He PRETENDED to buy a $40,000,000 house...and I believed him!

What's up you guys, it's Graham here. So, this video is gonna be a little bit different. I'm just gonna share a funny story from when I first started. It's pretty ridiculous; it makes me look like an idiot, but whatever. I hope it's funny. I hope you guys enjoy this.

And real talk, if you haven't added me on Snapchat or Instagram yet, add me. Add me on one of those or both of those. I post pretty much daily, so if you want to be part of that and try to boost up my Instagram a little bit, I'm finally posting, so feel free to add me there.

So, anyway, to the story. I started selling real estate shortly after I turned 18, and this is maybe about five months in. I was sitting in an open house, and obviously, everyone that comes in the open house will sign their name on a piece of paper. Usually, when they were upstairs, I'd be like really super nosy, so I'd get on my phone, which back then was like the, you know, the first generation iPhone with really slow internet.

So, I'd go and like they would go upstairs and I'd Google their name. I just see like, because a lot of times, there would be these like very famous people that would come in my open house, and I would just like go like, you know, crazy because like oh my god, like so-and-so's upstairs! I want to really make sure like I follow up with this person.

Sometimes, you get some really cool business people to come in, and you Google their name and like wow, this is like the CEO of like so-and-so; this is awesome! So, I would like to do a little bit of background research on the people that are coming in the open house so I know how to best tailor what I want to do and how I want to help them.

This one guy came in and wrote on the sign-in sheet, DL Clifton. I googled, you know, when he went upstairs. DL Clifton. I know this guy came in was somewhat like an old beat-up Mercedes, nothing fancy. You know he didn't dress like he was like this multi-millionaire. By the way, this home that I was sitting was I think six million dollars.

So like, just to give you an idea of the price point, this is back in 2008 or 2009. So, this house is probably worth now like nine million dollars. So, this was like six million dollars back then, so it was a high-end home.

So I googled the name, and I typed in DL Clifton, and what came up was Clifton Davis. I started reading up about Clifton Davis, and I went, "Whoa! This dude's from Jackson 5 and huge in the music industry! He's like this huge guy!" Oh my god, this is him! And I honestly, I thought DL Clifton was Clifton Davis.

So when DL Clifton came down, I was just like, you know, "What can I do? How could I help you? What...” You know, everything! I'm pulling out all the stops, and this guy, he's telling me, "I don't really have a price range. Show me something that blows me away! This place, this six million dollar place, it's not gonna cut it; it doesn't have the wow factor.”

“I have a lot of celebrities over, I am a lot of entertainment people over, a lot of very important people over. I need something with a huge wow factor!" So, I was just like, "Whoa, okay, cool!" And I thought in my mind, being like a brand new agent, “This is it! I'm gonna sell a twenty million dollar house! I'm gonna make a ton of money! This is gonna be it! This is gonna be like my big break!”

So I started emailing him properties, and he would call me up and be like, "You know what? Now let’s go up in price.” I think I went up in price after like forty million dollars, and I just assumed, being this young, naive agent, that like yep, you could buy a forty million dollar house, no problem, because he says he could!

And like this guy, you know, Clifton Davis—he should be a... why would anybody lie about that, right? So, okay! So I started emailing him homes with like forty million dollars, and I was like this brand-new agent; I was an idiot. I shouldn't have done this. But sure enough, he called me back. He’s like, "I want to see this property! I want to see this property! I want to see this property!"

And I set him up to see these like thirty million dollar houses, forty million dollar houses, and when other agents would ask me, they would say, "Hey, you know, what's his name?" I would tell them Clifton Davis. The funny thing is, is that I would show up to the appointment, and everyone thought he was Clifton Davis!

I thought he was Compton Davis. It's not like he was ever trying to lie about his name, by the way, like pretending to be Clifton Davis. It's just like I thought his name was, you know, Clifton Davis. So, his name was not obviously Clifton Davis.

So, we'd go to these showings, and he would look around and like kind of scope out the house. He'd spent a long time in the house. Like he would be there with like him and his wife for sometimes an hour, two hours. He would usually like to do the showings in the evening so that like he'll get there at 6:00 as the sun setting, spend like an hour or two in the house, you know, then 8:00 and leave.

Every home, he didn't want to write an offer on it! Like I would show him exactly what he wanted; he'd always find something. You know, I'd show them like this thirty million dollar house, "Two million? You know what? No, I don't like the way the sun sets over here! It's too much light in the home! I don't like that! We got to find something where the sun sets like, you know, this way!"

So, I showed him something like that, and I’d be like, "You know what, no! I just, I don't like the way the grass kind of slopes down there. It's not it! You know, it's got to be perfect!" I probably showed this dude like twenty different homes in the fifteen million to probably fifty million dollar price point.

And again, all the agents there are just like, "Clifton Davis, Clifton Davis!" And every home was just like there was something wrong with it. He never wanted to write an offer. Nothing! Now, when I was doing this, sometimes the agents, which is customary, ask for proof of funds.

So even though I say my client is Clifton Davis, they'll say, "Okay, that's cool. Show us a bank statement or show us proof of funds." But he would always say when I brought that up, I'm like, "Hey, this house is perfect for you! You got to show us proof of funds!"

Oh, so I could send it to the other agent? He would say, "Nah, let's skip that. It's not worth it! If they want to see my proof of funds, it's not the type of home I want to see! Skip that one! They don't want me as a buyer; you know what? I could do without it! Let's keep looking!"

Should have been an immediate red flag that I just didn't see. But again, as a young agent just getting in the business who trusts everybody, who's super naive, who just like assumed that why would this guy lie?

I kept going and it got to a point where I showed him so many homes and I remember even showing him this home for like 22 million dollars and it was beautiful! It was perfect! It was exactly what he wanted; the sun set in the right way, and the grass kind of didn't slope in the back, and everything was perfect about this house.

What he said, I will never forget this, "If I bought this home, I would tear it down and build another one!" Alright? You know, so it just continued to escalate to the point where I felt that like he was just going to these homes to hang out in the homes, to see them. His motivation—I don't know, maybe he was just like dreaming or something like that.

So then we got to a home he really liked. The home, I think it was like 18 or 19 million dollars in Beverly Hills—really liked this home. He wanted to see it again for a second time. The agent says, "We need proof of funds!"

And he's like, "You know what? This one I really like; I'm gonna give them some proof of funds." So he shows up to the appointment, and he brings his proof of funds.

He has this like, you know, kind of weird-look in like a satchel that he pulls out a few papers, and the agents like, "Okay, let's see the proof of funds!" It’s literally a Microsoft Word document typed up with like, how much money he has in his accounts!

And he's like, "Yeah, I know I have like a hundred million over here, and I have like fifty million over here, and fifty million dollars in this asset! It's like—and they're all like these weird LLCs. It's like, "Yeah, and blah blah blah LLC, seventy-five million dollars," it's like typed up on Microsoft Word.

And he’s just like, "No, no! This is not proof of funds at all!" He's like, "Well, no! My company was just featured on Oprah and this and that! What I do is I trade like Forex over here, and then I move it over there! Then I had this hedge fund that does this and that,” and he just kept digging and digging into stories.

And all of a sudden, I started to realize, "Wait a second! Something doesn't make sense!" So that night after that whole thing happened, I went on my computer and I looked up Clifton Davis, and all of a sudden I realized like, "Wait a second! This is not Clifton Davis at all!"

And I got into it; I realized like, DL Clifton was this random dude who like ran some sort of like weird scheme and I think he kind of went to jail for it. I think it was like a money laundering or something super shady like that!

Still, like he did some time for doing something illegal with money or something like that, and I was showing this dude around for like months these multi-million dollar houses! And I realized after that, I looked like such an idiot! I was humiliated!

And it took me a while to be able to look these other agents in the eye and be like, "I messed up!" And that's what happens when you're a new agent: sometimes you want to believe that this buyer is actually a real buyer.

Oftentimes it's very easy to be naive and just trust whatever people tell you, and you would be surprised, especially in a high price point, how many people lie and how many people make up money and how many people are not real buyers. They just want to be exposed and be around the high-end luxury mark! It's actually pretty absurd.

So after that, I became extremely careful about the people I was working with. I checked proof of funds to make sure they were serious. The biggest red flag—and that should have been—any time you asked for proof of funds, they skipped the house! Any real buyer has no problems pulling up on their phone being like, "Yep, proof of funds! Done! Let's see it!"

So anyway, that's my weird story from when I first started real estate. I hope this was entertaining! I hope you guys enjoyed this lesson of the day: just prequalify your buyers to make sure they're serious. And if you google them, maybe do a little bit of extra research to make sure it's actually the person who you think they are.

So anyway, that's it you guys! Thank you so much for watching. And if you haven't already, feel free to add me on Snapchat and Instagram, and subscribe and comment, share, and thanks for watching! Till next time, what do you think? I think you gotta sell this house!