A Montrealer Went Viral On TikTok For Showing Off Other People's Apartments & Rent Costs

You may have seen apartment tour and rent check videos on TikTok, perhaps from the hugely popular account @calebwsimpson, whose 6.6 million followers know him best for filming "this generation's MTV cribs" — videos touring New York City apartments and sharing how much each tenant pays per month.

Recently, a Montrealer has gone viral for a similar style of video: touring Montreal apartments and revealing how much each person pays for housing each month. The first video in the series, touring a Montrealer's $1,100 apartment, received over 460,000 views on TikTok.

The creator behind these videos is Jacob Grinblatt, who goes by @jacobvisuals on TikTok and @mtl_stories on Instagram. He began the series with a video filmed with a friend, he told MTL Blog over Instagram. The second video, which now has over 90,000 views, was filmed with "a complete stranger" who reached out to Grinblatt after seeing his initial TikTok clip.

"I got the series idea from the guy that does it in New York," Grinblatt explained, referring to Caleb Simpson. "Funny thing — he actually follows me on TikTok."

But Grinblatt considers his work to be distinct from Simpson's. "[For] the ending, I always make something different," he told MTL Blog. "The first one, I was pretending the person is throwing me out," he explained. In his second video, the tour-giver jokingly tells Grinblatt to "not creep up on him next time," giving a little humourous touch to the well-loved format.

Since the series began, Grinblatt has only gotten more interest in participating. After his first video came out, he "had many Montrealers reaching out to [him] inviting [him] to do a tour of their place."

As for his own apartment, Grinblatt can see a future where he films his own tour. "My apartment is currently my office space," he explained, "but [I] definitely will consider it in future."