Buying a House to Demolish in Quebec: The Permit

The math looks simple: a well located lot, a building at the end of its life, a new house in its place. Except that demolition is the one step in the project that depends neither on your budget nor on your contractor. It depends on three elected officials sitting as a committee, on a notice posted on the façade, and on a replacement project filed before you know whether you will be allowed to demolish at all.

Buying a house to demolish in Quebec: demolition is not a right

Section 148.0.2 of the Loi sur l’aménagement et l’urbanisme (Quebec’s planning act) requires every municipality to keep a demolition by-law in force, and that by-law must “prohibit the demolition of an immovable, except where the owner has been authorized to proceed with its demolition by a committee.” The legal starting point is a prohibition. The authorization is the exception, and you have to ask for it.

That obligation comes out of the 2021 heritage reform. Laval says so itself: its by-law was adopted in March 2019 by choice, and “since 2021, this by-law has become an obligation under the Loi sur l’aménagement et l’urbanisme.”

Heritage immovable is a broader notion than people think. Section 148.0.1 covers the cited immovable, one located in a cited heritage site, and one merely listed in the MRC’s inventory. And section 120 of the Loi sur le patrimoine culturel (Quebec’s cultural heritage act) requires every MRC to inventory immovables built before 1940 that carry heritage value. Appearing on an inventory does not protect a building the way a citation does, but it is enough to trigger the strictest regime. In Laval, roughly 2,600 immovables are covered by by-law L-12507, findable through the Info-règlements tool.

The demolition committee, the public notice and the ten days to object

Section 148.0.3 requires council to set up a committee of three council members, appointed for one year. That committee, not the clerk at the permit counter, is what grants or refuses.

The procedure is public by design. As soon as it is seized of an application, the committee must have a notice posted on the immovable that is “easily visible to passers-by” and publish a public notice without delay (s. 148.0.5). If the immovable is a heritage building, a copy goes to the ministre de la Culture et des Communications. The applicant must also notify each of the tenants (s. 148.0.6).

Then comes the window buyers discover too late. Section 148.0.7 gives any person ten days, from the publication of the notice or from its posting, to send the clerk a written objection with reasons. The committee must consider those objections, its sittings are public, and it holds a public hearing when the application concerns a heritage immovable.

Two details matter. Section 148.0.8 allows a person who wants to acquire the immovable in order to preserve its residential rental character, or its heritage character, to intervene in writing before the decision: the committee may then postpone its decision by at most two months, once only. And the MRC’s disallowance power does not apply in Laval, which section 148.0.20.2 excludes by name along with eight other cities.

What makes a demolition refusable

Section 148.0.2 lists the criteria the municipal by-law has to retain: the condition of the immovable, its heritage value, the deterioration of the quality of life of the neighbourhood, the cost of restoring it, the intended use of the cleared land and, where there are dwellings, the prejudice caused to tenants and the effects on housing needs in the sector. For a heritage immovable, add the history of the building, its contribution to local history, its degree of authenticity and integrity, how representative it is of an architectural current, and its contribution to an ensemble worth preserving.

A building in poor condition is not the winning argument people imagine. Restoration cost is one criterion among several, and it gets weighed against heritage value. What an old house actually reveals at inspection is detailed in what changes when you buy a century old home.

Rented dwellings complicate everything. Under section 148.0.13, a tenant cannot be forced to leave before the later of two deadlines: the expiry of the lease, or three months from the issue of the certificate. The lessor has to pay moving expenses and the indemnity under article 1965 of the Code civil du Québec (s. 148.0.14).

If the immovable is classified, or located in a declared or classified heritage site, sections 48 and 64 of the Loi sur le patrimoine culturel also require the minister’s authorization. The differences between classified, cited and inventoried are explained in buying an old or heritage building.

The replacement project, the guarantee and the imposed deadline

You are not applying for a demolition. You are applying for a demolition and for what comes after it. Section 148.0.2.1 lets the by-law require, before the application is even examined, an expert report such as a heritage study or a preliminary program for reusing the cleared land, then a financial guarantee before the certificate is issued. In Montreal, that preliminary program generally has to be submitted to the committee before the application is examined, with the applicable by-law and the fees varying from one borough to the next.

In Laval, the published sequence puts the permit application for the replacement project and the deposit of the monetary guarantee before the demolition certificate is issued, the guarantee being released only after the completed project is inspected. The certificate costs $84, plus $916 in analysis fees for an immovable covered by L-12507, and authorization is required as soon as the building’s footprint reaches 19 m2.

The committee may impose any condition relating to the demolition or to the reuse of the land, including the relocation of tenants (s. 148.0.12), and set the period within which the work must be started and completed (s. 148.0.15). Demolishing without authorization exposes you to a fine of $10,000 to $250,000, raised to a maximum of $1,140,000 for a legal person that demolishes a cited immovable (s. 148.0.22).

Nobody can guarantee you the certificate, or how long it will take. A broker who tells you otherwise is talking about a power that is not his.

Before the first shovel: asbestos and debris

The pre-demolition characterization, and who has to do it

The Safety Code for the construction industry is blunt: “Before demolition work is undertaken, materials likely to emit asbestos dust shall be removed” (s. 3.23.3.2). Section 3.23.3 adds that the employer must determine the types of asbestos present before undertaking such work.

The Regulation respecting occupational health and safety spells out the survey. Every building constructed before 15 February 1990 must be inspected to locate asbestos containing flocking, and every building constructed before 20 May 1999 to locate thermal insulating material (s. 69.3). The threshold is 0.1% (s. 69.2). Both are presumed to contain asbestos unless the contrary is shown by verifiable documentary information or a sampling report (s. 69.4). Section 69.11 requires a check for asbestos before any work liable to emit its dust.

The obligation falls on the employer, so on the contractor and, for a building under his authority, on the owner acting as employer. In practice the buyer pays: no serious contractor bids without a characterization. The same reflex applies to attic insulation, as the fact sheet on vermiculite and asbestos explains.

Debris and the disposal bill

Whatever is not sorted ends up buried, and burial is taxed. The ministère de l’Environnement sets disposal fees at $36 per metric tonne as of 1 January 2026, on top of the price charged by the disposal site, which the Regulation respecting the landfilling and incineration of residual materials governs. A demolished house weighs dozens of tonnes: that line gets costed before the offer.

Municipal assessment, taxes and transfer duties

The taxe de bienvenue is calculated on what you buy, not on what will be left. The Act respecting duties on transfers of immovables sets the tax base at the greatest of three amounts: the consideration furnished, the consideration stipulated, and the market value of the immovable at the time of the transfer (s. 2). That market value is the value entered on the roll multiplied by the roll’s factor (s. 1.1). So you pay duties on the building you intend to make disappear. The order of magnitude gets checked with the transfer duties calculator before you file a promise.

On the roll side, the correction is not retroactive to suit you. Section 174 of the Act respecting municipal taxation requires the assessor to alter the roll to reflect the decrease in the value of a unit following the demolition, and section 177 sets the effective date as the date entered on the assessor’s certificate, going back no further than the event itself or the first day of the preceding fiscal year. In the meantime the land stays taxed, and reading the land to building ratio is explained in land value and zoning in Quebec.

Buying to demolish: the conditions to put in the promise to purchase

A promise with no condition covering this project is a bet on a decision handed down by three elected officials after a public hearing. Five items to have drafted, then validated by your notary.

1. The authorization itself. A condition tied to obtaining the demolition authorization certificate, not to merely filing for it.
2. The replacement project. A condition tied to written confirmation, from the municipality or the borough, that the project you have in mind complies.
3. The timeline. A period that accounts for the public notice, the ten days to object, the hearing, the thirty days for review and, where it applies, the ninety days of the MRC.
4. The expert reports. A right of access to the building for the asbestos characterization and, depending on the history of the land, for a soil study, with a clear split of the costs.
5. The occupants. The complete rent roll, the leases, and acceptance of the indemnities and eviction periods under sections 148.0.13 and 148.0.14.

What I refuse to have a client sign is a promise whose only condition is financing. A lender financing a building destined to disappear asks its own questions, and the value it retains is not the value of the finished project.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a demolition application take? No overall time limit is set by the act. The only certain periods are procedural: ten days to object, thirty days before the certificate is issued, and up to ninety days of disallowance by the MRC where that power applies. The municipality adds its own analysis time.

My house has no heritage status. Am I exempt from the committee? Not automatically. The prohibition on demolishing without the committee’s authorization is the general rule of section 148.0.2. The local by-law may exempt certain non heritage immovables and drop the public notice in those cases, but that gets verified with the by-law in hand, address by address.

Can a neighbour sink my project? He can file an objection with reasons within ten days, and the committee has to consider it. He can also apply for a review of the decision within thirty days. An objection does not decide, but it goes into the file.

Can the seller obtain the authorization before the sale? That is possible, and it is often the best scenario for the buyer. Watch the period the committee sets for starting the work: past that period, the authorization is without effect (s. 148.0.16).

To round this out, read land value and zoning in Quebec and what changes when you buy a century old home.

Are you looking at a property for the land more than for the house? Write to me. I check the status of the immovable and the applicable demolition by-law before a promise is filed.

Georges Matar

Residential Real Estate Broker · RE/MAX DU CARTIER INC.

Contact Georges