Renters and landlords are going online in increasing numbers to find each other.

"The biggest feature for a landlord is that you're not restricted to the amount that you can advertise or promote your product as you are in print media," says Stuart Pudavick, who owns RentCanada (www.rentcanada.com).

"For a potential renter, you don't have to worry about running out in the rain or snow to pick up a copy of a magazine. It's all right there at your fingertips."

Winnipeg-based RentCanada has been online since 1994 and has been carrying nationwide listings since 1996.

Stuart Pudavick, who owns RentCanada

"We were the very first (dwelling rental site) in Canada," Pudavick says. "I can't give you the exact number, but at any time there can be over 2,000 properties listed, sometimes under. It fluctuates."

The low-cost website listings can be attractive to property managers and owners, especially when the added visual bonuses of online postings are factored in.

"The cost can traditionally run anywhere up to $50 per property and that will include pictures, floor plans, an unlimited amount of text and it gets put into a search engine," Pudavick says.

The sites are also a boon for prospective renters.

"People are attracted to our site for the amount of information that is displayed both in text and visual form," says Brent Daviduck, operating manager for Rent Board of Canada (www.rentboard.ca). "On the Internet, you can display pictures, video, the works. You can even download an application form right then and there. Whereas with traditional print you're limited in space and content."

Rent Board launched in April 2005 from Red Deer, Alta., and has listings from across Canada.

According to a 2004 survey done by the Canadian Internet Project, 72 per cent of Canadians use the Internet from various public and private locations and 52 per cent of users have made an online purchase.

There is potential for the number of users making purchases to increase since people are becoming more confident about such things as online banking, travel and tourism, and other ticket services.

"It will climb but very slowly," says Alan Middleton, a professor of marketing at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. "The Internet has proved to be hugely valuable as buying for business to business. But for business to consumer it's been much more modest."

Daviduck said in an e-mail that Rent Board had 3,708 listings from April 1 to Dec. 31, 2005. In the first six weeks of 2006 there were 689 listings. In the 2005 period, Daviduck said 10 per cent of the ads were removed by the landlord because the vacancy was filled. The remainder ran until the expiry date and "whether they were filled or not is only known by the property owner/manager."

In the 2006 period, 28 per cent of the ads were removed by the landlord. "As property owners/landlords become familiar with our model, the number of explicitly removed listings will increase; they almost tripled already," he wrote.

While Rent Board only posts rental vacancies, sites such as RentCanada and Toronto-based ViewIt Canada (www.viewit.ca) also run advertisements for property managers/owners, moving services, telephone services and other companies involved with helping people move.

"You can see a much larger portfolio of properties than you might be able to by just visiting them solely," says ViewIt president Ryan Schwerdtner. "The allure of being able to actually see the place before having to go there is pretty strong."

"Almost 100 per cent of our advertisers are not looking at it from a short-term position," says Pudavick. "They want to have their ads running continuously year-round whether they have vacancies or not.

"And that's primarily because it's promoting them as a property manager as well as the building. They're taking waiting lists and if one property doesn't have a vacancy, one of their other properties might."

Daviduck says landlords have an extra incentive to use Rent Board because it uses a per-day pay model rather than the traditional flat fee.

"If you purchase 30 days of advertising as a landlord and 10 days later find a tenant through your ad, you can remove your ad from the Rent Board and the system will credit back 20 days to your account," he says.

"No site out there other than ours that I'm aware of does that. Most rental sites you'll visit will have listings that have been up for over a year. And that's very discouraging to renters who come across these listings only to find they no longer exist," he says.

The onslaught of dwelling rental sites popping up in cyberspace has forced even such 900-pound gorillas as The Toronto Star to refocus their plans for dwelling rental ads.

"We're having challenges both on the private party and commercial side of the business and for us that's tied to a couple things," says Carolyn Sadler, group advertising director of The Star. One of the problems is that vacancy rates are at the point where "even property managers who are doing any type of advertising are not getting results."

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.'s rental market survey released in December, the average rental apartment vacancy rate in Canada's 28 major centres is at 2.7 per cent; unchanged from the previous year, but more than double the 1.1-per-cent level of 2001.

While the vacancy rate was lower than the average in places such as Vancouver (1.4 per cent), Calgary (1.6 per cent) and Winnipeg (1.7 per cent), other cities were well above average, such as Saskatoon (4.6 per cent), Edmonton (4.5 per cent), Toronto (3.7 per cent), Ottawa (3.3 per cent) and Regina (3.2 per cent).

"So what (landlords) are doing now is opting for the low-cost online options as sort of the least investment they have to do to market that they are having trouble filling," Sadler says.

Calgary-based Boardwalk Rental Communities operates about 250 properties across Canada and uses print and online marketing for its rental vacancies, including its own listings website www.bwalk.com.

Boardwalk senior manager of multi-media Tony Rino says the company has been using the web for about 10 years to post its vacancies, but adds that print classified ads are still quite valid.

"Print and online are really two different audiences and how they get to us," Rino says. "But you can't drop the ball on the web. People do make their decision instantaneously and if the information isn't there you've lost a customer."

Rino says having its own website to post vacancies saves Boardwalk money in advertising, although it will continue to use print in order to target everyone, despite the added cost.

An ad in the print classified section of The Star, which has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in Canada, is a significantly higher cost for a landlord than an online equivalent.

An ad with three lines of plain text costs an individual $176.40 for one week. For 28 days including a 50-per-cent-off promotional rate for the second, third and fourth week, the total cost is $441. For a commercial business, the rates are higher at $188.16 and $564.48, respectively.

"I have no doubt that the print purveyors will reduce the price of print advertising for this kind of property," Middleton says. "This will make the decline of print advertising slower, but it won't stop it. However, most newspapers offer really good deals to deliver it in both print and online. So right now, very few individuals or marketers or organizations really have to choose."

The Star includes a free basic online package of one photo and unlimited text with the purchase of a print classified ad.

"We have a competitive advantage because we can offer bundling. We have recently partnered with Live Deal and relaunched our classifieds website," Sadler says. "We're positioning ourselves stronger against the ViewIts of the world, which is our strongest online competitor in the Toronto marketplace."

But Craigslist (www.craiglist.org), the online classified ad monster that started in San Francisco in 1995 and has now spread around the world, could pose a threat to online and print rental listings as it expands in the Canadian market. It has listings for 13 Canadian cities.

The listings, which cover everything from jobs, to personals, housing and items for sale, are free to everyone with the exception of job postings in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. There are no advertisement banners on the site.

"It began as an e-mail list from Craig Newmark's apartment," Craigslist public relations representative Susan MacTavish Best said in an e-mail. "Now it's in 205 cities and has over 100 categories.

"No one has asked us to put up banner ads. Frankly, they're typically distracting and ugly so as our users haven't requested them, we're fine with keeping them off the site," she wrote.

Middleton agrees that a website hosting classified ads must keep things simple and be easy to navigate for visitors.

"A lot of websites just confuse the user and you can't navigate your way around it so it defeats the purpose," he says. "If the site is set up properly, the ease of classifying and finding what I want is attractive."

The Star has a dedicated readership of about 1.2 million people daily and 1.7 million on Saturdays, according to its website. By contrast, Best said Craigslist has about 10 million unique visitors each month.

Craigslist entered the Canadian market in 2001 and the response has been "enthusiastic," Best wrote. "Vancouver and Toronto particularly have grown a great deal."

Middleton says that although he believes it is still an age where the majority of people are more comfortable with their newspaper in print, the number is declining.

"A site like this that makes it free ... once word gets around about (Craigslist) in Canada that's going to be very powerful," Middleton says, although he admits he is unfamiliar with the site. "Canadians are slower at adopting things as compared to Americans. So it's not going to be overnight."

Having several options for marketing vacant property for rent means property owners and managers are able to optimize their spending.

Boardwalk's Rino says it may result in a growing trend of using print and online advertising together.

"I think you'll see more of a referral from print to web. I think print ads are going to become shorter," Rino says. "They're going to just be: 'Apartment for rent, here's a phone number, for more information visit the website.' And that's what's going to be most useful because it will allow people to scan quickly and if they want more they have to dig a little more."

Quote . . .

“The biggest feature for a landlord is that you’re not restricted to the amount that you can advertise or promote your product as you are in print media. For a potential renter, you don’t have to worry about running out in the rain or snow to pick up a copy of a magazine. It’s all right there at your fingertips.”

(Dave Ricie can be reached at richie@businessedge.ca)