Seller's Guide
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 …
The house across the street is listed at $749,000, so you conclude yours is worth about the same. Yet two properties that look alike from the sidewalk can trade $80,000 apart without anyone having made a mistake. A comparative market analysis is something you read, question and verify. Here is how to audit the one you will be shown.
Your neighbour’s asking price is not data
An asking price is a unilateral decision. Nobody validated it, nobody paid it. A closed sale, on the other hand, is a fact: two parties agreed and a notarized deed was published.
The OACIQ (Quebec’s real estate brokerage regulator) puts it bluntly in its guideline on the protection of personal information: until the deed of sale has been published in the Registre foncier (the land register), the price written in it stays confidential. And it speaks of the selling price obtained, “whether or not it corresponds to the original listing price.” The regulator takes for granted that the two numbers often differ.
According to the APCIQ (the Quebec professional association of real estate brokers), the Montreal metropolitan area counted 20,128 active listings in August 2026, up 18% year over year, against 2,853 sales closed in the month, down 13% (press release of September 4, 2026). The vast majority of the prices on your screen have proven nothing yet.
That the asking price is not the market value is already demonstrated in the article on bidding wars in Quebec. What follows is about something else: how you choose the sales that do count.
The four criteria of a real comparable
The OACIQ describes the exercise in one sentence: to determine fair market value, the broker must in particular carry out a comparative analysis with other similar properties recently sold in the same sector (page updated December 17, 2025). Four conditions hide inside that sentence.
Proximity. Same sector means same market: same taxes, same services, same neighbourhood school. A sale fifteen minutes away by car is not one.
Type and era. The rôle d’évaluation (the municipal assessment roll) distinguishes the type of construction: one storey, split level, single module, mansard storey, full storey. A 2008 cottage and a 1962 bungalow do not compare, even side by side. The OACIQ lists the year of construction and the state of upkeep among the elements that act on the price.
Recency. A sale closing today was negotiated weeks earlier. In August 2026 the APCIQ measured an average selling time of 42 days for the single-family home in the Montreal CMA, and 62 days for the condominium. Add the delay until the notarized deed: a sale “from last month” describes a market from a quarter ago.
Comparable living area. This is the criterion almost nobody verifies, and it is the one that does the most damage.
Living area is not measured by eye
A square foot is not a self-evident notion: it is the result of a method. The OACIQ writes it in black and white for commercial leasing. The parties must use a recognized measurement method, the BOMA standard being the most widespread, and calculation methods vary with the standard retained, the type of building and the year of publication. Hence the advice in the guide: require a measurement “according to a specific standard, and confirmed by a measurement certificate.”
In divided co-ownership, the rule is already settled. Net area is established by actually measuring the interior of the private portion, starting from the interior partitions or the finishing materials, excluding columns and ventilation shafts. Gross area comes out of the architectural plans and proves more generous. On resale, it is the net area, the one on the cadastral plan or the certificat de localisation (location certificate), that must be entered.
For a single-family house, no official source lets me state that one single measurement standard applies in Quebec. The principle holds all the same: an area with no declared method compares to nothing. Ask who measured, by what method, and from which document.
A basement is not space above ground. The ministère des Affaires municipales defines floor area as the gross surface corresponding to the sum of the areas of each full storey of the main building and, where applicable, those of the attic, the built-in garage and the built-in solarium. The basement does not appear in that list. The built-in garage does; the attached garage does not. The same ministry speaks elsewhere of “total finished area” when it wants to add up the basement, the storeys, the mezzanines and the attic to assess a renovation percentage. Two notions, two numbers.
| Number | Reference document | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Floor area | Rôle d’évaluation | Full storeys, attic, built-in garage, built-in solarium |
| Land area | Title of acquisition, certificat de localisation or cadastral plan | The land only |
| Net area, co-ownership | Cadastral plan or certificat de localisation | The interior of the private portion |
| Gross area, co-ownership | Architectural plans | A broader measure, used for new construction |
Practical consequence: if your neighbour’s sign announces 2,400 square feet and your own listing says 1,900, you may be losing nothing at all. He may be counting a finished basement, and you are not.
Adjustments, and what they mean
No comparable is identical to yours. The adjustment exists to correct the gap and it always applies in the same direction: you modify the price of the property that sold to bring it closer to yours, never the reverse. The house that sold had a garage and you do not? Subtract from its price. It had one bathroom fewer? Add.
The OACIQ lists the elements to consider: the location, the dimensions of the immovable, the year of construction, the state of upkeep, the number of rooms and their layout, the materials, the landscaping and the characteristics of the market. Its guideline on verification, information and advice, updated September 23, 2026, requires that market value be supported by objective elements and by the available comparables.
An adjustment is therefore defended in three parts: the direction, the amount, the justification. Be wary of the round percentage applied to a renovation: no official Quebec source allows anyone to state that a redone kitchen adds a precise percentage to the selling price. That is the subject of the article on what renovations really return.
Before the meeting, the home value estimator gives you an order of magnitude to set against the numbers you will be shown. An order of magnitude, not an opinion of value: that one has to be founded and supported, as section 76 of the Regulation respecting brokerage requirements, professional conduct of brokers and advertising requires.
Why the municipal assessment is not your home’s price
The roll is not wrong, it simply answers a different question. The actual value entered on the roll is the exchange value on a free and open market, set according to market conditions on July 1 of the second fiscal year preceding the roll coming into force, that is, 18 months earlier. The roll is triennial.
Translation for two cities in the sector:
| City | Roll in force | Market reference date |
|---|---|---|
| Montreal | 2026-2027-2028 | July 1, 2024 |
| Laval | 2025-2026-2027 | July 1, 2023 |
The City of Laval writes it itself: the assessment of your property “therefore does not necessarily reflect its current market value.” The average value of a single-family residence there reached $622,000 when the current roll was filed, after an average increase of 39.5% for that category. For what the roll really serves to calculate, read the explanation of property taxes.
The roll stays useful in another way. In Montreal, the owner of a residential building of five dwellings or fewer can consult free of charge the sales that occurred in his sector during the reference year. The City attaches an honest warning: those sales “may, or may not, be comparable to your property.”
Conditions of sale distort a comparable
The official definition of actual value speaks of the most probable price paid in a sale between two parties free to sell and to buy, both well informed. Three situations break that condition.
The sale between relatives. A transfer between parents and children is a real sale published in the Registre foncier, but the price was not set by competition. The number exists; it proves nothing about the market.
The estate. The OACIQ notes that the complete exclusion of the legal warranty of quality, the sale “at the buyer’s own risk,” is considered in particular in an estate or a repossession, because of the seller’s limited knowledge. A property sold without the legal warranty is not paid for like a property sold with it.
The imposed deadline. The OACIQ asks the broker to take the seller’s needs and situation into account in setting a fair price, citing the estate and the separation. A sale wrapped up in ten days because a judgment required it does not describe the market. The calendar is part of the price, as the article on how long a sale really takes explains.
Reading the comparative analysis you are handed
The questions to ask, in order, at the kitchen table:
- How many of these comparables are closed sales, and how many are active listings?
- On what date was each sale concluded, and at what distance?
- Where does each property’s area come from, and by what method was it measured?
- Is the basement counted in those areas, for mine as for the others?
- What adjustments were applied, in which direction, for what amount, and on what basis?
- Did any of these sales carry a particular condition: a link between the parties, an estate, a sale without the legal warranty, an imposed deadline?
- What is the date of the data, and since then, which way has the market moved?
One reservation to know before you cry secrecy: the broker cannot hand you the comparables’ listing sheets without masking whatever identifies the seller, directly or indirectly, meaning the photos, the address and the owner’s name. That is an OACIQ obligation, not a dodge.
Frequently asked questions
My neighbour is asking $60,000 more than the price being proposed to me. Why? Because he is asking, and you are trying to obtain. Until his sale is closed and published, his number enters no analysis. If he sells, come back and look at the real price.
Why does my broker refuse to give me the comparables’ addresses? He is applying a rule. The sheets given to a client must be redacted of whatever identifies the seller for as long as the sale is not published in the Registre foncier. You are entitled to the data: price, date, area, adjustments.
The municipal assessment says $540,000. Can I ask that price? That number describes the market at a past reference date, 18 months before the roll came into force. It says nothing about September 2026.
My basement is fully finished. Does it not count? It counts, but not on the same line of numbers as above ground space. Require that the two be presented separately, for your property as for each comparable.
To round it out, read what the asking price really means in a multiple promise situation and the full explanation of the assessment roll and taxes.
Want to see the comparative analysis before you hear a price? Write me. You will receive the sales retained, the adjustments and the date of the data, in writing.
Georges Matar
Residential Real Estate Broker · RE/MAX DU CARTIER INC.
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