Kijiji Rental Ads: What Gets Replies, and Where to Send Them

Is Kijiji still worth it for rentals?

For a lot of Canadian landlords, Kijiji is still one of the first places a vacancy goes up, and renters still search it. Whether it is worth it for you depends on two things only you can check: whether renters in your area are searching it, and what it costs you to post.

On the first, search your own city and unit type as a renter would and look at how many comparable ads are live and how recent they are. On the second, read Kijiji's own help center before you post. Look for what it says about posting in the real estate categories. We could not confirm the current terms on kijiji.ca for this article, so we are not quoting them. Check them yourself on the day you post.

The rest of this is about the ad itself, and what happens after someone replies.

The title: beds, area, rent, date

Renters scan titles in a list. Put the four facts they sort on into the title, in the order they read them:

• Beds and type: "2 bed basement apartment", "3 bed townhouse"
• Area: the neighborhood or nearest main intersection, not just the city
• Rent: the monthly number, and whether utilities are in
• Date: when it is available

A title like "2 bed apartment, Westboro, $1,950 incl. heat, available Nov 1" answers the first four questions before anyone clicks. "Beautiful bright unit, must see!!" answers none of them.

Use the rent you will actually accept. An ad priced low to draw replies, then raised on the phone, burns the goodwill of every person who called.

Photos, in order

The first photo is the one in the search list, so make it the most honest good photo you have. For a house or townhouse that is usually the outside. For an apartment it is usually the main living space in daylight.

Then walk the renter through the unit in the order they would see it: entrance, living area, kitchen, each bedroom, bathroom, laundry, parking, the outside. Shoot in landscape, turn every light on, open the blinds, and take the clutter out of frame. Leave out photos that show nothing new.

Our photo order checklist has the full sequence.

The description: the facts renters filter on

Lead with facts, then add character. A renter comparing ten ads is looking for reasons to rule yours out, so give them the facts that let the right person rule it in:

• Monthly rent, what it includes, and what it does not (hydro, heat, water, internet)
• Lease length you want
• Bedrooms, bathrooms, and roughly how big it is
• Parking: how many spots, and whether it costs extra
• Laundry: in-suite, shared, or none
• Pets: yes, no, or "ask"
• Smoking policy
• Separate entrance, for a basement or secondary suite
• Transit, and how far to the nearest stop you would actually walk to
• Available date, and whether it is flexible

Then two or three sentences a person wrote: what the light is like, what is nearby, what the last tenant liked about it. Keep your requirements about the unit, the rent and the lease. Leave out anything about the kind of person you want. If you are unsure what an ad may say, your provincial human rights commission is the place to check.

Scams: how renters spot fakes, and how to look legitimate

Rental scams are common enough that careful renters treat every ad as suspect until it proves otherwise. The warning signs they look for are consistent: a rent well below the area, a landlord who cannot show the unit, pressure to pay a deposit before seeing it, and a reply that moves straight to email or a messaging app with no name attached.

You cannot stop someone copying your photos into a fake ad. You can make the real ad easy to tell apart:

• Offer a showing before any money changes hands. Say so in the ad: "No deposit before you've seen the unit and we've both signed."
• Give a name. A first name and a company name, if you have one.
• Link to a page you control. A page with your name, your other units and a way to book a showing is harder to fake than a single classified ad. Put the link in your reply.
• Keep the price consistent everywhere the unit appears.

Deposit rules differ by province. Your province's landlord and tenant office is the source for what you may ask for and when.

Replies: send people to one page

This is where most of the work is. A good ad produces replies, and each reply is a small conversation: is it still available, can I see it, do you allow cats, what about parking. Answer those in the thread and you are running a dozen conversations about the same unit.

A better pattern is one reply, with a link:

"Hi, thanks for asking. It's still available. Everything about it is on this page, including the times you can book to see it: [link]. If it suits, you can apply from the same page."

The page does three jobs Kijiji replies can't do well on their own. It shows every unit you have, so the person who wanted two bedrooms instead of one finds the other one. It lets them book a showing without a round of messages. And it puts the application in one place, so you are comparing applications, not scrolling back through threads.

If the page has filters, send a filtered link. "2 beds under $2,000" as a link is a better answer than a list of addresses. More on that in a link-in-bio for rental listings.

If you have no replies at all, the problem is usually earlier than this. Why a rental listing gets no inquiries walks through the usual causes.

Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace and Rentals.ca

All three are places renters in Canada look, and plenty of landlords post on more than one. Rather than rank them, ask each the same questions before you post, and check the answers on each site on the day, since terms change:

Whichever you choose, the ad is the start. What matters for filling the unit is that every reply ends up in the same place.

Where Loftfolio fits

Loftfolio gives you the page to send people to: your own rentals website at yourname.loftfolio.com with every unit on it, one page per property, and filters that live in the URL, so "2 beds under $2,000" is a link you can paste into a reply. Renters book their own showing from the listing, with confirmation and reminder emails, and apply on the same page.

What it does not do: it does not post to Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace or Rentals.ca, and a reply on Kijiji stays on Kijiji. Only applications made on your own site arrive in your pipeline, which is why the reply above ends with the link. There is no custom domain, no tenant screening and nothing on provincial forms or landlord and tenant law.

If you want the page before your next ad goes up, here is how to put your listings online this afternoon.

→ See the plans, from US$39 a month, charged in US dollars