Landlord stuns after making brutal admission about rental crisis

A 50-second TikTok clip of a woman speaking outside the National Landlord Investment Show in London has attracted thousands of comments, after social media users were left in disbelief at her views on renters.

In the video, posted by UK outlet Novara Media, the landlord tells the reporter that her investment properties are “fantastic” at the moment because rents are skyrocketing.

When asked by the reporter how her tenants have reacted to the increase in rent, she admitted their response to the news was “not too good”.

She said there were some who feared “they might not be able to afford the rent”, but added that she wasn’t worried about her tenants not being able to pay the increase because “they can be replaced very easily”.

“There just aren’t enough properties to go around at the moment. So people are sort of, they’re totally going crazy, ‘Oh, I’ve got to get a property to live in’,” the landlord said.

When asked whether she thought her tenants “might be going crazy” because of spiralling cost of living, the woman agreed that it was “very, very high”.

She then claimed it was not her decision to increase the rents, telling the reporter it was something that was done “automatically”.

“It is actually the agent that puts the rent up, not myself. So, I think it is done automatically after a year,” she said.

The short clip was posted just two days ago and has already attracted more than 600,000 views and 2400 comments from horrified social media users.

“Listening to this landlord I’m convinced that rent controls are now the answer,” one person wrote.

One commenter accused the woman of having a “stunning absence of empathy”, while another claimed landlords “don’t see tenants as human beings”.

“Completely out of touch, and the lack of empathy is shocking,” another wrote.

Commenters also rubbished the landlord’s claim that it was the real estate’s decision to increase the rent every year, not her own.

“The agent doesn’t do anything without permission,” one person said.

“She blames the agent like agent owns the property,” another wrote.

One added: “Absolutely appalling! And it’s landlords who have the final say if rent goes up!”

This isn’t the first controversial take that has emerged from this landlord convention, with interviews with several other property owners raising eyebrows last week.

UK media personality, PoliticsJoe interviewed a number of landlords outside the convention who agued they were the real “victims” of the current economic crisis.

One of the interviewees said, while she was the landlord of “just under 10 properties”, she didn’t consider herself to be in that privileged of a position.

Another said he felt not only unvalued as a landlord, but also “despised and ostracised”.

“People despise landlords, they think they’re greedy. Whereas someone like myself has retired and I see it as a way of making some rent,” he said.

One claimed that current conditions had placed “more and more demands on landlords” but left “nothing” for them to benefit from.

“Landlords are the victims at the moment,” he said.

One man said that in times of economic difficulty, people simply needed to find ways to increase their income.

“The cost of living crisis is tough for everybody, I guess what you’ve really got to do is find out ways of making more income, and one of the ways is property.”

A fellow landlord however had more empathy for those on the other side of the fence, saying it was “not right” that landlords were prioritising making money over helping society.

“We’re not doing our job properly,” he said.

“To think about housing [and] humans, and always about making money, and that’s not right.”

– with Brooke Rolfe