For the first time since 2002 apartment vacancies are seeing a slight increase – this according to  The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.  Rates are at 1.5 percent, up from 1.2 percent at this same time last year.  This is good news that is clouded by the expectation that rents are going to increase  even more – by at least $100.

There are rentals out there, and my Edmonton page sees quite a bit of traffic, and is actually one of the most heavily used pages for listings on the entire site.   This may be a great time to make a move, since the holiday season is typically the slow season for renters!

Boy, the spammers are really at it hard this year.  Seems like every December, the number of spam listings and emails more than doubles.   Bottomfeeders these people are!

I have to say that we are getting pretty good at blocking spammers from the site.   We still human-edit each and every listing on the site, and we check each ip address for each listing to see if it comes from a typically spammy country or ip range.   If it is a spammer, we block them from the site.   Every day we block 4-5 new ip addresses.

We take spam very seriously, and we are hoping that our efforts will minimize any unnecessary e-mails or worse, people becoming the victim of a rental scam.

Our number one tip when responding to an ad, or when sorting through responses from an ad that you placed on our site is to deal with the person…in person!   If anyone says that they can only conduct business online or through the mail, it is a sure bet they are trying to scam you.

Be careful, and we hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!

David

Canadarentals.net