First, thanks to Chris for allowing me a guest post. I am a fellow Real Estate investor and spent seven years with REIN, so I really appreciate many of his insights in his posts.

This particular post is actually in regards to a post by Brian Persaud quite a few months ago in regards to Problem Tenants in Ontario. Its reading information like Brian’s, that really make me appreciate owning properties in Alberta. Similar to Ontario, making the wrong move with a problem tenant can be costly and can quickly evolve into even more lost money and extra stress.

Fortunately, for Alberta landlords though, there are some great laws and systems in place to make landlording considerably easier than most other provinces, in my opinion anyway. Two of the biggest positives for landlords here in Alberta are security deposits and a system for resolving landlord/tenant issues called the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service or RTDRS for short.

As a landlord, security deposits are a vastly superior option than tenants paying first and last month’s rent as they do in Ontario. Security deposits can be used to cover cleaning costs after tenants leave, or to repair any damages that tenants may have caused to the property. With the tenant understanding their deposit could be partially withheld it can work as a tremendous incentive for tenants to leave the properties in the same condition as they initially rented the premises.

In Ontario, any repairs or cleaning have to be added to the last month’s rent. This now puts the pressure on the landlord to try and collect additional funds from tenants. This can become an even more time consuming adventure than actually evicting a tenant in some cases. Of course, there are landlords who abuse security deposits as well, which bring us to my other favourite item about being a landlord in Alberta.

This is the RTDRS, which was introduced in Alberta around 2008. The RTDRS is a system designed to streamline the process of settling landlord and tenant disputes through the courts. This service allows landlords, and tenants, to bring their disputes to a less formal resolution using court appointed hearing officers. These hearing officers have the ability to make legally binding decisions regarding almost everything under the Residential Tenancy Act in Alberta.

This can range from setting eviction dates for tenants who have breached their lease agreement, to helping tenants recoup improperly withheld security deposits from landlords. All of this for just a $75 filing fee and in a much timelier fashion than the old very formal court system. Many hearings can even be arranged within about seven to ten days after the filings occur, which can shave days and weeks off the original process.

This simple system manages to work for both sides. Now there does seems to be a slight bias towards preventing tenants from being put out on the street, which no one really wants, but overall it’s still a very fair and impartial system that should be a model for many of the other provinces.

Ed Note: Bill Biko has been investing in Real Estate since 2003 and has become an expert at evictions due to his experiences owning multiple rooming houses. He can be found at www.AlbertaEviction.com and www.Investors.Housez.ca.

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Here’s your download for the new Toronto rental website ranking report. I’ll cover some of the changes since the last time we looked at the Top Ontario Town Rankings in a future post after the rest of the spring ranking report series are out.

You can find the full background in the Edmonton or Ontario report and download the new Toronto ranking report here.

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At long last, here is the Winter 2010 Edition of the Rental Website Ranking Reports for Edmonton and Calgary. Like the Ontario ranking report and the original rental website report, it helps you understand which rental advertising websites are dominating Google and why that’s an important thing if you have vacancies to fill.

The top websites for each category were:
Edmonton
Condos – www.rentfaster.ca
Houses - www.rentedmonton.com
Apartments - www.rentedmonton.com
Rooms for Rent - www.kijiji.ca

Calgary
Condos - www.rentspot.com
Houses - www.rentspot.com
Apartments - www.rentspot.com
Rooms for Rent - www.kijiji.ca

You can download the Edmonton, Calgary and Ontario reports below, and be sure to signup for email updates and subscribe to updates from my blog.

(PDF format, ~3MB each – Right click and ‘save-as’)

The struggle to find tenants to fill vacancies is a problem known to every investor and property manager. As the Internet has grown to become a pervasive part of our lives, the choices for advertising media have grown exponentially.

This report seeks to help narrow the field, and educate investors and managers about the role search engines play in our lives.

What this report gives you is a guide to which websites dominate Google, Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft) for Alberta’s two major rental markets. For transactions like buying cars and houses, nearly 80% of people start their search online. While not all of your marketing should be online, it should be a significant part of it.

The stronger a site is, the more traffic it gets from Google and other search engines, and the more likely it is to play a role in your tenants’ search. This is only a guide to how sites rank. We strongly encourage you to adopt a culture of testing and change in your real estate business. Track the responses so you know which sites consistently refer quality leads and tenants. Use different phone numbers and email addresses, tracking where your marketing time and money is having the greatest impact.

We’ve done the hard part here; determining which phrases people use and which websites rank the best. Now it’s up to you to take the lessons from our experience, create good ads and measure the results.

You can signup below to get updated releases of the ranking reports.

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Advertising your vacancies on the right sites will save you time and money. What many real estate investors fail to realize is that between your property and the tenant comes an advertisement. The missing link is how they find your ads, and the answer is:

This whitepaper does the heavy lifting for you if you’re in the Ontario investment market.We’ve set out to rank the highest, most consistently ranked sites for the areas identified as the Top Ontario Investment Towns by the Real Estate Investment Network (REIN).

Since it’s release to 400+ members of REIN at the Advanced Landlording and Investing Expo, this report has helped investors fill vacancies faster and with less effort.

The towns we’ve covered in the whitepaper include:

• The Technology Triangle: Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge (KWC)
• Hamilton
• Simcoe Shores: Barrie – Orillia
• Brampton
• Durham Region – Whitby, Pickering, and Ajax
• Ottawa
• Brantford
• Toronto
• Vaughan
• Whitchurch – Stouffville

It’s 20-pages covering the backgound and methodology of the reports, tips and tricks for advertising online, and detailed results for these areas. It’ll help make your advertising choices easier, learn how to Google like a tenant and run your real estate like a business.

You can download the report here (PDF) and signup for future reports below.

Praise for the Ontario Ranking Report:

Chris, while you were in Ireland, you made a big difference for 400+ people in Toronto. Your Special Report on the Ontario Rental Internet-site traffic was fantastic and a huge hit at A-LIFE. THANKS! And that was before the Blarney Stone….. can’t wait to see what comes next.

- Don R. Campbell, President, Real Estate Investment Network

Thank you so much for putting that report together for ALIFE & sharing it here. It is BRILLIANT! It is now one of my most frequently used documents.

- Carla Johnson, Author of Magnetic Real Estate Photography

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After the success of the first rental website ranking whitepaper, I had a request from the folks at REIN to distribute it to the attendees at the Toronto Advanced Landlording and Investing Weekend. Always one to go the extra 10%, I wrote a special report just for the Top Ontario Investment Towns.

This 20-page special report will be made publicly available to all starting October 30th, 2009. It’s available by donation to keep it accessible to new investors, but also to reflect the amount of time and effort a project like this entails.

The report details the methodology, the role search engines play in tenant’s hunt for a new home and detailed results for 11 areas and four types of properties.

You can signup here to be notified of the release, signup for email or RSS updates or just surf back here on Friday.

If you’re a blogger interested in an advance copy in return for a mention on your blog, please drop me an email: chris at chrisdavies dot ca. I’ll be sure to return the favour.

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