Photo: TikTok
TikTok’s brutal response to this landlord’s mortgage increase would make anyone want to click away.
By Hawthorn Martin — Written on Apr 23, 2023
For many tenants in today’s world, rent is getting harder and harder to afford. Higher expenses and inflation are all on the rise, even though minimum wage has yet to budge, and the cost of living is through the roof.
But what about the poor landlords with their own mortgages to pay?
One landlord argued that tenants shouldn’t complain about rent increases since her mortgage increased too.
She filmed a video of herself explaining that she had raised her tenant’s rent by $100 in response to her own mortgage increasing by $111. TikTok’s response to her video has been overwhelming, and it’s no secret: in the current world we live in, landlords are no one's favorite.
She sarcastically referred to herself as a “greedy landlord,” and then argued that due to this change in her mortgage, she was now actually losing more money than she made. She argued that the price hike was just her best attempt at “trying to stay afloat.”
TikTok, however, was having none of it. “It must be so hard living my paycheck to my paycheck,” one commenter wrote, blaming the landlord for self-victimizing herself while relying on another person’s income to support her financial endeavors.
Another pointed out the hypocrisy of her decision, pointing to her complaint about her own mortgage increasing by $100 annually due to insurance and tax costs. “Wait wait how are you taking a loss when your mortgage goes up $111 yearly but you increase the rent $100 per month for your tenant?”
Another TikTok user agreed with the above comment, pointing out that even if there was an $11 difference between the landlord’s mortgage and the tenant’s rent, she would still be making a profit. An increase of $100 annually is much less than an increase of $100 monthly.
Others have gladly begun to repurpose common millennial jokes, suggesting that the landlord “buy less avocado toasts.”
The TikTok user has apparently been unfazed by the controversy and has continued to post updates of her ventures into the world of real estate and home investing.
Hilariously enough, the angry commenters have followed her to her other videos, leaving comments like “Is it $11?” on a video of a run-down house she was considering investing in.
From commentary found in horror fiction, all the way to TikTok comments, the general populace has turned against landlords.
It’s no wonder as to why, either. With housing prices still through the roof, inflation hiking up everything, and thousands of Americans seeking work, it’s easy to point the finger at those making day-to-day life even more expensive than it already is.
In June of 2022, the median rent across the U.S. was nearly two thousand dollars a month, hitting an all-time high. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 4 million Americans believed they would be evicted within two months, and over 8 million were already behind on payments.
With housing costs so high, and rent increasing just the same, what is there left for most people to do? Thus, the problem of landlords increasing rent is ever higher.
Landlords, by definition, are people who own large amounts of housing and then rent the properties out to tenants in need of shelter. They are then expected to assist the tenants in the upkeep of the properties and manage disputes or legal issues as needed.
As valuable of a service that landlords seem to provide, the services they offer can be limited. There are thousands of horror stories online of tenants needing maintenance or other services from landlords and being met with lazy or subpar solutions, or just straight up having their concerns ignored.
This is not to mention that the landlords themselves are free to rack up prices however they choose, and can and do displace families at will. That’s just a fact.
With all this in mind, much of the internet has resorted to calling landlords “parasites” for pricing so many people out of a place to live. Many landlords, as one might expect, do not agree with this label.
Overall, the video points out an odd situation, where the landlord is clearly familiar with the unpopular opinion of her career on Tik Tok, going so far as tagging her video with “all landlords are parasites”, but also clearly not seeing any error in her ways.
One can only hope that her tenants can afford the high increase in their rent to support their landlord’s investments.
Hawthorn Martin is a news and entertainment writer living in Texas. They focus on social justice, pop culture, and human interest stories.