“Am I the only one who looks at, like, million dollar houses and acts like they’re moving tomorrow? Where am I gonna go? I be acting like I have everything packed. I literally have like two dollars, and three pennies and like a tissue on the side. Zillow be looking real cute at three in the morning,” Daniel Campo says to his TikTok audience of one million. He commented on the post, “it’s called ✨manifestation✨.”
@JulianFrndz chimed in, using capital letters, “I SCROLL THROUGH ZILLOW LIKE INSTAGRAM.” @its_saharaaa was shocked: “Thought that was just me💀😂😂.”
2,558 people have liked her comment thus far and there are more from users saying they do it too. Her TikTok published in late September has received more than 111,900 likes. It’s proof of Gen Z’s Zillow obsession and their wanting to ‘manifest’ on Zillow.
Manifestation is the idea of bringing a vision, idea, or dream from your mental space into your physical reality. Older generations may know this ideology from Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, but the younger generation is currently discovering it on social media.
Content creators like Luca Whitaker, who has hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube and a large presence on other platforms, is one of the young people teaching her peers.
“I posted a video back in 2017 or 2018 and want to say it wasn’t as viral as it is now…a lot of people were like ‘oh what is this’ and I did not expect that video to go as viral as it did. Now people look to me for advice on using the law of attraction and manifestation.”
Her audience has shared a number success stories including getting into the college of their dreams.
Gaby Martinez commented on one of Whitaker’s law of attraction videos titled “my top 10 law of attraction SECRETS to manifest your dream life.” Martinez wrote: “I found out about LOA bc of you last summer, it’s crazy how my life did a 180, I’m genuinely appreciate you, no doubt you were meant to do this, thank you Luca 💗.”
Zillow didn’t return Ithaca Week’s request for comment, but the company clearly noted in its 2017 “Consumer Housing Trends Report – Highlights: Introducing Generation Z” that this generation is powerful in many ways.
“Despite only just beginning to enter the housing market as renters, a subset of Generation Z (defined in our survey as those ages 18 to 22) has home on the brain. Generation Z’s pre-emptive dreaming and proactive thinking about owning their own homes is a heartening signal about homeownership rates in the future,” the report says.
Another TikToker, who goes by the name of Laura Lisbon, has garnered thousands of followers for his critiques of McMansions, which he describes as: “a house that was built post-Reagan Era but pre-economic recession crash. It comes from the term McDonalds where it’s like fast food real estate where it’s meant to kind of come across a little bit nicer than what it actually is, but it’s built so cheaply…it’s essentially fast food like what a McDonald’s hamburger is to like Gordon Ramsey making a hamburger.”
He says it takes him two to three hours to sometimes find a home that meets the criteria and is bad enough to critique. He describes Gen Z’s fascination as not unique but rather, “part of life,” citing seeing his mom looking at houses.
He knows that many young people can’t afford million dollar homes and so for now looking at Zillow is the only thing they can do until they get there. “It’s a way to window shop especially because it’s so available now. I remember in high school we would go to open houses just for fun. There is something about putting yourself mentally in a different physical space and kind of seeing yourself there.”
Many young people have faced difficult times this year and may just be dreaming of a place to call home — no matter the price tag. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “On a single night in 2019, 35,038 unaccompanied youth were counted as homeless. Of those, 89 percent were between the ages of 18 to 24. The remaining 11 percent (or 3,976 unaccompanied children) were under the age of 18.” These numbers are likely an undercount and this was before a global pandemic took centerstage, the Alliance noted.
It’s been reported by Vox that people with anxiety disorders could spiral into thinking they could manifest bad things because they are spending time having those thoughts. In conversation about loss, mental health, and hard times Whitaker shared that she didn’t want anyone to feel bad about themselves,
“Feeling your feelings is completely different than being a negative person. It’s so important to feel your feelings, to heal your traumatic experiences…and you don’t always have to see those as something bad and see you attracting that into your life as something bad because in reality it could be needed for you to become a better person and then attract something that you might see as good. This whole year has just been so hard for all of us.”
Looking to the future, the thought of when we’re out of a pandemic and potentially living in million dollar homes seems to make the present-day more bearable for some.
Manhattan-Based licensed broker Kristin Thomas, of Compass’ The Kristin Thomas Team, says the pandemic has changed the landscape, sharing that people have taken this time to “appreciate their homes more than ever and see the positives and the negatives.”
“In terms of sales, the real estate market under the two million dollar mark has been very active. There’s been a lot of trades going on. There’s been a wave of activity since the markets opened back up in June. Interest rates are at record lows. I think buyers have seen this as an opportunity to upgrade, to make that first-time purchase, to get a little bit more space, to upgrade from that studio or one bedroom apartment in case there’s another shutdown,” said Thomas.
Having worked in the real estate industry for 15 years, she believes Gen Z can manifest the home of their dreams even if it costs a million dollars: “It might take a year or it might take three years but that will fly by, and when you look back you’ll say ‘wow I just took little steps each day and here I am.’”
