Browsing through platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji in hopes of finding an affordable place to live can be disheartening and downright frightening, considering all of the sketchy and head-scratching listings that pop up.
As the rent price for a one-bedroom apartment continues to creep upwards, it’s not uncommon for some landlords to take advantage of the city’s housing crisis to transform small spaces into living areas for several people.
At this point, prospective tenants have seen it all, from bedrooms stuffed with bunk beds and even landlords offering up half of their own beds for a stranger to rent.
The latest questionable listing to appear in the city’s rental market is a one-bedroom apartment in North York for $480 per month. While it might seem like a sweet deal at first, read the fine print, and you’ll discover that you’ll have to share the space with five other people.
“There will be six people living in total. Three in the hall and three in the bedroom,” the alarming listing reads, noting that aside from rent, tenants will have to pitch anywhere from an extra $25 to $30 for utilities every month.
As expected, the listing was quickly shared on Reddit, where it attracted dozens of comments and discussions regarding affordable housing in Toronto, how renters can report similar ads, and what sort of consequences landlords should face for advertising these spaces to multiple tenants.
“So this ‘landlord’ is raking in up to $3,060 off of the unit alone. And I put landlord in quotes because I highly doubt the person who made the listing is the actual owner… The building in question (as per the address) is actually owned by Ranee Management, and they lease one bedroom apartments out for ~$2200 a pop…. The grift is crazy,” one comment reads.
“This is almost certainly a fire code violation. Report report report,” another person said.
“So the ‘landlord within a landlord’ aka the person who signed the lease is making money off of this or lives rent-free,” one comment points out.
Other horror rentals in recent weeks include a laundry room-turned-“studio“ in Brampton for $550 a month and a mattress packed into the corner of a living room in Ottawa for a staggering $500 per month.