Is the Hype House Era Officially Over?
On a recent sunny afternoon in Los Angeles, real estate developer Danny Fitzgerald paced the halls of one of his 11,000 square foot Hollywood Hills mega mansions (aka the first Hype House) and reminisced about the famous influencers who once roamed its halls.
“We’ve had Tana Mongeaau, that girl that made two and a half million her first year,” he said of the famous YouTube star. “It was amazing. We had FaZe Clan [the gaming collective] when they were kids.”
Now, several of his most luxurious properties, which housed generations of content creators, stand empty.
For the past 15 years, Los Angeles has been littered with content houses. Content houses, (also known as collab or hype houses) are a long-running tradition in the influencer world. Groups of YouTubers, TikTok stars, Twitch streamers and so on, live together and create content on a near 24-7 basis, while supporting each other, appearing in each other’s videos and collectively landing brand deals.
But lately there are signs the boom may be over. Some of Los Angeles’ most iconic content mansions, like those owned by Fitzgerald, remain without tenants. “It’s not the [content house] golden era anymore,” said Walid Mohammed, CEO of The Breadwinners Club, an advertising agency in Los Angeles.
One development, Thirty Four Fifty West, located across from Universal Studios at the edge of Studio City, obtained hybrid zoning that allows residents to easily live and run an office from the same location. TikTok stars and the YouTuber Andrew Bachelor took up residence in 2021, Hana Cha, told the Hollywood Reporter. “The residences are self-contained studios where buyers can shoot, edit and produce work without leaving their home base [and] with tons of privacy and great light,” Guy Penini, principal at BLDG Partners.
