Rental property website in Montréal: what it must do

Someone searches "2 bedroom for rent Verdun" on a Sunday night. They find your building, open the site, and see no price and no available unit. They go back to the listings and email three other buildings. On Monday, your leasing office answers the same question by phone for the tenth time.

This guide is for rental property owners, property managers and new-project developers in Greater Montréal. It covers what a rental site has to do, what a rental application form may ask under the Tribunal administratif du logement, what 251 local listings analysed in June 2026 show, and what a site costs. The rules cited come from public pages of the TAL and the Commission d'accès à l'information, read on 22 October 2026.

What a rental site must do

Job	Feature	Why
Show what is free	Available units, price, occupancy date, updated by your team	A rented unit still listed costs calls and credibility.
Give real dimensions	Floor plans, square footage, inclusions	This is what filters out wasted visits.
Place the building	Neighbourhood, transit, parking, shops, schools	Renters choose a neighbourhood first.
Show the building	Recent photos, common areas, view, light	2019 photos are recognisable.
Book a visit	Time slots or a form, with a stated response time	The visit is the deciding step.
Explain the costs	Rent, included charges, parking, deposit	Hidden fees lose the applicant at signing.
Be bilingual	Complete French and English	In Montréal, some applicants search in English.

Open your site on a phone, on cellular data, and look for an available unit with its price. If you have to call to get it, your site is not doing its job.

The rental form: what the TAL allows

This is where rental sites create the most risk. Many online forms ask for a social insurance number, a salary, a copy of the health card or a sample cheque. The TAL and the Commission d'accès à l'information say otherwise.

What a landlord may ask for:

• first name, last name and full current address;
• an identity document shown, with or without a photo, to confirm identity;
• the names or contact details of previous landlords;
• with consent, a credit check, for which name, address and date of birth are enough;
• a credit statement, a reference letter or proof of regular payments.

What a landlord may not collect:

• the information on the identity document, or a photocopy or photo of it;
• the driver's licence, health insurance or social insurance number;
• employment, the employer's name, years with the employer or salary;
• bank details or a sample cheque;
• the vehicle's make, colour or plate number.

The TAL also states that a landlord cannot refuse an application because the person did not provide a health insurance or driver's licence number. A web form that requires those fields is therefore a problem, even if nobody has complained yet.

Two consequences for how the form is built. First, it should ask for the strict minimum and explain why each field exists. Second, an identity document is checked in person or on a video call, not by upload: if you are not allowed to keep the copy, do not create the field that collects it. The full detail is on the TAL page on leases and personal information.

One site per building, or one portal?

Both work, and the wrong choice is expensive.

One site per building is right when each building has its own address, neighbourhood and audience. That is what I built for Liveo, whose case study is here: six buildings, one site per building on its own domain, and a single codebase reused from one site to the next. The first site defines the structure, components and path to a visit; the others change the photos, plans and prices. A fix made once benefits all of them.

A single portal suits small, nearby buildings managed by one team with the same prices. One page per building inside one site is enough, and costs less.

Either way, units and availability have to be editable without a developer. At Liveo, the leasing team updates a listing itself the day the information changes. That is the difference between a site that stays true and a site that lies for three weeks.

For a new building, a short pre-launch page is enough before opening: what is coming, where, and how to book a visit. Enquiries come in before the building is ready, and the full site arrives once the plans are final.

What 251 local listings show

In June 2026 I pulled 251 Google Maps listings through the Places API for rental condos, apartments for rent and property managers in Montréal, Laval, Longueuil, Brossard, Repentigny and Pointe-Claire, then analysed each site's homepage.

• 13% (33 listings) had no website, or only a social profile.
• Of the 218 sites, 96 ran WordPress and 26 ran Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy.
• The median mobile PageSpeed score was 55, the lowest of the six sectors; 38% scored under 50.
• An analytics tag was present on 60% of sites.
• The median listing had 18 Google reviews.

The number to keep is 38%. Almost four sites in ten fail the 50 threshold on mobile, while rental searches happen on phones, often on the move. A slow site loses the applicant before the photo of the kitchen.

The limits: the Places search returns what Google ranks, not every building in those cities. One PageSpeed run per site. A tag on the page does not prove it is configured. No building from the scan is named.

Applicant data

On top of the TAL rules, Law 25 applies. A rental application collects personal information, sometimes a credit report: it needs a notice at the point of collection, a privacy policy, and a defined retention period. A rejected application is not kept forever.

The point managers forget: documents sent by email. A credit report received as an attachment and kept in a shared mailbox is not protected. If the form exists, it should route documents into a controlled space with named access. The full list is in the Law 25 guide.

French, finally: the site and the application flow must exist in French. That is the subject of the Law 96 guide.

What it costs

My prices are public on the pricing page, before tax:

• Landing site, CA$3,500: one building, units and prices, photos, plans, visit form, French and English.
• Custom site, CA$5,500: if your team manages units, availability and pages itself without a developer.
• Add-ons: extra page CA$250, third language CA$800, blog CA$600, migration CA$700.
• Care: CA$150 a month on the landing tier.

A multi-building portal is quoted separately, because the work depends on the number of buildings and the data structure. The Liveo case shows the approach: one base, several sites, content managed by the team.

Market ranges are in the guide to website costs in Montréal.

Audit your current site

• Every unit shown is actually available, with its price and occupancy date.
• Floor plans and inclusions are current.
• The form asks for no social insurance number, health card number, salary or sample cheque.
• An identity document is checked without being copied or kept.
• The credit check requires explicit consent.
• The site and the form exist in French.
• A privacy notice precedes the form submission.
• The homepage scores 50 or more on PageSpeed Insights, mobile.

If you manage a building in Montréal, Laval or the South Shore and want a second opinion, book a 15-minute call. I will tell you what is design, what is compliance, and what can wait.

Sources

Pages read on 22 October 2026.

• Leases and protection of personal information, Tribunal administratif du logement
• Signing a lease, Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec
• Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (P-39.1), LégisQuébec
• Language of commerce and business: your rights, Office québécois de la langue française