How to List a Rental Property and Manage Inquiries: A Practical Ontario Landlord Guide

Pictures matter a lot.

From my experience, they are probably one of the biggest factors in whether someone scrolling through dozens of rentals actually stops and opens your listing.

Whenever possible, take the pictures during the day. Open the blinds, turn on the lights and try to make the property look bright without making it look different from what someone will actually see when they arrive.

Try to photograph:

• Living room
• Kitchen
• Bedrooms
• Bathrooms
• Dining area
• Laundry
• Storage
• Balcony or yard
• Parking
• Building amenities
• Exterior or entrance

The goal is to give someone a realistic understanding of the property before they decide whether they want to see it.

AI can actually be really useful here, as long as you don’t go overboard.

Tools like ChatGPT, Claude and other image-editing tools can help with things such as:

• Improving lighting
• Correcting colour
• Straightening a photo
• Cropping
• Reducing noise
• Improving sharpness

What I would not do is use AI to materially change the property.

For example, don’t:

• Make a room look significantly larger
• Remove permanent damage
• Change flooring or countertops
• Add appliances
• Change the view outside
• Add amenities that don’t exist
• Completely regenerate parts of the room

This is one area where my experience has been pretty clear.

For our GTA rental properties, Facebook Marketplace has consistently generated the most inquiries, especially when the listing is also shared into relevant local rental and community groups.

And it’s free.

That doesn’t mean Facebook Marketplace will automatically be the best option for every landlord or every market, but if I were listing another property tomorrow, it would be the first place I would post it.

Marketplace gives you broad local exposure.

The rental groups are useful because they let you target people already looking within a particular city or neighbourhood.

I normally recommend:

1. Post the property on Marketplace
2. Cross-post into a handful of relevant rental groups
3. Respond to inquiries from the original listing
4. Remove or update the posts once the property is rented

Just make sure you follow the rules of each Facebook group.

I also wouldn't spam the same listing into dozens of groups or immediately post external links everywhere. Once someone expresses genuine interest, you can give them the next step privately.

There are plenty of other options worth trying as well: Kijiji, Rentals.ca, Zumper / PadMapper, Viewit, REALTOR.ca if you're working with a realtor, and local housing boards or university housing sites where applicable.

Personally, my results from some of these platforms have been mixed. Kijiji can generate inquiries, although I haven't found it nearly as effective as Marketplace. I've also tried some of the dedicated rental platforms and haven't personally seen the same level of results.

That does not mean those platforms don't work. The results can depend heavily on location, type of property, rent, time of year, local demand, and how the listing is presented.

There is very little downside to testing multiple channels and seeing what actually works for your property.

One thing I think landlords should start doing more is actually keeping track. At the end of the listing process, ask yourself where most inquiries, booked viewings, formal applications, and the eventual tenant originally came from. After a few listings, you'll have a much better idea where your time is worth spending.

The goal before a viewing should simply be to collect enough basic information to organize the inquiries and decide which conversations you want to continue.

There are two ways you can do this.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing this directly inside Marketplace, Kijiji or wherever the renter messaged you.

The important thing is that the questions are relevant to the tenancy and that you're using a reasonably consistent process across inquiries.

This is the problem I originally built Nestriq to solve.

Instead of repeating the same questions across Marketplace messages, emails and texts, a landlord can create a free property listing on Nestriq and generate a property-specific pre-viewing questionnaire.

You can then:

1. Create the property
2. Share the questionnaire through a link or email
3. Collect structured, self-declared responses
4. Review responses in one place
5. Compare inquiries using the same information
6. Follow up regarding a viewing
7. Coordinate viewing times through Nestriq

The important distinction is that these answers are still self-declared. Nestriq isn't verifying someone's employment, income, credit or identity at this stage. It is simply giving you a much more organized way of handling the early inquiry process.

And if you'd rather ask the exact same questions manually through Marketplace, you can. There aren't any secret questions hidden behind Nestriq. The value is having one consistent process and one place to organize the responses.

For more detail, see the Tenant Pre-Screening Questionnaire Guide and the Landlord Pre-Viewing Checklist. You can also review how Nestriq works.

This is where I think landlords need to be careful not to cut corners.

A pre-viewing questionnaire is not tenant screening.

Once someone has viewed the property and wants to move forward, that is when you can move into the formal application and verification process.

Depending on your process, that may include:

• Formal rental application
• Identity verification
• Rental history
• References
• Employment verification
• Income verification
• Credit check
• Clarification of inconsistencies between previously provided and verified information

Make sure you obtain the appropriate consent before using third-party verification or credit-reporting services.

For our own rental properties, I have personally used SingleKey several times when we've reached the formal screening stage.

I've simply found their tenant-screening report useful as part of the overall process.

But I think there is an important distinction here:

The report is one piece of information. I would consider it alongside:

• The information the prospective tenant provided earlier
• Whether that information remained consistent through the process
• Conversations we had
• Questions they asked about the property
• How the viewing went
• Whether our expectations around the tenancy appeared aligned
• References and rental history where relevant
• Any properly verified information

Meeting someone in person can provide useful context that a report obviously cannot. At the same time, I would be careful about relying on a vague “gut feeling.”

The things that matter should be connected to the rental process — communication, consistency, expectations about the property, information provided and objective concerns that came up during the interaction. Personal characteristics protected under human-rights law should never factor into the decision.

SingleKey is also only one screening provider. Landlords should use whichever reputable service works for them and understand exactly what that service does and does not verify. And no tenant-screening report can guarantee that someone will be a good tenant.