The improbable rise of landlord influencers: ‘I’m not taking advantage of anybody’

theguardian.com:

J ames Coupland started his Instagram account more than 10 years ago, posting unremarkable photos showing him with his mates, or in the gym. After giving up on a career as a footballer, he was studying for a sports performance degree while trying to make a name in fitness. But none of his posts were getting more than a few dozen likes.

Then, in March 2020, came the pivot.

Coupland had by then become a landlord. In 2016, when he was 21, he had bought a £53,000 house in Goole, east Yorkshire, with a £5,300 deposit from his savings and a cheap mortgage. Inspired rather than frustrated by the £95 weekly rent he was paying for a basic student houseshare in Leeds, he thought: “If my landlord can do this, then that’s a way I can make money, too.” He moved in, learned DIY on YouTube and sold the place a year later for £92,500. He invested the profits in the next house and started building a modest buy-to-let portfolio.

Shouting about being a landlord hadn’t occurred to Coupland, but during the first UK pandemic lockdown he began posting photos of his properties and DIY exploits – mostly before-and-after shots and how-tos. These, too, made a modest impact until, in early 2021, someone suggested TikTok.

Coupland, who is 28 and lives in York, was sceptical. “I didn’t think anyone was going to be interested in this stuff,” he says. “But I posted my first video and woke up the next morning to 60,000 views. It just spiralled out of control.”

Thanks to TikTok’s mysterious algorithms and Coupland’s knack for producing fast-cutting clips with snappy captions and dance-music soundtracks, he now has almost 435,000 followers and has racked up 30m views.

His most popular clip, with 7.2m views, is a 52-second tour of a three-bedroom house cut to