Rent·Ka

Documentation

How Rent·Ka works

Apartments and homes for rent across Canada, gathered in one place — a faithful index, with no invented price or guessed coordinate.

Overview

What the site is for

Looking for an apartment in Canada means opening dozens of different sites. Rent·Ka (www.rent-ka.com) flips the problem: a dedicated connector per property manager visits each site, normalizes every listing to a single schema and detects changes continuously — additions, updates and automatic removals. Every listing links back to the manager's original ad through the exit gateway /gateway/{uid}. For tenants (filtered search, 3D map, complete listings), market watchers (rent observatory, PDF reports) and managers (claimable pages).

Thousands of active listingsAcross Canadian cities outside Québec, Ontario first — coverage growing continuously.
Dedicated connectorsEach property manager has its own connector, resynced continuously.
Nothing inventedNo invented price or guessed coordinate; a vanished listing answers 410 Gone.
Enriched listingsFair value, price history, building passport, KA Scores, Winter Score, nearby amenities.

Step-by-step guide

Use the site in 4 steps

1

Search from the home page

Enter a city or neighbourhood, pick the type (studio, 1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms…), the min/max rent and your options (pets, furnished, area). The list and the 3D map stay synchronized: the counters match the markers exactly.

2

Browse a city's results

City pages (e.g. /city/toronto) list all active listings with their filters. On the Rent-Ka Maps view: clusters by average price, "Search this area", 3D/2D toggle.

3

Open a listing page

All the photos, a structured digest of the description, the fair-value badge, price history, building passport, KA Scores and a Winter Score. The button to the original ad goes through the transparent gateway.

4

Follow the market on /stats

The market observatory: real-time KPIs, median rents by region, city and size, plus a downloadable multi-page PDF market report.

Under the hood

Where the data comes from

Pipeline: connectors → normalization → deduplication → SQLite → API/frontend. Auto-discovered connectors visit each property manager at the source (direct extraction or Scrapfly depending on the site), and a resync loop (rent-ka-sync) runs continuously: each listing's content hash detects additions, updates and removals — a vanished listing answers 410 Gone. An anti-drift guardrail suspends removals if a source suddenly returns far fewer listings. Enrichment crosses geocoding (Nominatim/OpenStreetMap), OpenStreetMap points of interest and Statistics Canada proximity measures. The public registry /sources shows every source, its status and its last sync.

Frequently asked questions

FAQ

Are the prices reliable?

Displayed rents are those published by the managers themselves, captured at the source. Rent·Ka invents no price and guesses no coordinate.

Can I rent directly on Rent·Ka?

No. Rent·Ka is an index: every listing links back to the manager's original ad through the exit gateway. Groupe KA is not a party to any transaction.

How often are listings updated?

The resync runs in a continuous loop; listings removed at the manager disappear automatically (410 Gone).

Where do the location scores come from?

From public sources: OpenStreetMap (amenities, roads, bike lanes) and Statistics Canada proximity measures (2021) — see /ka-scores for the full methodology.

I'm a manager — can I manage my page?

Yes: every source has a claimable page (/g/{source}); sign in with your KA ID to claim it.