A quarter of real estate advice clips on the short-form video app TikTok contain misleading information, according to analysis of hundreds of such property videos by UK broker matching service Online Mortgage Advisor.
Content identified as misleading in the research has a combined 10.1m viewers and almost 1m likes, and influencers who were found to have posted misleading content have a combined total of 11.8m followers.
Nearly all the videos in the site's analysis (99%) did not contain a disclaimer, and none of the account bios analysed contained a disclaimer either, with just four in 10 of the influencers analysed found to be transparent about their real estate investment qualifications, or lack thereof.
More than 5% of videos featured an influencer bragging about how much money they had made through property purchases and suggesting to their viewers that they would be guaranteed profitable returns by following their methods.
"Worryingly, our research revealed a considerably high proportion of videos giving property investment advice on TikTok, an app that’s most popular in the UK with those aged between 18 to 34," said Pete Mugleston, managing director of Online Mortgage Advisor.
In Association with
"Of these videos, we flagged one in four as misleading, and the majority (64%) of their creators didn’t mention having any qualifications or professional experience in real estate – something you should certainly look for when taking financial advice."
"One of the most common types of content we found on TikTok’s #realestateinvesting corner – a hashtag with nearly 1.5bn views – were influencers boasting about how much money they had made by investing in properties.
"One money-making strategy that influencers espoused was ‘house hacking’, the term for buying a multi-unit property and living in one unit while renting out another to pay the mortgage. While the promise of profits using this method can be enticing, the reality is that property investment will never be a guaranteed source of income."
TikTok is accessed by more than 1.4bn, including an estimated 39% of millennials, with hashtags such as #property and #realestateinvesting garnering more than 1bn views from users seeking advice on how to get on the property ladder or make real estate investments.
Online Mortgage Advisor analysed 25 TikTok property influencer accounts with more than 10,000 followers each, starting with videos that appear on the trend's hashtag page and then the next 25 videos that appeared on their accounts.
Criteria for misleading videos include clips that did not contain a disclaimer such as advising viewers to do their own research before investing in a property while being guilty of either telling people to invest in or purchase property; how much to spend on a property or where to buy it; and/or indicating that purchasing property guarantees a profitable return.
Online Mortgage Advisor analysed a total of 624 videos from 7-11 March for the study. Research from Paxful published earlier this year similarly showed that finance influencers on the platform were frequently misleading people with poor advice.
(Pic: Getty Images)
