Timothy Di Prizito ’91
Di Prizito shines in the luxury real estate scene
Timothy Di Prizito is a different kind of Hollywood star.
He’s not an actor, a musician or an entertainer. Di Prizito’s talent is real estate. But as founder and CEO of The Di Prizito Group, a luxury real estate agency that helps A-listers buy and sell some of the most lavish properties in the greater Los Angeles area, he often crosses over with notable clientele.
Now more than two decades into the business, Di Prizito has become a titan in the real estate game. Representing properties valued anywhere from $1 million to $70 million, his individual career sales are approaching $1 billion.
“Most people want to make a lot of money in real estate, and that’s why they want to get in it,” Di Prizito says. “But my purpose is totally different. I’m here to serve people.”
Di Prizito first started helping others more than 30 years ago in two other areas of interest: sports and health sciences. He turned that combination into his first job out of college when he moved back closer to his native New Jersey to start a fitness consulting company. At 24 years old, he was tapped to lead an international Gold’s Gym convention in Los Angeles, which became his permanent home in 1994.
“I flew out, just fell in love with Los Angeles and met a whole bunch of people,” Di Prizito says.
Among them were celebrities and high-profile business leaders. As his client list rapidly expanded, Di Prizito experienced burnout and looked into real estate, which aligned with another interest — he briefly considered studying architecture at Clemson before graduating with a parks, recreation and tourism management degree — and a go-getter attitude that translated well to sales.
Di Prizito obtained his real estate license in his early 30s and broke in as an apprentice. The first real estate he sold? A vacant piece of mountainside land.
“I built my business one brick at a time, one sale at a time and — in building a resume — one real estate transaction at a time,” he says.
Ask him what the keys are to becoming a champion in his industry, and Di Prizito will rattle off a laundry list that starts with three essentials: discipline, competitive drive and perseverance, particularly when hearing the word “no” in his line of work. He credits his time at Clemson for helping mold those principles.
“It was a world where I was able to live life, grow, experiment, make mistakes, win and fail,” he says. “That’s what Clemson was for me. It was a Clemson world.”
Fun Fact: Di Prizito’s older brother, Lee ’87, was a scholarship swimmer at Clemson in the mid-1980s. Visits to campus sold the younger Di Prizito on the University, where he later joined the swim team as a walk-on. “It just stole my heart,” he says. “I knew I always wanted to go there.”
