I purchased my first rental last year and I have a tenant whose lease is up and has given notice that he is moving out at the end of March.
I’m wondering where Canadians go to post their rental listings. I’ve started using TenantCloud.com to track my property and they do have a listing functionality that will syndicate to multiple sites, but I’m guessing they will be more skewed to a US audience.
If anyone is willing to share their experiences, that would be great.
@Patrick Archer welcome to BP. I’d recommend staying which city/town you are located in, because is is very region specific.
I’m in Victoria and for us the online classifieds work the best. In Victoria our success comes from usedvictoria.com, Craigslist and kijiji in that order.
But Vancouver for instance, I don’t believe they even have a usedvancouver.
It sounds like Kijiji is the best bet from the comments so far.
One follow up question I have is around timing. I understand that different properties will take a different amount of time to rent, but how far in advance should I be posting the property? Should I post now for an April move in? Or should I be waiting until closer to the date?
@Patrick Archer for a traditional rental property I would say 60 days out is standard (gives people notice time for their current landlord etc.).
If you're doing a student rental which it sounds like it may be due to the timing, I believe January on-wards some students start casually looking for accommodations for the next year.
I’ve had good success with RentFaster.ca. I’ve also used Facebook and Kijiji but seem to get the most qualified tenants from RentFaster. It does cost money but for me it was well worth it.
It sounds like you're an out of town investor. Do you have a property manager?
60 days would be the minimum, and it's actually not just a rule of thumb. I believe (I've always been told) that tenants have to give 60 days notice to their current landlord before moving out. So, really, 60 days is the absolute minimum.
It also sounds like you may not be familiar with all of the Landlord-Tenant rights. Just a suggestion, but if you hire a property manager, they'll take care of all the advertising, tenant screening and application process for you. Plus, they will be intimately familiar with the RTA (Residential Tenancies Act) in Ontario and protect you and your property as best they can under the act. NOW, that's what the GOOD companies will do. Finding a good property management company is like anything else in business, it takes time and diligence.
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with London, but I'm sure there are many here who can help you find a great property management company, if that's something you want to explore.
I have places on Vancouver Island and use usednanaimo (it covers the towns where my places are) and kijiji. The one in Alberta is done by a PM and one of the places they post is kijiji.
It seems like the rental market is HOT overall, listing properties on MLS for lease is getting crazy, tons of showings and tons of crazy offers. I am not sure how people are suddenly affording to pay so much more rent.
In Calgary Kijiji, Rentfaster, and Facebook work well. Rentfaster will come and take professional photo's which is nice. Facebook marketplace leads to a lot of tire kickers, but it is also nice being able to check out their profiles to see what type of person they may be and if they fit your tenant profile. Good luck!
I've also been having a lot of luck with facebook marketplace lately but Travis is right, by far the highest amount of tire kicker and wasted time, in my experience by FAR the highest no shows as well.
I found that a majority of my traffic came from Facebook marketplace. I had a boilerplate response to any inquiry that told them we were having an open house and if they were interested in being contacted for it, to fill out a form I created on Google Forms (with the link).
I asked a lot of questions like income, pets, etc. then I would be able to let people know based on their situation if they were a good fit for coming to look at the property.
It worked fairly well at weeding out the tire kickers and left me with a decent number of people to follow up with before the open house. One of those people from Facebook are moving into the unit next week!
@Patrick Archer I like your idea of the boilerplate response. I think I might try this out next time i've instead been fitting 10+ people in a single showing night so that even if 2-3 show up it's still worth my time, I also set plans on facebook messenger so they get a reminder which helps a bit