With the winter semester underway, May leases are quickly coming to an end. For first-year students, the beginning of the winter term is a crucial time to figure out their living situations for the upcoming fall semester, find roommates, and select which neighbourhood in Montreal is their best fit. Finding the right apartment is difficult enough without McGill’s academic workload, but online resources can help make the search much more convenient. The McGill Tribune has compiled a list of online rental resources, rated based on their user-friendliness, selection of apartments, and the specificity of their search filters.

Louer.com — 2/5

Louer.com has poor search filtering options, and the website can be a headache to maneuver. The website does, however, do a good job of consolidating the multiple rental sites’ resources, producing an uncluttered list of results. Also, renters can contact property owners directly from the platform. Unfortunately, with a quick search, prospective renters will find that most listings fail to give considerable details or clear images of the apartments, ultimately making the apartment hunting process more difficult.

Kijiji — 4/5

Although Kijiji isn’t exclusively dedicated to real estate, the website lists a diverse selection of apartments and other living spaces around Montreal. With the right keywords, potential renters can find hundreds of listings in their preferred neighbourhood. Additionally, most listings are fairly detailed and provide sufficient information about the apartment. However, Kijiji filters don’t allow house-hunters to narrow their search by apartment features such as heating and appliances. After making an account, users can message the hosts directly from the platform.

Kangalou — 3/5

With a sleek website and comprehensive search filters for heating, accessibility, and appliance availability options, Kangalou is the most user-friendly option on this list. The biggest disadvantage of this website, however, is that does not have many listings; ads for popular areas like the Plateau can have as few as 15 options, leaving almost no room for proper browsing. As a result, the listings are often over-priced, making the site, overall,  inaccessible to the student community.

Facebook groups — 3/5

While Facebook is not a real estate platform, there are many local groups which advertise great living options for student accomodations. McGill-specific groups, such as Housing, and Montreal rental groups, like Apartments for Rent, offer plenty of options and rental steals for students and those looking for short-term living situations. These groups have little-to-no search filters, so keywords are renters’ only mechanism to filter their results for the apartment size or location they are looking for. Facebook housing groups are particularly useful for those who can’t find roommates and do not want to live alone, as many advertisements are for single-bedroom sublets. Facebook groups are also well-suited for renters in search of atypical arrangements such as sub-leases or leases starting mid-summer.