Influencers like Marissa Meizz, 25, are struggling to persuade rental firms of their earnings and signal leases within the extremely aggressive NYC rental market.
Stefano Giovannini
Kelsey Kotzur moved to New York Metropolis in 2015 and has since constructed a TikTok following of greater than 144,000 with depictions of her fabulous life within the Large Apple. A few of her standard movies present her strutting throughout crosswalks with the Empire State Constructing peeking out behind her, strolling by Central Park in a brand new outfit and brunching in Brooklyn.
“This video makes me wish to pack up and transfer to ny to put on cute clothes and go to central park,” a person replied to considered one of her clips.
The issue? After seven years, Kotzur — who has been a full-time content material creator for the final year-and-a-half — now not lives in NYC. In July, the 29-year-old vogue influencer’s hire for her two-bedroom in Greenpoint shot up from $3,900 to $5,485 — forcing her to maneuver again to her small hometown of Plattsburgh, NY.
“I'm at the moment attempting to get accredited for an condominium [in NYC] nevertheless it’s almost unattainable as a result of nobody actually understands my earnings and what I do. In order that’s been fairly troublesome,” Kotzur instructed The Publish.
Influencers, creatives and different gig economic system employees are struggling to signal leases within the extremely aggressive NYC rental market regardless of the town being a serious hub for his or her traces of labor. Multiple-third of the flats obtainable to hire within the second quarter of this yr turned obtainable after folks had been priced out of their properties resulting from rising rents, a report from StreetEasy discovered. Earlier this yr, The Publish reported that a landlord evicted a complete constructing of longtime Manhattan artists.
With out paystubs proving a assured wage backed by a third-party firm, they mentioned they’re having to go to exhaustive lengths to maintain their Empire Way of thinking a actuality — even, in some instances, with six-figure incomes.
Struggling on a six-figure earnings
Kotzur instructed The Publish she is estimated to earn an astonishing $250,000 this yr on prime of an “wonderful” credit score rating. Her major supply of earnings got here from offers with manufacturers equivalent to Skims and Delta Airways. Nonetheless, they are often sporadic, and as of late, landlords have their choose of tenants.
“It’s exhausting to get these landlords, who're from an older technology, to know what I’m doing. This can be a full-time job,” she mentioned of social-media influencing-as-work.
Most of the landlords who Kotzur has spoken to insist that she discover a guarantor and that they supply two years price of paystubs, even if she makes 40 instances the hire.
“I'm lacking out on a ton of alternatives whereas I’m away from the town,” she mentioned. “Profession-wise, I’m undoubtedly taking some losses.”
And so she has taken to creating the six-hour journey into the town for days at a time to squeeze in as many conferences and alternatives for content material creation as she will.
“I'm an influencer, that is my job and being in New York is the place all of my jobs come from,” Kotzur mentioned.
The rising gig economic system
About 36%, or 57.3 million, employees within the US are at the moment collaborating within the gig economic system, with greater than 50% prone to take part by 2027, in keeping with a 2022 report from venture administration software program firm TeamStage. However the unreliability of their earnings generally is a crimson flag to landlords.
Marissa Meizz, 25, mentioned she just lately struggled to safe an condominium rental within the metropolis, endangering her 471.7K TikTok following — and her livelihood.
Meizz first went viral in Might 2021, when a TikToker overheard a bunch of buddies in a park speaking about purposely excluding their buddy Marissa from their social gathering. It turned out that she was the Marissa in query, and so she used her newfound social-media fame to start the No Extra Lonely Mates motion — internet hosting meet-ups in Central Park to make new buddies and sharing clips of the inventive chaos of her life within the metropolis that by no means sleeps.
“If I wasn’t dwelling in New York … I don’t assume that any of my content material would have turn into what it's at the moment,” she instructed The Publish.
Meizz has lived in NYC for about three years now — paying about $1,000 in month-to-month hire for condominium shares within the East Village and Brooklyn. However, as her social-media profession took off — she mentioned she expects to make $100,000 this yr — she sought to strike out on her personal.
However regardless of incomes greater than ever, the full-time content material creator couldn’t discover anybody to consider her. “It was simply so exhausting to get somebody to belief me,” she mentioned.
“I actually needed to beg my landlord,” Meizz mentioned. “I wrote a canopy letter, I gave each single bill that I made within the final yr, I gave them proof of my earnings and every little thing they usually nonetheless mentioned that I didn’t make sufficient and that I nonetheless didn’t have sufficient proof in order that they needed a guarantor.”
Meizz ultimately gave in and paid the additional $1,500 to safe a third-party guarantor and signed a lease on her $2,500-a-month Bushwick condominium in November after almost two months of obsessive looking.
“Individuals don’t actually acknowledge that the little issues that preserve the town going are the artists,” Meizz mentioned. “A metropolis like New York is the place my stuff thrives.”
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