Buyer's Guide

Buying Property Together in Quebec

By Georges Matar · July 27, 2026 · 7 min read

Buying with a partner, a parent, a sibling or a friend has become ordinary in Greater Montreal. What stays misunderstood is that this is not an understanding between relatives: it is a legal structure governed by the Civil Code of Quebec, and its rules apply whether you know them or not.

I am a broker, not a notary: this is general information.

When several people buy an immovable together, they become undivided co-owners, or indivisaires. Undivided co-ownership may result from a contract, a succession, a judgment or operation of law (art. 1012 C.C.Q.). Each person holds a share of the whole building, not a floor or a bedroom, and may use the property without interfering with its destination or with the rights of the others (art. 1016).

The trap is article 1015: the shares of undivided co-owners are presumed equal. Éducaloi puts it bluntly: the law presumes you own in equal shares even if your down payments and mortgage contributions were unequal, and rental income and resale profit are split the same way.

The indivision agreement: what it settles, and why it gets published

This is the document that replaces presumptions with your own decisions. According to the Chambre des notaires and Éducaloi, it covers:

each person’s real share, the one that follows the money actually invested;
how expenses and income are split, where the law only provides for a contribution to common charges in proportion to shares (art. 1019);
decisions. Article 1026 sets the default: ordinary administration is decided by a majority of the co-owners, in number and in shares, but selling the property, partitioning it, charging it with a real right or changing its destination requires unanimity;
exclusive use of part of the building;
the right of first refusal, which forces anyone selling a share to offer it to the others first;
what happens when a co-owner dies;
the exit: who buys out whom, at what price, on what valuation.

One technical point worth real money: a conventional indivision bearing on an immovable must be published to be set up against third parties (art. 1014). Unpublished, it binds you to each other but not the buyer of someone else’s share, nor that person’s creditors. The notary publishes it in the land register.

Nobody is forced to stay

This is the most important rule and the least known. Article 1030: no one is bound to remain in undivided co-ownership, and partition may always be provoked, unless it has been deferred by an agreement, a testamentary disposition, a judgment or by operation of law. One co-owner alone can therefore demand the end of the arrangement, without justifying it.

You can defer that right, not extinguish it. Co-owners may agree in writing to defer partition, for a maximum of 30 years, renewable (art. 1013). A court may also stay an immediate partition for no more than two years (art. 1032). Article 1031 also allows three quarters of the co-owners representing 90 % of the shares, despite any agreement to the contrary, to end the undivided co-ownership of an immovable used mainly for housing, but only to convert it into divided co-ownership (a condo): the others may then pay out in cash the share of those who object. It is not a general way to push out a co-owner.

Article 1022 adds a safety net: if someone outside the indivision buys a co-owner’s share, the others have 60 days from learning of it to remove that person by reimbursing the price and costs paid. This right of withdrawal does not apply where the agreement provides for published rights of first refusal: the agreement replaces an emergency remedy with a planned one.

The lender does not care about your percentages

In Quebec law, solidarity is not presumed: it exists only where it is expressly stipulated by the parties or provided for by law (art. 1525). Mortgage loan contracts stipulate it.

Each co-borrower is therefore liable for the whole loan, not for a share. If the other stops paying, the bank comes after you for everything and your credit file absorbs the delinquency. The indivision agreement changes nothing here: it gives you a remedy against your co-owner, never against the lender.

Co-owner or surety: two very different positions

Suretyship is the contract by which a person binds themselves toward the creditor to perform the debtor’s obligation if the debtor fails to do so (art. 2333). A surety is not on title, holds no share and captures no capital gain. In principle the surety enjoys the benefit of discussion, which allows them to require that the creditor first seize the debtor’s property, but they may expressly renounce it (art. 2347), and lenders commonly ask for that renunciation.

A parent who acts as surety takes the risk without the asset. A parent who becomes an undivided co-owner takes the risk and the share, with the tax and estate consequences that follow.

The parent who helps: gift or loan

A gift and a loan only look alike in the bank account. The lender requires a signed gift letter confirming the money is not repayable, because a loan would be added to your debts and damage your ratios.

The lender also wants to see where the money came from: bank statements, often over roughly 90 days, under anti money laundering obligations. Funds coming from abroad need more time and more documents.

A warning: declaring a gift to the lender and then treating the money as a loan between yourselves is not a grey area, it is a false declaration.

Breakup, death, bankruptcy

Breakup. Nothing divides automatically: article 1030 applies, with the delay and cost of a provoked partition. See also real estate and separation.

Death. The deceased’s share falls into their estate: you become co-owner with their heirs, who are not necessarily the people you pictured. See inheriting a property in Quebec. A right of first refusal or a purchase option funded by life insurance is the usual answer.

Bankruptcy. A co-owner’s share is part of their patrimony, and therefore of the common pledge of their creditors. A published agreement with a right of first refusal at least leaves you the option to buy back.

Marriage, de facto union, parental union: the law in 2026

Many co-buyers assume some legal regime protects them. It depends entirely on who you are to each other.

Married or civil union. The family patrimony applies automatically from the marriage or civil union. According to quebec.ca it includes the family residences, the furniture that furnishes them, the motor vehicles used for family travel, rights accrued under a retirement plan and earnings registered under the Quebec Pension Plan. It is the value that is divided, not ownership.

De facto partners with no common child. No legal patrimony. Title and the agreement are your only protection.

Parental union. Since June 30, 2025, this regime applies by operation of law to de facto partners who become parents of a common child born on or after that date. It creates a parental union patrimony made up of the family residences or the rights conferring their use, the furniture that furnishes them and serves household use, and motor vehicles used for family travel. Property received by succession or gift is excluded. Parents of a common child born before that date may opt in voluntarily, by notarial act or private writing.

Note what this patrimony does not include: neither rights accrued in a retirement plan nor earnings registered under the Quebec Pension Plan. It is narrower than the family patrimony.

Siblings, friends, a parent and an adult child. No legal regime at all. Only title and the agreement.

The order of operations

Talk numbers before you visit. Have the notary draft the agreement before or at the same time as the deed of sale, never after. And if the down payment feels like the real obstacle, read the 20 % myth and the help available to first-time buyers.

Planning a purchase with others? Write to me: we sort out the structure before the search begins.