Toronto newcomers paying up to 12 months' rent up front to secure housing

Andrea Carranza and her husband vied for at least a dozen condo units when they first arrived in Toronto last summer. 

Every single landlord rejected their application. 

"It was really frustrating. They were really crappy places, but they still said no," said Carranza, who worked at IBM in Lima, Peru, for nine years before leaving the politically unstable country. 

For two months, Carranza and her husband slept on a couch in a small, one-bathroom apartment in downtown Toronto that they shared with two other couples as they searched for a home.

The real estate agents Carranza was working with said the reason they were rejected was because they were newcomers with no credit scores, no reference letters and — at the time — no jobs. So the agents suggested they offer up to a year of rent up front.

Desperate, Carranza started looking for options on Kijiji. There, she found a one-bedroom-one-den apartment near Kipling Station for $2,250. The landlords were willing to meet with Carranza and her husband in person.

They ended up handing over $28,300 — their life savings — to prove their reliability to the landlords and, finally, secure a home. (CBC News has seen emails that confirm the transaction.)

They're part of a growing number of newcomers who are paying thousands of dollars up front to persuade landlords to rent them apartments. CBC News spoke with eight newcomers who said they felt this was the only way they could secure a home. It's not technically illegal, but lawyers and housing experts say this unregulated grey zone leaves many newcomers, as well as other would-be renters, vulnerable to exploitation.

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If this is you, or you have a different story to tell about being a newcomer in the Canadian rental market, send an email to ask@cbc.ca.

Like Carranza, Raffaela Cruz was desperate to find housing in Toronto after a couple of weeks of paying more than $270 a night for an Airbnb with her husband and their Dalmatian. 

They moved to the city from Quito, Ecuador, in 2023 and were told by friends to work with a real estate agent to find an apartment as soon as possible.

Angela Chaves, a transitional services manager at the Halton Multicultural Council who works with newcomers to Ontario, says it's typical for those who can speak English to work with real estate agents, because agents can advocate for them with landlords, which increases the chances of having their applications accepted.

Chaves also says that these days, landlords would rather work with agents than with tenants directly, because they trust agents will find them a reliable tenant.