Two ways to fill a vacancy: hire a leasing agent and pay a fee, or run the listing, showings and screening yourself. Most small landlords settle this by feel, mid-vacancy, when they are already behind. It comes down to two numbers you can work out in five minutes.
Turn the fee into vacant days
A leasing fee buys one thing you can measure: a shorter vacancy. So price it that way. Divide the fee by your daily rent, and you get the vacant days the agent has to save you before the fee pays for itself.
Take a unit at 2,200 dollars a month. Daily rent is roughly 72 dollars. A one-month fee is 2,200 dollars, or about 30 vacant days. A half-month fee is about 15 days. A flat 800 dollar placement fee is about 11 days.
That settles a lot of arguments before they start. A full month's fee is a high bar: the agent has to fill the unit a month faster than you would have. A half-month fee is far easier to clear, and a flat fee gets easier the more expensive the unit is, because the fee stays fixed while the daily rent climbs.
Any of the common daily rates will do for this, as long as you use the same one on both sides of the comparison.
The second number is the rent, not the speed
Speed is the obvious benefit. The quieter one is price. Someone who leases in your neighbourhood every week knows what the unit rents for this month, not last year.
If an agent lists at 2,275 and you would have listed at 2,200, that is 75 dollars a month and 900 dollars over a twelve-month term. Where annual increases are a percentage of the current rent, the gap does not stop there. The higher rent becomes the base every future increase is calculated from, so it follows the unit for as long as you own it.
The reverse gets ignored and costs more. An agent who prices low fills the unit fast, clears their own vacancy target, and hands you a rent you live with for years. Ask for the last three comparable units they leased, with the asking rent and the signed rent for each. If those two sit far apart, they list high and negotiate down, and your real vacancy is longer than the pitch suggests.
Four questions that settle it
- How many days will you add? Be honest about your calendar, not your intentions. If you work daytime hours and can only show on weekends, you are adding days, and you should count them.
- How far away is the unit? Scattered-site landlords pay for this decision in driving. A unit forty minutes out with six showings is most of a day, twice over.
- Do you know this month's market rent? Not last year's, and not what your sitting tenants pay. If you cannot name three comparable units currently listed and their asking rents, you are guessing, and guessing is expensive in both directions.
- Is the unit still occupied? Showing an occupied unit means written entry notice, a schedule built around a resident who did not ask for any of this, and cancellations you did not cause. That is where paid help earns its fee most often, because the constraint is coordination, not effort.
Two quotes are comparable only if the scope matches
Leasing fees cover different amounts of work. Before you compare one fee to another, write down what each includes:
- photography and the written listing
- where it gets posted, and whose account it lives in
- who answers inquiries, and during which hours
- showings: how many, and who attends
- screening, and who sees the results
- the lease document, and who signs it
- deposit collection, and whose account the money lands in
- key handover and the move-in inspection
Scope explains most of the gap between two fees. Match the lists before you compare the numbers.
Check that they are allowed to lease it for you
Leasing someone else's property for a fee is licensed work in much of Canada, and the rules do not care what the person calls themselves.
In British Columbia, the BC Financial Services Authority states that a person does not require a licence to provide real estate services to themselves, such as renting out their own property, but must not provide those services on behalf of another for remuneration unless licensed or exempt. Remuneration is defined broadly enough to catch any commission, fee, gain or reward.
In Alberta, the Real Estate Council of Alberta lists the activities needing a property management licence, and they are the ordinary parts of filling a vacancy: leasing or offering to lease, negotiating or approving a lease or rental, holding money received in connection with a lease or rental, and advertising that furthers a rental transaction. RECA adds that a licensee may only provide what their brokerage authorizes, so a licence alone is not the end of the check.
Both regulators run a public register. Look the person up before you sign, not after. Other provinces keep the same kind of register and scope list. The exemption that matters to you is the one for owners: none of this stops you leasing your own unit yourself.
The hybrid most small portfolios end up with
This is not all or nothing, and splitting usually beats picking a side. Splits that hold up:
- An agent for the units far from you, self-managed for the ones nearby.
- An agent for the first lease-up after a purchase, before you know the building's market, and self-managed on later turns.
- Your own listing and inquiries, with paid help for showings only, priced per showing rather than per lease.
- A reduced fee where you supply the photos and the listing copy. This one is worth asking for and rarely offered: hand over usable photos and finished copy and you have taken real work out of the engagement.
Decide at the notice date, not at the vacancy
The worst version of this decision gets made in week two of an empty unit, when the fee looks cheap because you are worried. Make the call the day notice arrives, while you still have the occupied period to work with. That is when an agent could start marketing, and equally when you could.
Write the break-even number on the file: the fee, the daily rent, and the days it has to save. If the vacancy runs long, you will want to know whether the decision was wrong or the market was. Those are different problems, and only one is yours to fix.