When the world visits Toronto for the G20 summit on June 26 and 27, many city residents will be checking out.

Some downtown condo owners are planning to rent out their homes for thousands of dollars and escape the hubbub for a few days.

Toronto's lakefront condos are close to the G20 meeting site. Several suites are renting for exorbitant prices. (Chris Roussakis/Reuters)

"I don't want to be here for the nightmare of the G20," said Mirella Radman, a Toronto woman who has arranged to rent her condo to a BBC reporter during the summit.

"I have family in Oakville, so it was the perfect opportunity for me to get somebody in, make my mortgage payment and avoid the chaos during that week."

Radman, a history and political science teacher at Philip Pocock Catholic Secondary School in suburban Mississauga, is renting her lakefront condo for $3,000 for the week leading up to the G20 summit.

During the Vancouver Olympics in February, Vancouver condo owners were being offered as much as $11,000 a month for a two-bedroom condo.

Delegates solicited condo owners

Radman said she got the idea after hearing from neighbours that journalists and members of G20 delegate entourages had been putting out flyers in condo buildings in the downtown core.

'This is definitely not the time to be in Toronto.'—Downtown condo owner

Much of the area will be blocked off by a police barrier during the summit, while residents and businesses just outside the perimeter have been told to expect traffic standstills and major delays getting around.

"This is definitely not the time to be in Toronto. So, if I can get some cash and settle quietly in the suburbs of Oakville, that's perfect," Radman said.

Initially, only a couple of dozen other homeowners espoused the same idea. Classified websites like Craigslist and Kijiji had just a sprinkling of G20 rental offers over the last two months, but a radio report Thursday morning about homeowners dishing up their digs to G20 attendees inspired a rash of copycats. Craigslist had 81 ads for G20 rentals as of early Thursday afternoon, mostly for condos in the core.

"I heard it on the radio this morning that someone had done this, so I talked to my partner and we figured out what we could do," said Jeff Green, who runs his own internet marketing business and posted an online ad to rent out his house in the Beach.

"She's got another building over in the St. Clair and Dufferin area" — well away from the downtown tumult — "so we decided, if it works out, I'll go shack up with her for a couple weeks."

Green's home is nearly 10 kilometres from the summit meeting site, but he said it's great for someone looking to bed down "away from the hustle-bustle, in a more relaxed setting." He hasn't decided on a price, but said it will be "reasonable, probably about $1,000 to $1,500 a week."

Some steep prices

That's well shy of the most optimistic rental ads, one of which is asking $20,000 for a week in a "fully luxurious" 800-square-foot waterfront suite. Another seeks $25,000 for a one-bedroom penthouse with rooftop barbeque from Tuesday through June 30. By comparison, the deluxe Park Hyatt hotel, at the northern edge of Toronto's downtown, has double rooms during the G20 for $650 a night.

A few of the online offers are downright misleading, possibly seeking to exploit out-of-towners' geographic ingenuousness. A two-bedroom bungalow near Pape Avenue and O'Connor Drive is advertised as five minutes from downtown, though realistically it's at least three times that.

For some aspiring renters, the main motivation isn't profit but peace and quiet.

"I don't want to be in the city at all," said a 26-year-old Toronto woman who is trying to rent out her waterfront condo for $1,200 a week during the G20. "It's going to be difficult to get around because of Union Station being shut down. Also, I'm just generally afraid of danger and it's a huge inconvenience."

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said that she had recently talked to a police officer about safety issues surrounding the G20 and that "he said that he wouldn't suggest anyone enter the city after the 18th of June and that, besides major disruptions, there was going to be violence."