i am undecided as to rent a house or apt.my wife and son would be with me and as it would be a bit tight money wise the first year i was wondering what the rental prices are like compared to back home??any one help me ?

I think renting is a good idea for the 1st yr to how you can cope and maybe as well help build good credit plus access the areas well and mark them down.

Then again if you have a huge deposit and the monthly payment is inline with your pocket then go for it. but i would chose rent if i am new in the country b4 buying.
good luck

I think he was asking whether to rent a house or an apartment, not whether to rent or buy - unless I've completely misunderstood the question?

If it's as I think, then the answer for the OP will depend on what you will have to spend on rent and whereabouts you will be living. You can easily search for properties to rent via Google so check out roughly what your budget will get you for the money. Also, there are loads of threads on here that will give you an idea of living costs in Canada (general consensus seems to be about the same as in the UK), so that should help you budget a bit too.

Best of luck.

Canada is a great big country. Rent on an apartment in downtown toronto will be more than rent on a detached house in hicksville if you know what I mean. Give us a clue and someone can probably point you in the right direction

How much stuff do you plan bringing. Space for storage will be tight in an apartment, but it will be cheaper than renting a house for any given location. Running costs (heat and hydro) will be a lot more on a house too I suspect, but at least it will give you an idea of what to expect when the time comes to buy a place of your own. It was a nasty suprise to me when I moved out of the apartment...but that was before I found all the useful info on the forums here...

Have you checked out sites like www.rentcanada.com or www.canadarentals.net or www.viewit.ca

We're renting an apartment for 4 months. We feel that this should give us enough time to look around the areas we're interested in and find a house to buy.

If we wanted to rent a house, I would still start off in a short term rental apartment - most houses will be minimum 1 year lease.

Well I guess yr plan is a good way forward, you rent and look around abit more and make a concise decision b4 u buy.

I am sure you can get a rental agreement for 6 months. What province, city and metro area, maybe its classified advertising newspapers can be useful. good luck.

When we rented (in Toronto) we rented an apartment in a house, which is effectively a floor. Usually split into top floor, ground floor and basement with the basement being smallest and cheapest. We found that way you could live in a nicer more residential neighbourhood (in our case Bloow West Village nr High Park) rather than being tied to the more desnsely populated areas where apartment buildings tend to be grouped, also you only have a couple of neighbours rather than hundreds. You end up a little further out though, if you want to be right downtown then you pretty much need to rent an apartment in a building. Renting a whole house would be very expensive in the city, but as someone else said in a suburban town it would be comparable, say $1500/month for a full new house rental in suburbia vs the same or a little less (depending on utilities etc.) in the city.