Keep or Sell a Property in Quebec: Five Cases

An owner who is hesitating tells themselves they are holding on “until things become clearer”. The trouble is that certain clocks keep running in the meantime. Here are five Quebec situations where doing nothing carries a cost you can put a number on, and then the test to run on your own figures.

Keeping or selling a property in Quebec: both are a decision

Not selling is not a status quo. It is the choice to keep paying the mortgage payment, the municipal and school taxes, the insurance, the energy, the maintenance and, in a co-ownership, the common expenses. That choice can be an excellent one. It becomes expensive when a specific deadline is approaching and nobody has written it on the calendar.

Which month to list in is a separate question, covered in what the monthly APCIQ numbers say. This article is about something else: is there, in your file, a deadline that makes waiting more expensive than selling?

The renewal that changes the math

In July 2025, the Banque du Canada (Canada’s central bank) published a staff analytical note, signed by Claudia Godbout, Adam Su and Yang Xu, on the effect of renewals. Its findings, measured against December 2024: roughly 60% of borrowers renewing in 2025 or 2026 should see their payments increase; five year fixed rate loans renewed in 2026 would see an average rise of about 20%; variable rate loans with variable payments would keep falling by about 5% to 7%. Among borrowers whose payment goes up, the median debt service ratio would move from 15.3% to 18.0%, a gap of 2.7 percentage points.

This cycle has an announced end. In its opening statement of May 28, 2026 accompanying the Financial Stability Report, the Bank writes that “the last wave of these renewals will take place over the next 12 months”. The policy rate itself has been held at 2.25% since October 2025, a level confirmed on September 2, 2026.

What follows is an arithmetic illustration of what a rate gap does to a payment. The rates below are not offered rates, they are two points of comparison, and the amortization used is the one you have left.

Three hundred dollars a month is $3,600 a year. Run the numbers on your own file in the mortgage calculator, then compare the result with what you hope to gain by waiting. I am not a mortgage broker: the prepayment penalty, the interest rate differential and the portability of your loan are checked with your lender or with a mortgage broker certified by the Autorité des marchés financiers, and the mechanism is explained in what gets decided before the rate.

Deferred maintenance becomes a declarable problem

Article 1726 of the Code civil is clear: the seller warrants to the buyer that the property is “free of latent defects which render it unfit for the use for which it was intended or which so diminish its usefulness that the buyer would not have bought it or paid so high a price if he had been aware of them”.

The mandatory Declarations du vendeur sur l’immeuble form (the seller’s declarations on the immovable), issued by OACIQ, the regulator of real estate brokerage in Quebec, turns that rule into precise questions: whether there has already been water infiltration and where, whether there have already been traces of mould, rot or fungus, whether the building has ever been inspected, and whether an insurance company has ever refused to insure the building or to indemnify you.

That is the cost of waiting. An infiltration repaired this year is an invoice and one line of the declaration settled. The same infiltration left for three years becomes a history, sometimes mould, sometimes a refusal of insurance, and all of it gets declared. The form also provides that the seller “undertakes to notify their broker if they obtain additional information about the immovable after signing the form”. On the buyer’s side, article 1739 requires the defect to be denounced in writing within a reasonable time after its discovery, which brings the file back to you.

Putting off a job you know about therefore does not make the obligation to disclose it go away, and the problem grows in the meantime.

The vacant dwelling and your insurance policy

This is the most misunderstood point. Article 2466 of the Code civil requires the insured to promptly notify the insurer of “any change that increases the risks stipulated in the policy and that results from acts of the insured” if it is such as to materially influence the assessment of the risk or the decision to maintain the insurance.

Article 2468 deals specifically with dwellings: the fact that a residence is unoccupied “does not constitute an aggravation of risk where it does not last more than 30 consecutive days or where the insurance covers a secondary residence designated as such”.

Read that carefully. The law states what is not an aggravation; it does not describe your coverage. Your contract may set out its own time limits and its own exclusions during a period of vacancy, for theft, water damage or freezing, for example. The only way to know your number is to read your policy and call your insurer or your damage insurance broker. Do not assume that 30 days is your number.

Once informed, the insurer may cancel the contract or propose a new premium rate in writing, which the insured has 30 days to accept and pay, failing which the policy ceases to be in force: that is article 2467. If the aggravation is not declared, article 2411 applies and the indemnity may be reduced in proportion to the premium collected against the premium that should have been collected.

An empty house kept “while we think it over” is therefore not neutral. It can change your coverage, your premium, and the answer you will have to give later on the seller’s declarations form.

The estate left to sit

Death stops neither the taxes, nor the insurance, nor the heating. Settling an estate, on the other hand, takes time.

The liquidator exercises the seisin of the heirs for the time needed to liquidate the estate, and their designation is published in the register of personal and movable real rights as well as in the Registre foncier, Quebec’s land register, when there is an immovable: that is article 777 of the Code civil. The liquidator must make an inventory and acts as an administrator of the property of others charged with simple administration.

Selling the house is not automatic. Éducaloi sums it up this way: if the will gives the liquidator the power to sell, they may sell the property of the estate; if not, they need the authorization of the heirs or, failing that, of the court. Éducaloi also notes that waiting for tax clearance certificates can take “several weeks, even several months”.

The typical blockage is not legal, it is human. Two heirs want to keep, one wants to sell, and nobody decides. Article 1030 settles it: “No one is bound to remain in indivision.” During that time the house is often empty, which takes us back to the previous section.

The special assessment in a co-ownership: selling before or after

Article 1071 requires the syndicate to set up a contingency fund and to obtain a study establishing the sums needed to cover the estimated cost of major repairs and of the replacement of the common portions. Article 1070.2 imposes a maintenance logbook describing the maintenance done and still to be done.

The implementing regulation came into force on August 14, 2025. According to Québec.ca, the syndicate’s attestation has been required on a sale since that date, the maintenance logbook and the fund study must be in place no later than August 14, 2028, and the study is then redone every five years by a qualified professional. Article 1068.1 provides that the syndicate delivers the attestation within 15 days to a co-owner who requests it.

Selling “before word gets out” therefore does not hold up. The attestation, the minutes, the financial statements, the maintenance logbook and the fund study are all in the co-ownership register, and a well advised buyer asks for them. Article 1072.1 adds that the board of directors must consult the general meeting before deciding on a special contribution: you will see the decision coming if you read your notices of meeting. The checks are set out in what to verify on the contingency fund.

The real question is not how to escape the assessment, but whether you want to finance major work in a building you plan to leave within three years.

Keep or sell: the four number test

None of the five cases above commands a sale. They command a calculation. Take four figures, your own, on a single page.

1. The monthly cost of holding. Payment, municipal and school taxes divided by twelve, insurance, co-ownership fees, energy, maintenance.
2. The cost of the deadline you have identified. The payment gap at renewal, the adjusted premium or the reduced coverage during a vacancy, the special assessment that has been announced, or a contractor’s quote for the work you have put off.
3. The net proceeds of a sale today. Likely price, less the mortgage balance, any penalty, the broker’s remuneration and the selling costs.
4. What those net proceeds would do elsewhere, and what your next purchase would cost if you buy again.

Reading it is simple. If figure 2 grows every month while figure 3 stays flat or falls, waiting is the expensive decision. If figure 2 is a one time amount you can absorb, keeping makes perfect sense. A broker, a notary, an accountant and your insurer each fill in part of that page.

Frequently asked questions

My renewal is eight months away. Should I sell now? Not on that basis alone. Ask your lender for the estimated payment at renewal given your balance and your remaining amortization, then compare the annual gap with your budget margin. A gap that fits inside your budget is not a reason to sell; a gap that forces you to borrow elsewhere is one worth examining.

My mother’s house has been empty since she moved out. Is my insurance still good? Call the insurer today, before any loss. Article 2468 of the Code civil says that a vacancy of 30 consecutive days or less is not an aggravation of risk, but your policy may set its own conditions beyond that. The only number that counts is the one in your contract.

The syndicate has just voted a special assessment. Can I sell before it becomes payable? You can list, but you cannot hide it. The syndicate’s attestation, the minutes and the financial statements all speak to it, and how it is split is negotiated in the promise to purchase and then settled at the notary’s office.

There are three of us heirs and we do not agree. What happens? Article 1030 of the Code civil provides that no one is bound to remain in indivision and that partition may always be provoked, subject to the exceptions it lists. Before getting to that point, have a value and the real cost of holding established: many disagreements fall away once the numbers are on the table.

To go further, read what heirs need to know before selling or keeping and the real cost of selling a house in Quebec.

A deadline is coming and you are not sure whether it changes the decision? Write to me. We put your four figures on one page, with no obligation to list.

Georges Matar

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

Contact Georges