What $500 or less gets you for an apartment rental on Craigslist

I guess this is the week of the double post for me. It started when I decided to compile a second list of top Toronto landmarks in response to the discussion on our original post, and it continues today with a follow-up to my collection of apartment rentals on Craigslist in excess of $5000 a month. The first of these apartment rental posts was a little bit of impromptu fun, but taking a look at apartments on the lower end of the scale requires a bit of caution.

I'm not going to delve into some serious bit of analysis of the Toronto apartment market -- what I'm going to reveal, that it's expensive? -- but I also don't want to position this collection mistakenly as another exercise in making fun. Instead, this post represents the satisfaction of a curiosity that was sparked yesterday. The fact is, people should be able to find reasonable accommodation for $500 worth of monthly rent.

And, for the most part, this brief -- and admittedly limited search bears that out. What's also apparent, however, is that on Craigslist the pickings for these rooms and apartments is slim. Unsurprisingly, very few are located close to downtown and the majority of them are basements.

A search through ViewIt.ca yields a somewhat different set of results. When one chooses the option of $599 or less for an apartment, almost every listing has the "$Call" designation instead of an actual price. A less than scientific comparison with Montreal's Craigslist (see below), on the other hand, does reveal more options -- at least on this occasion.

What does this tell me? Not much that I didn't already know. But, it has given me an idea to look into this in a bit more depth. As unscientific as searching sites like Craigslist may be, the added benefit of photographs of the apartments, I think, makes city-to-city comparisons rather intriguing.

For now, here's a look at what I drummed up searching in the $500 or less bracket of GTA apartment rentals.

I'm thinking this last one must be a typo, but if not, that's a great deal!