Open House in Quebec: What the Seller Has to Control

On a Sunday afternoon, strangers walk through your house, open your cupboard doors and head upstairs. The real question is not whether the charm will work. It is who controls the door, what stays within reach during those three hours, and who pays if something disappears or if someone falls down the stairs.

Visite libre in Montreal and Laval: what the OACIQ requires of the broker

The OACIQ is blunt: a broker or an agency may advertise a visite libre, an open house, only if the courtier du vendeur, the seller’s broker, is present during that visit, or is able to have another broker stand in. The regulator ties that rule to articles 14 and following of the Règlement sur les conditions d’exercice d’une opération de courtage, sur la déontologie des courtiers et sur la publicité.

That regulation says two things that concern you. Article 15 prohibits the broker from disclosing confidential or strategic information about you without your written authorization, while requiring fair treatment of every party. Article 16 requires the broker to inform, at the earliest opportunity, any partie non représentée, any unrepresented party, that the broker defends the interests of the client. It is the same framework, seen from the other side, as the one described in the article on the broker at the door of an open house.

What is required, and what is recommended. The distinction tells you where you have to insist yourself.

The OACIQ writes that the broker “should” verify the identity of visitors and record their names in a visitors’ register, for reasons of security and protection of the property for sale, and that the broker will take care never to leave a visitor alone in a room. Those are best practice expectations, not a regulatory ban on doing otherwise. And one broker does not watch a ground floor, an upper floor and a finished basement at the same time. If your property has several levels, ask how many licence holders will be on site and how arrivals will be staggered.

What the seller puts away before an open house

The OACIQ’s list is short and precise. Put out of reach your valuables, cell phone, tablet, jewellery, your medication, your personal documents such as your chequebook and passport, your keys and your remotes, the garage one in particular.

Each item answers a distinct risk. A missing blister pack of pills goes unnoticed for days. A chequebook and a passport open the door to identity fraud. A garage remote gives physical access to your home after the visit is over.

The OACIQ also recommends walking through the rooms with your broker before the doors open, then inspecting the premises with them again after the event and checking that the windows are still locked. That second walk-through is the one sellers skip, and it is the only one that lets you put a date on a disappearance. It does not replace the decluttering done for the photos, which belongs to preparing a home for sale.

Home insurance: theft, injury and the limits of the policy

The Bureau d’assurance du Canada, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, describes home insurance in two parts: personal property and personal civil liability. Theft appears in its list of insured risks, on the same footing as fire. The BAC does specify, however, that contents coverage applies subject to certain limits.

Here is what no public source can tell you in your place: how your insurer will handle a claim for an object that vanished during an open house. No BAC document deals with that case. The outcome will depend on your policy, on the applicable limits and on the proof you are able to produce. The call to your insurer happens before the visit, not after.

Another point from the BAC: vandalism is covered when the building is usually occupied. If you have already moved out, that call becomes necessary, especially for a property that ranks among the homes that are hard to insure.

Civil liability: what the Code civil puts on your shoulders

Quebec has no separate occupiers’ liability statute. Three articles of the Code civil do the work.

Article 1457 imposes on every person the duty to abide by the rules of conduct incumbent on them so as not to cause injury to another, including through the act of things in their custody. Article 1467 adds that the owner is liable for injury caused by the ruin, even partial, of an immovable, where it results from a lack of maintenance or a defect of construction.

Article 1465 is the one that changes everything: the custodian of a thing is bound to make reparation for injury resulting from the autonomous act of that thing, unless they prove that they committed no fault. The burden is reversed. If the railing gives way, it is up to you to show you were not negligent.

The BAC gives the exact example: if a visitor is injured slipping on a snowy walkway at your home, legal liability for those injuries may be attributed to you, and if your negligence is established, the civil liability part of your home insurance covers the damages, up to the amount of coverage, usually with no deductible. It does not, on the other hand, cover your own injuries or those of the members of your household.

For a November open house in Laval or Montreal, the translation is simple: the walkway and the steps get de-iced an hour before the doors open, not the night before, and the wobbly railing gets fixed beforehand.

Pets and children: who leaves during the visit

The OACIQ asks that pets be kept away. This is not a question of smell. Article 1466 of the Code civil leaves no room for nuance: the owner of an animal is bound to make reparation for injury the animal has caused, whether the animal was in their custody or in that of a third person, or had strayed or escaped.

For children, no rule applies, and the reason to have them leave is practical: a seller watching the children is a seller who is present, and the seller’s absence is the condition of a useful visit.

What a seller must never say to a visitor

Article 15 of the regulation prohibits your broker from disclosing confidential or strategic information about you. That protection is not aimed at you: nothing governs what you yourself say in your own kitchen, and three categories of sentences are expensive there.

Strategic sentences. The date by which you absolutely have to have sold, the reason for the sale, the number below which you are willing to go. What your broker is required to keep quiet, you have just handed to the other side for free.

Sentences about the condition of the property. A “no, the basement has never taken water” thrown out to reassure someone is a declaration, not a conversation. Article 1726 of the Code civil requires the seller to warrant the buyer against latent defects, and article 1733 adds that the seller may not exclude or limit that liability if they failed to disclose defects they knew of or could not have been unaware of. The condition of the property gets stated in writing, in the seller’s declaration form, with documents to back it up.

Sentences that sort visitors. Article 10 of the Charte des droits et libertés de la personne, Quebec’s charter of human rights and freedoms, lists the prohibited grounds of discrimination, and article 12 provides that no one may, through discrimination, refuse to enter into a juridical act concerning goods ordinarily offered to the public. A comment on a visitor’s origin, religion or family situation is not a social slip. It is a legal risk.

Judging what the open house actually produced

No public source allows anyone to claim that an open house sells a property, or to put a number on its contribution to a sale. It produces traffic, and traffic is not a result.

Measure four things, in this order: the number of visitors recorded in the register, how many were already represented by a broker, how many asked for a second showing, and how many promises to purchase followed within ten days. Only that last column is a result. The OACIQ also points out that a buyer is not bound to your broker merely because they visited a property advertised as an open house.

Then put that Sunday back on its real scale. According to the APCIQ, in the Montreal metropolitan area in August 2026, single-family homes sold in 42 days on average, condominiums in 62 days and plexes in 52 days, with 20,128 active listings, up 18% year over year. Three hours weigh very little against a six-week campaign.

If showings pile up with no promise to purchase, the problem is not the event. The first thing to check is still the price: the home value estimator gives you a starting point, and the article on a property that is not selling goes through the symptoms one by one.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to stay home during the open house? No rule requires you to leave or to stay. In practice, your presence keeps visitors from speaking freely and exposes you to saying yourself what your broker is required to keep quiet.

Does my insurance cover a piece of jewellery that disappears during an open house? Theft is among the insured risks listed by the Bureau d’assurance du Canada, but contents coverage applies subject to certain limits, and no public document deals with the open house case. Call your insurer beforehand, and put the jewellery away.

Who is liable if a visitor falls down my stairs? Article 1465 of the Code civil binds the custodian of a thing to make reparation for injury resulting from the autonomous act of that thing unless they prove they committed no fault. Your civil liability coverage steps in if liability is found against you, up to the amount of coverage.

Can the broker refuse entry to someone? The broker may ask every visitor to identify themselves and limit how many people are inside at the same time in order to keep watch over the rooms. Refusing someone on a ground listed in article 10 of the Charte, on the other hand, would be illegal.

To go further, read the broker’s real role at the door of an open house and how to prepare your home for sale.

Not sure about opening your house on a Sunday afternoon? Write to me before you set the date: we will decide together whether an open house belongs in your marketing plan.

Georges Matar

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

Contact Georges