s just gonna increase next year going into 2026 when the interest rates do come down. ⁓
I think construction is just going to keep booming. There’s a housing shortage all across America, as ⁓ our president always states out, you know, trying to free up in federal lands and try to build. So right now building is, I think, a great income producing vehicle for us right now.
Kristen (12:39)
Yeah, and you’re not just working in Houston, you do deals all over.Lee Price III (12:45)
Yeah,so we’re everywhere. We have a hotel project going on in Virginia right now. We have some multifamily projects in Georgia, as well as Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re really thinking about scaling into Dallas, Texas right now with the new construction. Yeah, so like we go where the markets and the deals make sense, not just staying in a backyard. I’ve stressed that to a lot of. ⁓
Kristen (13:06)
Right.Lee Price III (13:10)
people that are in this industry that don’t just stay in your backyard, know, go see what the market is like somewhere else, you know. ⁓ There’s deals all across America. We don’t get too far on the East Coast because I feel like migration now is coming south, still heavy, and nobody’s going.Like I don’t hear people moving from Houston or Florida to the Northeast to New York or so, but I hear people leaving New York coming to Houston all the time. So I try to stay in the Southern markets where job growth is. And yeah, we’re super excited. We’re thinking about scaling over into Dubai coming up next quarter. And so investing some capital over there. And so yeah, we’re just excited to keep investing and growing and building the company.
Kristen (13:53)
That’s amazing. And how do you identify which market is a good market? I mean, I think in general, people look at the market as like a good market or a bad market. But you’re right, there’s these pockets of good and bad everywhere. How do you find those opportunities?Lee Price III (14:07)
Yeah.Yeah, so it depends on what we’re looking at. So as far as the hotel deal, we’re looking for traffic. What’s the traffic generator in that area? They have a casino that they’re bringing in that’s pretty close. So we’re looking for how traffic is flowing. Same way with the multifamily side. I’m looking at traffic. So I want to see what jobs. Where are the people at? Who is going to be the person to buy this area? And what’s the kind of the
The tricky part about the business, you have to think 12 months ahead how the market is gonna be. And especially with single family development. ⁓ It’s not about what’s happening right now, because it’s gonna take us six, nine months to get this property on the market. So what’s gonna be the market 12 months from now, right? So I’m looking at job growth, is jobs are leaving, right? Is the city putting money into that area?
All right, so sometimes you’ll look at these city master plans and a lot of people really don’t even know about it, but you can map out and see the city maps out and says, hey, look, we’re putting, you know, $10 million over here. We’re putting 300 million here. We plan on doing this. We plan on doing that. And so when I see the city behind an area and I see that there’s job growth and there’s a market behind it, then that’s when we were like, okay, this is a good area to deploy.
capital to. And so yeah, it’s seeing that market 12 months ahead. That’s the big thing for us.
Kristen (15:30)
Yeah.Absolutely, I mean that’s really really great advice. I think that can probably help a lot of people. I want to shift gears a little bit because you have this great mentor program and you really help people build their business credit and I would love to get into that and kind of the know the resources you offer.
Lee Price III (15:53)
Absolutely, so ⁓ I started ⁓ obviously we’re doing what I’m doing I get a lot of people that are interested in getting into real estate and so I started creating capital community and I created capital mentorship so I took out all the fluff in it with people that want us or your average person that’s working nine to five or somebody that really wants to get in real estate I said okay listencome over here, get involved with me. I’ll basically hold your hand. I’m gonna guide you all the way through the process. We’re gonna make sure your credit’s in order. If your credit’s not in order, we’re gonna get it in order. We’re gonna leverage business credit, get you set up with the LLC, everything. ⁓ I’ve partnered with a hard money company where they allow to lend to you now because you have no experience. they normally wouldn’t lend to you, but since I’m getting involved with you, they’ll lend to you. So we teach people how to go from zero to setting up their business credit,
that funding to get money to put down on a deal and so for instance if it’s a single-family deal we put anywhere from 25 to 50 percent down on the lot cost. Hard money lenders going to lend the rest of the construction and rest of the lot cost as well because I’m partnering with you. So we utilize your credit use it as leverage to get into a deal build a single-family home put it on the market sell it make a return on your money.
be able to pay off your creditors, everything that you use lies your credit, and then roll that money back into another deal. After we build up enough cash flow, we take you then and transition you into multifamily. Get you to park that money in apartment complex so you can start getting that residual capital. ⁓
benefit from the greatest tax breaks in the world, right? And so that’s the mentorship program that I started where we take you and all the glitz and glamour is all cut out. A lot of these guys out here are saying, you know, you’re getting this business, no money down and zero, you can buy this property with no money and all this stuff. There’s gonna be money comes from somewhere, right? There has to be money involved. And so we are teaching people how to really scale up and…
Kristen (18:32)
Yeah. Yeah.Lee Price III (18:38)
keep you from making all the mistakes that most people will do, right? And plus it’s accountability. I’m gonna be on you. We’re gonna have weekly Zoom calls. You’re gonna be in a community full of people. And so we’re like, yeah, we’re back. I like production. Like, what are we doing? What do we do this week? Did we get something done? Is the LLC set up? Is the credit right? Are we looking at lots? It’s permitting. This is what we need to do here, right? And so maybe people that can’t, not ready to jump in that deep, I started creating Capital Community off the school platform. People can see it on,school.com slash creating capital community. this is where you can go log in and from step one, learning how to get into real estate, learning the word, the language, ⁓ To courses on how to start in single family development, how to go through the permitting process. Or if you want to, maybe you’re on the multifamily side, right? You need to learn how to scale and get your first apartment complex deal, right? ⁓ And like-minded people that are all networking,
have Q &As on Sundays, we have weekly Zoom calls where you can ask, you can bring a deal to us. We’ll underwrite your deal right there online. And so really getting in an environment where people are all after the same kind of goal and willing to help each other and grow and build. so, yeah, October 23rd, I’m releasing a book called Business Credit Master Manual. So this is A to Z on how to build your business credit, right? Everybody knows about personal credit. They hear about it. It’s millions of things online.
about personal credit, but really people don’t even understand the business credit. If you could bring the personal credit and the business credit and come together, you unlock tremendous amounts of capital.
⁓ And so it’s a it’s a a disease step-by-step guide and I mean I’m guiding you through it I’m like hey go to this website do this here go here do this This is how you get your EIA in step one step two step three right apply for this here start net 30 accounts or wherever you’re at I go step by step and break it all down and so yeah I’m excited about that business credit master manual October 23rd, and so it’s actually that’s my birthday as well So I’m releasing on my birthday, and so yeah, so
It’s a great tool that people are going to really benefit. ⁓ A lot of the business credit companies might be upset with me because I’m just giving all the information away basically. But yeah, I’m super excited about it to help people getting that information, utilize it, be able to utilize funding strategies to scale and get into business or grow their business.
Kristen (21:03)
Okay.Yeah, I mean, that’s incredible. You have like the three levels of education there. And I think that’s a part of the business that people are really intimidated by. And as far as strategies, it’s kind of hard to learn that kind of stuff. And I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear from you kind of how community and mentorship has helped you grow to where you are today.
Lee Price III (21:20)
Yeah.Yeah, so I say a lot is networking, right? ⁓ Show me your friends, I’ll show you your network. I’m so big on networking, I always say that you don’t have a money problem, you have a people problem, right? You have to find people. The reason that the biggest companies in the world, your Coca-Cola’s, your Amazon’s, your, you know. ⁓
Kristen (21:38)
Yeah.Lee Price III (21:52)
McDonald’s is because they have scale they have access to so many people and so I believe that Getting out there networking ⁓ Getting around people. I don’t care if it’s going meetup.com and go to a group in your area to Network with people that’s in real estate or maybe you want to be in fitness or whatever industry you want to be in you have to network and get peopleYou never know where your next deal is going to come from. You never know who you’re going to meet that can help you scale. There’s no such thing as self-made that doesn’t exist. Everybody has somebody, a team of people helping them. And if you really want to scale and go to ⁓ grow a big business, or maybe you just want to have a nice nest egg portfolio of real estate so that take care of your family, right? You need to know the people.
And a lot of industries are kind of close knit. And so, you know, the brokers, everybody knows each other. ⁓ The real estate agents, everybody knows each other. And same way with any industry. And so I believe that seminars and investing in conferences and just like the community group, right, that I started, Create Capital Community, getting in groups like that where you’re around like-minded people, everybody’s motivating people because it gets tough, right? It’s tough getting in a new industry, like you said, learning these all these different terms and how to finance and how to leverage.
and who to call and the broker and for some reason nobody talks about the attorneys and has to get involved in all this, the legal side and title companies. And it’s a lot to learn about. So that’s why getting around
around the right community and the right networking group where you can bounce. title fees. What’s the title fees on this property like this? What’s what’s legal going to cost me? They told me this. It didn’t sound right, but what do you think about it? Right? Having that network of group so you can learn and grow your business and learn about the industry is.
instrumental to that. Like you have to have a network, right? I can’t stress it enough. Network is everything for me, right? My saying is, know, you don’t have a money problem, you have a people problem. You have to have people.
Kristen
Absolutely. Well, I think that’s such great advice. mean, it’s such a foundation of building something. If you want to build something great and generational wealth, you really need to lean on others and not think you can do everything yourself. ⁓ I think it’s wonderful that you have different levels based on people’s finances, people’s interest. ⁓ I think that’s wonderful. tell everybody where to find you, where to find create and capital.Lee Price III
Yeah, so our website is creatingcapitalhtx.com, creatingcapitalhtx.com. ⁓ My Instagram is priceizright, so it’s spelled P-R-I-C-E-I-Z-R-I-T-E, right? ⁓ YouTube, Lee Price the third. TikTok, Lee Price the third. Yeah, I wanted Lee Price the third on Instagram, but somebody has it, so I can’t get it, so. ⁓It’s Price is Right. Actually, a long time ago, one of my first companies was Price is Right Entertainment. And I was doing hosting, throwing team parties, was like 15, 16 years old when I started that LLC. yeah. Price is Right, Instagram, Facebook is Lee Price III, YouTube is Lee Price III. If you want to get involved with the community, it’s www.skollschool.com/creatingcapital communit.
⁓ Book the community. Everything can be found on our website at creatingcapitalhtx.com. And yeah, we’re just excited about growing and building and hopefully meeting the next network of people bringing them in.
Kristen
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being here.Lee Price III
Absolutely, I appreciate you having me and absolutely I enjoyed it.Kristen
Yeah, and I really encourage everyone to check out Creating Capital. I think you can’t do it yourself. I think this is such a great way for you to learn some of these strategies. And maybe if you’re already in the game and looking to just level up and hone in some of your skill set, I think it’s an amazing opportunity for people. So thank you again for being here, Lee. And thank you everyone for listening. hope you learned a lot and got some inspiration for your business. And we will see you all next time. Bye.Lee Price III
Awesome, y’all have a good one.
