People Are Buying Houses on TikTok Now

When 23-year-old Noah Berghammer was turfed out of his New York sublet – due to the unexpected return of his friend, the owner – he had just four days to find a new apartment.

After scouring websites like StreetEasy and commenting on renter-focused Facebook groups, he realized his time frame had him in a near-impossible position, so he took to TikTok to vent. From there, the New Yorker picked up his video, posted it on their Instagram and it went “semi-viral”. By the end of the four days, a travel photographer had reached out to him to offer up her apartment. “Her spot was so damn nice and I could not afford it, but she allowed me to pay what I could if I fed her cat,” says Berghammer. “It kind of saved me.”

Berghammer isn’t the first young person to turn to TikTok for housing, and he won’t be the last. In fact, real estate content on the app is booming (despite the widely-acknowledged real estate crash), with the hashtag #property having over 3.6 million views and counting. Estate agents are increasingly posting home tours for available properties or apartments to rent via TikTok. But considering 80 percent of people on TikTok are between the ages 16-34 (and therefore have notoriously bad house-buying prospects) is the TikTok real estate boom leading to actual sales?

Tanya Baker, an estate agent based in London, says posting on TikTok is (at least) resulting in additional viewings. “A recent listing on Rightmove gave us 4,500 page views in two weeks, but the same listing on TikTok yielded 1.1 million views,” she says. “These additional viewings helped sell the property within a matter of weeks.” Baker says she’s had similar luck on Instagram, where she sold a house listed for £1.75 million.

Baker’s TikTok house showings often rack up millions of views, where she gives a walk-through of the property as “not your usual real estate agent”. The videos are filmed vertically, native for the app, and are often sped up far faster than your average property video – appealing to younger people and shorter attention spans. Her dog often makes a guest appearance and she’s often seen waving the viewers into the property or pointing to specific rooms, adding small bits of text as an overlay: The whole thing is very reminiscent of MTV Cribs or Vogue’s “73 Questions” series.

While there’s no doubt that many of Baker’s millions of viewers are just nosey interior enthusiasts with $200 in their bank account and pipe-dreams of one day owning a home, she says the app has already changed the real estate industry for good.

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“It’s given agents a platform for us to do our jobs with creative edge,” says Baker. “An edge that blurs the lines between formality and friendship. It makes you relatable and more human.” Baker started posting on TikTok in 2021, after setting up her own business – Keller Williams – and by the time her buyers meet her in person, they often tell her they feel like they’re being “shown around by a friend”.

As with all real estate platforms, there are also viral posts that appear too good to be true – like two-bedroom apartments in Brooklyn, New York, for only $1600 with “all utilities included”. This is about as rare as winning the lottery in the current housing market but, still, the videos draw in bountiful comments asking how and where to apply. It goes without saying you shouldn’t trust every property post that you come across on TikTok – just like you shouldn’t try every TikTok beauty hack (ahem, using erection cream on your lips). You also shouldn’t make any deposits without speaking to the real estate agent in person.

In amongst a bleak buyers market, while some TikTok videos are marrying viewers with their dream homes, this entire genre of video on the app has become just another entertainment category. It’s why creators like Caleb Simpson — who’s known for asking people on the street what they pay for rent, then taking his 7.1 million followers on a tour of their house — is creating viral house-related content every day. With most young people unable to own property, #property TikTok is a way for us to all live out our wildest apartment dreams, without ever actually owning it.

For those still in the rental category, however, it’s proved helpful for a number of people in a pinch — you just have to hope and pray that your post goes viral. Tori Ely, based in Los Angeles, compares finding a roommate on the app to how millennials use Facebook Marketplace.

“I have two roommates, one of them from college and the other, Evan, is from a TikTok post. He’s awesome, literally so hilarious and we get along super well,” they say. “With the algorithm you’re reaching people who have similar interests to you and we’re honestly like family now.” Ely is already planning on moving into their next apartment with another person they met on TikTok.

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Then there are people who turn to TikTok rental posts with the hope of new friendships. When business manager Casey Han, posted the room opening up in her two-bedroom back in March of 2022, she quickly gained 200,000 views and hundreds of replies after a few mere hours. The video now has over 850,000 views. “After reading through the comments and direct messages, I noticed many of them were not only people looking for housing, but also people who were living in New York, wanting to make new friends,” she says.

Han chose her TikTok roommate, Ashley, because they had “many similarities” – most notably their living habits, age, and both growing up in Korean immigrant households. They’ve now been living together for over six months, and are even signing a commercial lease with a few other friends for the place to be used as an art studio. Han plans on using TikTok for all of her future housing needs, since the platform provides creators and roommates with “a better medium to display their personality”.

After all, having things in common with the people you live with should have always been the first place to start (and could probably have prevented some roommate horror stories). “What once were some unassuming Craigslist postings looking for roommates, or static shots of dark apartments on StreetEasy, has now transformed into something more engaging,” says Han. Whether you’re engaging because you actually need a room, are looking for a friend, or want a peek into someone’s personal space, is entirely up to you. Either way, don’t be surprised if your apartment building starts to look a lot like your For You page.

@lauraepitcher