How I sold my first house at 19 for $3,550,000

So it took me about 10 months to sell my first house. 10 months. Well, honestly, I believe that after like month 8, I'm like, this is impossible! Like, how does anyone ever sell a house? I’ve been doing everything I can and I just can't seem to get any real buyers. Like, no buyers want to work with me.

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here. So I see a lot of you guys are interested in working in real estate or maybe working as a real estate agent. So I felt this would be a good time to share with you guys exactly how I sold my first house, the process that was involved, time with the clients, a little bit of everything. So I'm gonna share that story with you guys. And if you're a new subscriber or this is your first time watching, obviously my name is Graham and I've been a real estate agent here in West Los Angeles for the last nine years.

Over the last nine years, I've had a little bit over a hundred and twenty million dollars worth of sales. All the money that I made selling real estate as a real estate agent, I've just invested back, buying my own properties, renovating them, and then renting them out. So basically, all I do is just I just end up doing a lot of real estate.

So anyway, I started selling real estate right out of high school with just a high school diploma. I never went to college. I had no college degree. In fact, my grades in high school were so terrible that I didn't get into any colleges just because, I say, I hated school. I didn't see the point. I didn't want to do homework. I didn't want to be in class. I'd rather be working.

I had this part-time job basically that I would ditch school and go work instead. But anyway, that's my point— I had no college degree. I just had a high school diploma and neither of my parents, by the way, were like well-connected, nor was I for that matter. I didn't come from like this wealthy family where my parents were like feeding me deals. I didn't come from like this inner circle of like all these people that were all buying real estate.

So I basically started off with a completely clean slate at 18 years old, not doing what the fuck I was doing. So that's where I was coming from. I just want to give you a little bit of background on how I started. Basically, because I knew I wasn't gonna be going to college because my grades are so bad and I didn't get into any college, I basically scrambled. I thought like, you know what? Real estate would be a good option. At the very least, I can get my real estate license, work at it for a year, and if it doesn't work out, I could just reapply to college the next year.

So I started doing that. But I was studying for my real estate license. I would go around to open houses, meeting different agents and asking them questions about getting in the real estate industry and just asking questions like, “What do you think of real estate? Is this a good career? Would you recommend this for me? Do you have any tips for me? Any advice for me?”

This is 2008, just as the real estate market started to tank. 2006-2007 were really hot years in real estate; everything was selling. 2008 it started to slow down and 2009 was just like a shit show. But 2008 is when I started. Most people that I met during the open houses were extremely discouraging. I would walk up and they would give me some very generic shit advice like, “You just got to work hard and be passionate. You have to really love real estate,” like all this sort of stuff.

And I also, like I would say, every other agent was just telling me, “You should go to college. This isn't a good business for like someone that's young to be in. Nobody's gonna trust you to sell real estate. You have no experience selling real estate.” I had basically everything under the sun thrown at me. I talked with dozens of agents. Some people were pretty nice; some people gave me like some decent advice, but nobody was like overly encouraging, telling me like, “This is the best decision ever.”

After doing that for a while, I finally met somebody that was actually super encouraging and his name is Van. I went to a completely random open house and all these open houses, by the way, I really just focused on like three million and up. I didn't want to waste my time with any of like the lower-priced homes. I figured like, if I was gonna do this, I want to jump right into the high-end. I want to go into the luxury market. I don't want to waste my time working my way up. I just wanted to like start at the top.

So I ended up meeting this guy, his name was Van, and he was super encouraging, telling me like, “Now is the best time to get into real estate. You're young, you had no obligations. You have all the time in the world to build up your business. You have all the time in the world to dedicate to selling real estate.” You got me so hyped up on selling real estate!

Then at the very end, he basically made me an offer that I could come work with him. He'll teach me the business, he'll kind of show me how to work with clients and this and that. In return, we'll split things 50/50. That, to me, as like brand new, I had no idea what I was doing! I jumped on it! That was like my gift offer— godsend, right? It was like, this sounds amazing.

And this agent, by the way, was one of the top-performing real estate agents for Coldwell Banker worldwide. So it was amazing to actually get this encouragement from somebody who was like one of the top 50 brokers in California who like does an insane amount of sales volume. He was really well-respected and like I get to learn from this guy. So, to me, that was just like mind-blowing. So I jumped on that offer.

A few days later, I came to his office and I just basically would watch him work. I'd go with him to showings; I'd see what he did and what he said and what he didn't say, how he handled clients. All of these properties, by the way, to me were like mind-blowingly out of my league! I did not come from these like four, five, six, seven, ten million dollar houses. I grew up in a really small house; I think it was like 1,100 square feet. I think it was a two-bedroom house in Santa Monica before Santa Monica was like nice like it is now.

This is Santa Monica from like the 1990s, which is not the Santa Monica that's all like kind of nice and luxurious today— really small home that my parents rented. I had never seen these like five, six million dollar homes before! Like, to me, that was incomprehensible! But I'd go along; I just had to stand there in awe. Just like, I can't believe people afford this shit! To me, it just didn't register that this is doable, like this is possible.

So I basically shadowed him for a while and from there, I began posting little leases on Craigslist and doing little rentals here and there. But in the back of my head, I still felt this doubt that like nobody's gonna trust me at 18 years old to sell a house. It was one of these limiting beliefs that I really, I truly believe somewhat held me back from actually doing that. Because at the time, I had so many people tell me I was too young and too inexperienced and no one was gonna trust me to sell the house.

When you're told that that often, it starts to seep in and then you start to believe it. For a while there, I really believed that I was too young and I believed that like I was too inexperienced. I could get away with little leases— like I was doing these leases and getting a little lease to me, that wasn't like a sale. I felt like a lease, like someone signs a one-year lease—that's not that big of a deal! But then buying, you know, a million dollar plus house through me, that's a big deal!

So it took me about ten months to sell my first house. Ten months! I worked, I would say, every single day. I was in the office or watching my mentor work or just being around the office about 12 to 14 hours a day, pretty much every single day. I was out there meeting as many clients as possible. I was holding open houses every single Tuesday and Sunday.

Honestly, I believed after like month eight, I'm like, this is impossible! Like, how does anyone ever sell a house? I’ve been doing everything I can and I just can't seem to get any real buyers. Like, no buyers want to work with me! So what I would do is every single Sunday, I would sit an open house. What that means is that sometimes your real estate brokerage has agents in it that have houses that they don't want to sit open on a Sunday. So what they do is they allow other people in the office to sit the open house.

It does two things. The first thing is that it gives the home exposure. The second thing is that another agent can pick up clients or meet buyers or sellers from it. The listing agent maybe doesn’t want to be there on a Sunday; maybe they've got like too many houses to do. They can only be at like one place at one time, and they have like multiple open houses. So other agents can sit those listings.

So that's what I would do. Any open house I could sit on a Sunday, I was there from like 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. every single Sunday. Everyone that would walk in, I would have them sign in; I’d have them put their email address down. I'd follow up with them; they’d go dark. I would never hear from most of these people.

So about nine months into doing this— this is nine months— every single Tuesday and Sunday holding open houses with nothing. A couple walks in and I show them around this house and the house I was showing them might have been, I think, about two and a half to three million dollars that I was sitting for another agent in my brokerage. They walked in and I was showing them the house.

After about 20 minutes or so of talking, they asked me how old I was and I was really embarrassed. At the time, I think I was 18 years old, but I lied and I told them I was 19. In my mind at the time, I thought like 18 is too young; but if I tell them 19, that'll sound better. That'll make it like I’m more mature and I thought it’d sound like as an 18-year-old, that 19 was like, that’s mature.

What they asked how long I was doing real estate for, and I told them almost a year now. I didn't tell them that I had never sold a house before; I really tried to play it cool. I had my poker face on that, you know, I knew what I was doing but deep down it was just like, oh my God, I’ve never gotten this far with like a real buyer before. What do I do? I was pretty scared.

So after talking for a little bit, we got down into the specifics of what exactly it is they were looking for. They wanted a very specific property in a very specific area and I think their price range at the time was between like three million and maybe six and a half million dollars. Again, it was in a very specific area of Beverly Hills. As I started showing them properties, in the back of my mind, I'm like, why is he working with me? Like, what is this?

He can work with basically any agent in Beverly Hills who has like 10, 20 years of experience. Why me? It eventually came out that I reminded him of himself when he was younger. He started in business really young and no one would trust him and he wanted to give me the chance that he wanted to have as a kid.

Some of that may have been luck; some of that may have been like I was in the right place at the right time. But I really think it comes down to is that most people want to give a young person a chance. If they see you putting yourself out there and they see you working your ass off, I think most people just want to see someone younger succeed.

I think it's like this inherent nature that a lot of people have and the people that don't have that are usually coming from a place of just like insecurity or jealousy or they're like afraid you might take their business or they're just like, they just don't take you seriously and they just like tune that out for whatever reason.

I think a good amount of people out there just naturally want to see someone else who’s young who wants to be successful become successful. So after that, it really started to make a lot more sense that like I had this huge advantage ahead of me of just being young.

I am the only young agent here in Beverly Hills, like under the age of 20, that is really like working at it every single day. I knew at that moment, I’m like, holy shit! I actually like now I had the confidence that like I could actually do this. So I continued to show them around more and more homes and we found something that was listed at about 3.6 million dollars in Beverly Hills.

So we ended up placing an offer on that house for about 3.5 something million dollars and it got accepted. At that point, again, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what was involved in that but thankfully, I had the mentor who was kind of teaching me the ropes who walked me through step by step what I needed to do. I was totally clueless!

This is something, by the way, that you can read like all the processes in a book and you could like memorize like every step of the way and then you get to it and you're like, I am so lost. I definitely would not have been able to do this completely on my own because at that point, I was just like the mountain of paperwork and disclosures that you need to give to any buyer— anybody that you're representing— is just like insurmountable.

So again, this is something that I had someone else I was working with who really helped to guide me through the process of, “This is what I need to do. This is how you do it. This is what you're gonna say. This is how you're gonna present this.” He walked me through everything A to Z on this deal and we ended up closing it for a little bit over three and a half million dollars.

Now keep in mind this is almost a ninety thousand dollar gross commission! Now don’t get the idea that I made like 90 grand on the deal because that's before like broker's fees and all that good stuff. But getting a check that large— that check was as big as many people make in a year and I made that in one check. That probably made the biggest difference to me of anything! I mean, at the time, it felt like I just won the lottery because I had never seen that amount of money before!

To me, that was like insane! Honestly, I'm forever grateful for those clients to give me the chance, to give me the confidence really, and to trust me in helping them find their home. As soon as I sold that, it gave me this huge boost of confidence that like, you can do it. Like, it doesn't matter if you're 18, it doesn't matter if you're 19, it doesn't matter if you're young or how experienced you are.

If you're really putting the effort in and you're really into it and you're really enthusiastic about what you do, it's possible! So even though it took me 10 months to sell my first house, I sold the next house for about one and a half million dollars two months later because all of a sudden, I just got this confidence like, you can do it!

I honestly just attribute the second sale not to like meeting the right person or anything like that. That was just like, I believed I can do it! I put myself in more situations where I set myself up to sell something else. Now that second client I actually met off Craigslist. I had posted a lease on Craigslist; they had called me up about that lease.

I started showing them homes for rent and then they said, you know what? Instead of renting a home, maybe we should buy something. So as you can see, it really doesn't matter how old you are, how experienced you are. I feel like if you really put yourself out there, if you really do everything you can, if you can really show to everybody that you're enthusiastic and really passionate and really into what you do, people are just gonna want to gravitate towards you and work with you.

I think having that enthusiasm and passion is more valuable than having experience or being older. So anyway, that's the story about how I did my first deal and how that came about. I'm happy to share my experiences and I'm happy to encourage everyone else who's thinking about getting into real estate to get into real estate.

I'm happy to make these videos and I'm super thankful that everyone likes these videos and choice them and watches them. And that, to me, by the way, I think we just hit seventy thousand subscribers! Which again, guys, thank you so much for that! I really deeply appreciate it!

If you haven't already, make sure to click subscribe and then smash that notification bell so you’re aware any time I upload a video and you don't miss out on that. And then if you haven't already, feel free to also add me on Snapchat and Instagram. I post there pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there.

As always, thank you again for watching! It means the world to me. Hope you enjoy this. Until next time!