When Kris Culley met Samuel Leeds, he had two buy-to-lets bringing in around £1,800 a month. Now he has eight properties clocking up a monthly profit of £10,000 in three countries after joining the academy. It has made him a property millionaire and financially free in his first year in business.
Kris snaps up properties in England, Spain and Dubai
Kris works part-time for Transport for London in an operational role. The rest of the time he spends looking after his portfolio and scouting around for more properties to buy.
It was seeing colleagues reaching retirement age, struggling with their finances and looking forward to a paltry pension, that drove him to become a property entrepreneur on the side.
Apart from one or two people who had paid off their mortgages and would be reasonably well off when they stopped working, most were unprepared.
“Very few of them had things set up that were going to benefit them going forward. The vast majority were refinancing their house,” says Kris.
One person he met refinanced his home to pull out £150,000 and spent £100,000 on refurbishing it.
“I thought you’ve just increased your mortgage. It turned out he had to work another five years past retirement just to allow for the payments. I thought I don’t want this to be me. I can’t be approaching 60/65 and hoping I’m going to get £2,500 a month for a pension. I’ve got to make some changes.”
From an early age, Kris demonstrated his business acumen. As he puts it, he had an ‘entrepreneurial mind’ and knew there were ways to make money outside of the system.
When he was 12, he worked in his local sweet shop and would buy confectionery at a discount to sell to pupils at his school, sometimes quadrupling his income.
“That progressed. I started to find things like gold, commodities, silver, crypto. I always had an interest in those kinds of things. I always wanted to acquire assets.”
By the time Kris had his two buy-to-lets, he was setting aside the profits and letting them build up. Then about two years ago he went on a transitional journey and stopped drinking. That gave him a different perspective on life.
The only problem was not knowing what to do with all the money he had saved.
“I I spoke to somebody who said if you’ve got £100,000 in the bank and you leave it there for five years, with inflation your money is going to be worth about £60,000.
“That hit me and I’m thinking why am I holding onto all this money? I’m not doing anything with it and it’s losing value.”
It was against this backdrop that the landlord came across one of Samuel Leeds’ YouTube Winners on a Wednesday videos featuring Nathan Lamb.
Watching the video gave him the inspiration to think that ‘Monday to Friday, nine to fivers’ could operate in the real estate market and that it was not just the preserve of the rich.
He joined the academy straight after the one-day crash course. “I knew that this is a good environment for me to be in and I just went for it.”
That would prove to be an understatement as the fledgling entrepreneur went on a buying spree, snapping up six properties in England, Spain and Dubai in just eight months.
‘The ambition is to pull all your money out’
Kris describes buy, refurbish, refinance as his favourite strategy. His method is to purchase a rundown property and bring in a team of builders to renovate it. That makes it worth more and allows him to remortgage it to its new value, giving him funds to reinvest.
“The ambition is to pull all of your money out or close to it, so that in effect once that six-month process has gone by you’ve got a free property,” Kris explains. “Of course, you have to have the capital initially, but if you’re getting that money back it’s a win-win.”
Patch wise, he doesn’t mind where the property is, as long as the numbers work. He finds properties through Rightmove and using other tools of the trade. On a ‘big day out’ in several cities searching for opportunities, he found a five-bedroom house in Coventry. It had previously been used as an HMO and was in a poor state of repair.
After speaking directly with the landlord and meeting him at his home, Kris agreed to a delayed purchase in which he would pay the asking price of £190,000. They drew up the heads of terms together which gave Kris six months to complete the purchase.
He put down a deposit of £30,000 from his savings at the request of the owner. If Kris didn’t buy the house by this time, he faced losing his money. However, he had already lined up builders to refurbish the house and knew the work could be done in a month – if not sooner.
The improvements cost £25,000 and in the interim the property was rented out as serviced accommodation, bringing in £5,000 to £6,000 a month.
“We’ve had to stop that because we need the property to be vacant. Now we’re in the process of finalising the finance. We’ve had to go to a bridging company. Then we’ll try to exit as soon as possible into a mortgage.
“We turned it into a six-bed and we had it valued at £285,000. The ambition is to run it as an HMO. That will bring in £3,500 to £4,000 a month, minus the mortgage and bills. We’ll probably walk away with about £2,000 a month profit.”
By refinancing the property to its new value, Kris will be able to pay off the bridging loan and retrieve his deposit.
He also has properties in Derby and Nottingham, as well as four in the Alicante province of Spain and one which he bought off-plan in Dubai.
His serviced accommodation is listed on platforms like Airbnb and bookings.com
The Coventry house was occupied during the week by contractors while it was being rented out. Each of the six bedrooms has an office space and there are three bathrooms.
“Our target audience was contractors and we hit that. We had pretty much 90 per cent occupancy rate from day one. They’re paying hotel prices but in my opinion have more comfortable surroundings.”
The four properties in Spain are in ‘worker towns’ just north of Alicante. For that reason, they can’t be run as SA’s, but they were cheap.
He bought the first one for £48,000 and had grand dreams of doing it up as a BRR project until the agent handling the sale advised him simply to paint and decorate it and rent it out.
Kris did just that, spending £4,000 on doing it up and had it revalued at £120,000. With taxes and his other expenses, his investment amounted to around £60,000.
Rather than selling the house and making a profit of £60,000, he used it as collateral to borrow money for the next acquisition, repeating the process until he had four.
The agent he was dealing with was finding him below market value properties. The purchase price of the fourth one was £44,000.
It already had a valuation of £68,000. So, already without improving it, Kris knew that there was leverage in it which he could use to his advantage.
“I said [to the agent] we’ve done it your way now. Let me refurb it properly and see how much we can push it up. In Spain it’s straightforward lets but on this one we’re going to advertise it room by room, HMO style, to increase that profit.”
In terms of investing in property abroad, it is easier than many people might think, provide you go through the right channels, he points out. “You need a power team and a good solicitor. You can do it by networking and going out there and meeting these people. You can also find them on LinkedIn. They’ll help you through the process and you set up in whatever country you want to invest in.”
‘The network in this academy is worth the fee alone’
Kris now works four hours a day, Mondays to Fridays, and he can choose to work in the mornings or evenings, depending on his colleagues’ schedules. This not only gives him flexibility but helps him in his property dealings.
“Because my property business is relatively new I don’t even have my first year’s accounts yet. So, borrowing money without pay slips is quite challenging. My idea was let’s keep this (his job). It brings in a good income. That’s allowed me to invest in Spain and made things easier here with the bridging company.
“I enjoy it as well. It gives me life lessons in different aspects. I meet lots of people.”
Similarly, on the academy he is meeting people from all walks of life. “You meet so many good people. The network in this academy is worth the fee alone. That’s without the training.”
Along with a new set of friends, Kris feels he now also has a purpose which was lacking before. One academy trained businessman, who runs SAs there, organised a trip to Dubai where Kris went on to invest. His contact explained how the market is structured there and Kris picked up ideas on how to save money.
Another member suggested he listen to a podcast on personal development. “It changed the way I was thinking. From that moment onwards I was like I know I’m in the right place and with the right people. Now it’s down to me.”
His new career has also taken him further afield to Uganda to see the charity work undertaken by the Samuel Leeds Foundation. He made a donation to it which went towards the building of a school of excellence there.
During the week-long trip with a group of about 15 fellow academy students, Kris also toured the Jinja Referral Hospital where Samuel opened an orthopaedic ward named after him in 2024.
Samuel underwent emergency surgery at the hospital six years earlier following a horrific boating accident on the River Nile which left him with a shattered kneecap. The visitors walked around the ward where he stayed and met the doctor who treated Samuel.
His foundation funded the construction of the ward, with the country’s health department paying for the equipment and the hiring of two orthopaedic surgeons.
Kris, who had never been to Africa before, said it opened his eyes to the way people live there. He was impressed by how his guru has changed the conditions at the hospital.
“They went from having one surgeon who came around once a week to do operations to having two full-time orthopaedic surgeons in that hospital. That’s a game changer.”
Back home, Kris’ goal in 2025 is to double his monthly cashflow and acquire as many assets as he can. He also wants his 16-year-old daughter Olivia to become involved in property. She is keen, especially after hearing how another academy member’s daughter is making £15,000 a month from deal sourcing.
Kris’ tips
- When I want to do something, I go for it. I don’t want any negativity to impact my decision. I didn’t tell anyone I had joined the academy until I’d committed to it.
- The podcast I listened to was about being around the right people. If you’re around negativity it will manifest. If you’re around positivity it will manifest.
Samuel Leeds
“I’m really impressed by what Kris has managed to do in such a short time. He’s found a little goldmine in Alicante, and I know this is just the beginning. It shows that the creative strategies I teach work pretty much work anywhere in the world.
“Last year we had students from 43 different countries on our training and they’re doing it in their own countries.”
