Canada Rentals Blog

Site down equals stressful weekend

My site over the past month had been experiencing a number of outages – for whatever reason, the server my site was on was just not performing well, causing a lot of errors, and strange things happening.  I spoke to my web host on Friday, and they said that they would transfer my site to a new server over the weekend.  The disturbing and stressful thing was that they said that there should be no downtime.   Well, I shoulda known.  The site was down for 20 + hours, and I was pretty stressed about it.  My web host made several mistakes and misled me on what was involved (I actually knew what was involved, but stupidly chose to believe them when they said “no down time.”

I do like my web host – or, I want to like them.  The reason is that I believe that they do try hard, and they are for the most part polite and responsive.   I think it was the fault of the guy in the “sales” department who misled me about the details of transferring a site to a new server – I think he just didn’t know any better.   As I told them this weekend, this is not some hobby site posting photos of my cat – it is a big part of my livelihood and there is a lot at stake.

The site is back up now, and I think is working -  If you submitted a listing on Thusrday or Friday,  and you don’t see it on the site, please let me know.  There also may have been some loss or corruption of information with the database transfer.  I am checking into that too.

At any rate, I apologize for the site being down – hopefully those days are behind me for the time being.

David

Posted in Site Stuff | No Comments »

Will we ever learn?

Ok, I don’t know how many friggin’ times I have said in my blog, on my website, and screaming it at the top of my telepathic and mental lungs – never, ever EVER do business with someone from Nigeria. I have nothing against the Nigerian people, and I am sure most of them are nice people trying to make the best out of life. However, the ones that are online and contacting people abroad, almost without exception, are scammers. EVERYONE should be aware of this by now.

So it disturbs me when I come across a forum where someone is talking about an email transaction that took place from a rental posting on my site. The woman went on to say in her forum post.

“I was originally suspicious at the very first when he said the word Nigerian,BUT we have had many responses from out of country persons looking for accommodations….”

Jaw dropping to me. This is precisely why they (scammers) keep at it because people like this don’t have enough common sense to just say no to these scams.

I am now officially speechless.

Posted in David's Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Sun Peaks Accommodations page

Imagine a heavy snowfall – the kind that adds up to a perfect, knee-deep powder day – while you are soaking in a hottub steps away from your slopside chalet!
Yes! Ski season is almost upon us, and I am kicking myself for not having Sun Peaks on my site as a choice for accommodations.
Well, I just added it, and already I have a great chalet listing on this page for a ski-in ski-out chalet!
Sun Peaks is a great area and village. It has over 3,600 acres of terrain and almost 3,000 vertical! From Hotels and Lodges to Chalets, and even Bed and Breakfasts, Sun Peaks has it all!
Plan your vacaion today!

Posted in Site Stuff | 2 Comments »

Cottage Rentals Increasing?

I have been seeing an increase in the number of “Cottages” being listed on the site lately. I wonder if “Cottaging” in Canada is more of a late-summer/fall thing?
The listings I have been getting have been mostly in the Kawartha Lakes area and various other small towns in Ontario.
Do people cottage in the winter? I assume so – but to do more winter-type activities. Or, does this market fade away when the cold weather comes?
Someone, please educate me!

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I have done Gravenhurst Ontario a disservice

I owe the folks up in Gravenhurst, Ontario an “I’m Sorry.” I have had this site going on 3 years now, and up until today, Gravenhurst was not a city choice on my site. I really thought when we added our cities in the first place, that we covered all of the towns and cities with more than 5,000 or so people in them – most certainly towns over 10,000.
I am glad someone e-mailed me and asked me to add Gravenhurst to the site. I hope that people up there will use it for their cottage rentals or vacation rentals. You can see the Gravenhurst Rentals page on the site now.
I found a nice little video clip of Muskoka Wharf in Gravenhurst. You can see it here:

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Apartment construction costs in Edmonton and Calgary

I saw an article today that talked about construction costs “increasing faster in Edmonton and Calgary than any other major city in Canada, according to a Statistics Canada report released on August 15, 2008.”
When I read the article, I thought to myself “It’s about time” thinking that this means that there has been an increase in apartment building in these two cities, who desperately need more housing (don’t believe me – look at the vacancy rates in these cities – the lowest in the country).
Unfortunately, the costs were due to higher labor, fuel and materials costs.
What this probably means for the near future is that apartment building will cool off a bit. The economy is certainly not “new building friendly” right now. I imagine the vacancy rate in Edmonton and Calgary will stay in the low single digits for some time.

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Sneaky scammers paying for listings

I have been waiting for the day that a scammer actually pays for an ad on the site, uploads photos, and the rest of their information. The operative word here is “pays.” This happened yesterday when I got an ad for a flat in Toronto. The signs were all there that it was fraud – the text had the same “tone” as a typical scam email – the fellow’s name was Joseph – and the ad started like this “My name is Joseph. Bright 3bedrooms apartment with modern bathroom, bed linen. It also has its own private kitchen with all cutlery and crockery.”
Crockery? Why would you leave this at an apartment you are renting? And cutlery? The title of the ad also said 2 bedrooms which contradicted the text in the ad that said 3.
I cut and pasted some of this guy’s ad text into a google search, and he had posted the exact same ad on several other websites – but for different cities.
The photos were very bad, and looked like they were stolen from a variety of different ads from different sites too.
I then tracked the guy’s IP address (I capture these for every ad) and lo and behold – Nigeria!
The payment came from someone in the UK – so it might of been his boss or subordinate paying with a stolen card or something like that. I didn’t accept the money (you can refuse payments in Paypal.).
Just goes to show the lengths these chodemonkeys will go to steal from you.
Fortunately we catch and block most of these idiots before they do much damage.

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Roommate Finder Canada

I finally added my roommate finder on the site – it is a service provided by easyroommate. I will be interested to find out if it is helpful to my visitors or if it isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. I have looked into their website, and service and it looks pretty good to me. I know that finding a roommate can be a daunting process, and their service seems to be able to screen people and match people based on their interests and personalities. I have added a little section on this page too where people can add their roommate stories – I think everyone has at least one. A few people have offered their tales from the roommate abyss.
I hope this was a good addition to the site. I plan on keeping it on the site for 2 months, and at that time I’ll decide whether I’ll keep it on there or not. You can also post an ad on there if you have a room to rent.

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Trying some new things out with search

I am trying a few different formats for making the site searchable. I am trying a search box at the top of my site on the city pages, over on the right-hand side. This seems to be the ’standard’ position of most good sites, so I will give it a try and see how people like it. I have also been attempting to de-clutter the site a little bit lately.

Traffic seems to be down just a tad from a few weeks ago, but then, if you look at any good trends repots (I like google trends) it shows a big spike in most rental markets right about the middle of July, and then it tapers of a little bit. I assume that since we are getting close to school-time, students will start looking for places soon.

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Looking for good roommate stories

I think just about everyone has a good roommate story, or nightmare to tell. I sure have mine. I lived in a house in college (many years ago) with 9 other roommates. It was a big house, but with 9 other souls within arm’s reach of me, I almost went crazy. The room I lived in was separated from the next room with a large piece of plywood. There was never a clean dish in the house, and at any given moment there was some big drama or girlfriend/boyfriend fight going on. Seems like the police were there about every other night for some kind of noise complaint. I think there were also 3 dogs and several cats in the house.
Sometimes I wonder how I got through that year. I finally moved out and got an apartment of my own – all to myself.
Yesterday, I was surfing around and tried Google’s “Street View” service – if you haven’t tried it, you must! You can basically drive down city streets in virtual reality – and I drove past this old house I lived in with the 9 other roommates. It still looks the same, but only one car out front this time, so I am guessing it was bought and is not being rented out to college kids.
Anyways, the point of this post is that I would love to hear any nightmare roommate tales – and post them on the site here. I am about to create a ‘roommates’ section for the site (due to popular demand) and I am sure people would appreciate a few good stories about the psycho roommate! You can use my contact form to send me your story!

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Accommodations Winter Olympics Vancouver

Ok, I know it is still a few years away, but I am starting to think about the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver. I am not the only one – I am already starting to get a few “housing wanted” ads on my site for that time period. People are obviously planning ahead, and want to make sure they are covered with a place to stay.

Our site here is a great starting point for either looking for accommodations for the games, or posting your rental!

Vancouver can be quite expensive, and who knows what will happen when the games come around. I’m sure prices for rentals will be quite inflated.

Wouldn’t it be nice to secure your rental now?

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Website down today

Hi everyone,

Canadarentals.net experienced about a 5 hour outage today.   I knew it was serious when my web host’s site didn’t come up either, but that also made it difficult to figure out why.    I learned early this afternoon that it was due to a power outage at their datacentre.   I was a little miffed that they didn’t have a backup power source, as most good web hosts do.

I let them off the hook a bit when I learned it was a massive power outage in Vancouver, so most everyone in that area, including me, had no power, and no website.

You can read the article about it here

Again, I apolgize for the downtime.   Looks like we’re back up and running.

For some geeky, website is down humor, please see the following video – it’s funny (warning – it has a bit of ‘language’ in it)

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Signs of life

Am I seeing some signs of life in the Canadian rental market?  I guess that’s a matter of how you look at it.  For me, traffic is up, listings are increasing, and life is good.   I am hearing that the vacancy rate is a bit higher now than it was not so long ago, especially in the western cities.

I guess this isn’t as good for landlords and property managers, in that they might have to work a little harder to find renters. It also depends a bit on exactly where you are geographically, but in general, I am sensing a shift.

I am also seeing a nice increase in listings especially in the market of executive, or high-end homes.

Just an observation.   We’ll see how the rest of the summer pans out.

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Finding a roommate in Edmonton

Edmonton is a tough market for renters right now.   Anyone trying to find a place to live there has probably heard the word “no” or “not available” as the standard responses to most of their rental inquiries.   It is also very, very expensive to rent in Edmonton right now.   If you have a pet, or if you smoke, that complicates matters even more.

So why not try to find a roommate?   Sharing a place obviously means sacrificing privacy and space, but if you need a place right now, and money is tight, this may the way to go.  The economy of Canada is expected to tighten even more due to higher gas prices and grocery bills.  You can expect that this will trickle into rental prices, making the cost of living even higher than it is now.    Sharing a house or condo can make your dollars stay in your wallet a little longer.

Canadarentals.net will be partnering with Easyroomate in a few weeks to offer a roommate finding  service on this site.   We are excited, since Easyroomate is one of the premier roommate finding services in Canada.   We also encourage anyone with a room to rent, or anyone looking for a roomate to post a free ad on our Edmonton page.

Posted in Roommates | 2 Comments »

Canadian Real Estate Market Cooling

I have been reading that the Canadian real estate market is starting to cool, and that the boom is over.  A lot of new inventory on the market is causing home prices to fall, which is creating a lot of opportunity for the buyer.

What I want to know is how this might affect the rental market.  I suppose you could argue that if people are having a harder time selling their home due to higher competition, then might these same people resort to renting their home out and wait for a better market?    I live in a city where the real estate market is not great right now, and in the past year you just don’t see very many for sale signs out.   The rental market is seeing a surge though.

I seem to remember reading that the Edmonton rental market is seeing a higher vacancy rate than they have seen in a long time.    We’ll see how this all pans out!  I predict that the vacancy rate for rentals will slowly start to rise over the coming year.     The higher price of gas, and the resulting price of food and other items will make people want to put off any major investments for a while.

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Advertise Short Term Housing

I have had a few different people who manage or own corporate housing or short-term rentals in Canada place a photo ad with me, and have incredible success.   These folks paid for a full year, so they don’t have to worry about renewing every few months, and then I send them a reminder when their year is up.     For a full year photo ad on Canadarentals.net it is only $108 CAD.   That’s a pretty darn good deal considering that you get a google map, 5 photos, fraud detection info, and a custom mail form.     The people who have done this have all gotten numerous inquiries from their ads.   I am also developing a Corporate Housing section on the site that is starting to rank very well.

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Craigslist, Kijiji, and little old me

To return to the main ad posting page click here

It’s true – Canadarentals.net has some pretty darn good rankings, which is amazing since it has all been done by me, David – a stay-at-home dad. I have always been adept at developing rankings and traffic for my sites – all “white-hat” as they say – nothing done spammy or unethically.

In many cases, I rank right there with Craigslist or Kijiji (as of 6.3.08):

In many cases, I rank at the top (as of 6.3.08):

I have to say that both Craigslist and Kijiji are outstanding sites and obviously very successful. Both of them receive infinitely more traffic than my site does, but they both also have many more categories than my site (autos, for sale classifieds, etc). My site focuses on just property rentals. I am just happy to be able to do what I have done in just a few short years with Canadarentals.net, and ’swim in the same pond’ as some of these larger sites.

Anyways, thank you for using my site! I hope it brings you success in finding a renter or a rental.

~ David

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Who is Canada Rentals?

I finally decided to clear this matter up a little. I get e-mails frequently asking to speak to the president, tech support, marketing department, or just e-mails wondering who in the heck we are.

Well, Canada Rentals is a one-person show – me! My name is David, and I am the owner, tech support, editor, marketing and every other department. I started this site several years ago, and it has taken off beyond my highest expectations.

Although I enjoy the programming aspect of the site, I am more a person who has a knack for getting traffic and visitors, and respectable rankings in the search engines (ethically and organically!). I think this is of most value to anyone posting an ad on the site. The site is approaching a milestone 10,000 page views in one day! I also believe in a spam-free website. I know this is an ideal, but I do spend a lot of time blocking spammers and bad people from the site, and I try to make sure that each ad is a legitimate rental or renter. There is no way to be 100% with this, but I have made some great progress in this area.

I take a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment in helping people with their ads, and making sure there is a human connection with the site. From the comments I have received, people really appreciate this.

The photo below is of myself and my son (my wife is holding the camera).

To get back to the main site, click here.

Posted in David's Thoughts | 1 Comment »

It’s Victoria Day and I’m working

Am I the only one working today?  Traffic seems down (naturally) on the site.  I guess the government is forcing (or strongly encouraging) people (most people) to take today off.    They gave a pretty stern warning to Sears because they opened several stores today.  Oops!

From the Canadian Press:

TORONTO — At least 10 Sears Canada (TSX:SCC) stores in Ontario opened their doors to the public on Monday, even though the provincial government warned the company that it would be against the law to do so on Victoria Day.

Fines for violating the retail act could range between $500 up to $50,000 but… said it was completely up to the police to act on complaints from the public and then act accordingly.

Guess I’ll go find a parade somewhere.

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Detecting Renter Fraud

The most powerful thing at your disposal to help detect if a potential “renter” is a fraudster is their IP address. The IP address is basically the user’s online “signature” that can tell you where a user is from geographically. Of course, if the user is from Nigeria, or out of the country, you would want to be very careful with any transactions.

A typical IP address looks like this: 41.220.75.3

To track where a user is from, I like to use this tool:

www.ip-adress.com/ipaddresstolocation/

It usually gives you one lookup per day without having an account. I signed up for an account (it is free) and you get several lookups per day. It is a great tool that will provide you with a map of where the IP address is from, and other valuable information.

IF YOU DO suspect that a fraudster or scammer is contacting you, please send us (Canadarentals.net) the information (IP address) and we will block them from using the site.

To return to the main site click here

Posted in general | 2 Comments »