Since moving to New York City in 2015, Kelsey Kotzur has been Gain over 144,000 TikTok followers along with a description of her wonderful life in the Big Apple. Some of her popular videos include empire, her state, striding across the crosswalk with her building peeking behind her, strolling through her park in Central in her new outfit, and having brunch in Brooklyn. It shows how it is.
“This video makes me want to pack up and move to New York, put on a pretty dress and go to Central Park.” User replied to one of their clips.
problem? After being a full-time content creator for a year and a half, Kotzur no longer lives in New York after seven years. In July, the 29-year-old fashions her influencer Greenpoint’s rent for her two bedrooms jumped from her $3,900 to her $5,485, and she moved to her tiny home state of New York. was forced to return to Plattsburgh.
“I am currently in the process of getting my apartment approved. [in NYC] But it’s almost impossible because no one really understands my income and what I’m doing.
Influencers, creatives and other gig economy workers struggle to sign leases in the highly competitive New York rental market, even though New York is the primary hub for their work. More than a third of his apartments available for rent in the second quarter of this year became available after rising rents pushed home prices down. Found a report from StreetEasyEarlier this year, The Post reported that the landlord had evicted the entire building of Manhattan’s longtime artists
With no payslips to prove that their salaries are guaranteed by third-party companies, they said they must make every effort to achieve the Empire State of Mind.
Kotzur is now making more money than ever with brand deals with companies like Skims and Delta Airlines.
The fashion influencer left her corporate job last year to become a full-time content creator.
The millennial was evicted from her lovely Greenpoint apartment when the rent was raised to $1,500.
Kotzur was kicked out of Brooklyn after months of struggling to find another apartment.
struggling with six figure income
Kotzur told The Post that he’s estimated to make a staggering $250,000 this year on top of his “excellent” credit score. Her main source of income was her deals with brands such as Skims and Delta Airlines. Still, they can be sporadic, and these days landlords can choose their tenants.
“It’s hard to get the older generation of landlords to understand what I do. This is a full-time job,” she said of the influence of social media as a job.
Many of the landlords Kotzur spoke with insisted on finding a guarantor and providing two years of payslips, even though she earns 40 times the rent.
Kotzur was forced to leave New York City after seven years when his rent increased.
The influencer returned to his hometown of Plattsburgh, NY and made the six-hour commute to Manhattan to shoot content.
The 29-year-old rents a 350-square-foot apartment in her hometown and struggles to get her landlord and rental company to accept her freelance work as a full-time job.
“I miss a lot of opportunities while I’m away from the city,” she said. “I’ve definitely taken some losses career-wise.”
So she decided to make six-hour trips around the city, many days at a time, to cram in as many meetings and content creation opportunities as possible.
“I’m an influencer. This is my job and being in New York is the source of all my work,” Kotzur said.
Growing gig economy
About 36%, or 57.3 million workers, are currently in the gig economy in the US, and by 2027, more than 50% could join. According to a 2022 report from project management software company TeamStage:But the unreliability of their income can be a red flag for landlords.
Marissa Mays, 25, said she recently had trouble finding a rental apartment in the city, putting her 471.7K at risk. tick tock Next — and her livelihood.
Meizz first went viral in May 2021, TikToker overheard a group of friends at the park talking about deliberately excluding their friend Marissa from a party. As she turned out to be the Marissa in question, she used her newfound social media fame to I don’t need lonely friends anymore Exercise — Hosting meetups in Central Park to make new friends and share clips of her creative chaos in The City That Never Sleeps.
Meizz was nearly discounted from NYC when landlords and rental companies questioned her income stability as a content creator.
“I literally had to beg my landlord,” Mays told The Post, explaining all the hoops she had to jump through to secure her Brooklyn apartment.
“If I didn’t live in New York…I don’t think my content would be what it is today,” she told The Post.
Meizz has lived in New York for about three years and pays about $1,000 a month in rent for apartment shares in the East Village and Brooklyn. But when her career started to take off (she said she expects to make $100,000 this year), she tried to fend for herself. .
But despite earning more money than ever before, the full-time content creator couldn’t find anyone to believe in her. “It was very difficult to get someone to trust me,” she said.
“I literally had to beg my landlord,” Mize said. “I wrote a cover letter, turned in all the bills I made last year, gave them my income and all the proof, and yet they told me I didn’t make enough and I still didn’t have enough proof. I said no, so I wanted a guarantor.”
Ultimately, Meizz paid an additional $1,500 to secure a third-party guarantor, and in November, after nearly two months of relentless hunting, leased her Greenpoint apartment for $2,500 a month. signed.
“People don’t really realize that artists are the little things that make the city run,” says Meizz. “Cities like New York are where mine thrives.”