Rental Properties in Montreal and Laval

Buying an income property is a decision. Managing one is a practice governed by statute, article by article. In Quebec most residential lease rules are of public order: neither your lease nor a verbal side agreement can depart from them to the tenant’s disadvantage.

This article assumes the building is bought. The first income property guide covers the purchase, and building a portfolio covers financing the next one. General information only: check your case with a legal adviser and an accountant.

The Tribunal’s lease and the famous Section G

Every residential lease in Quebec is signed on the mandatory form of the Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL). Section G is not a formality. The landlord must declare the lowest rent paid during the 12 months preceding the start of the lease, or the rent fixed by the Tribunal during that period. If no rent was paid, the landlord states the last rent paid and its date.

The new tenant’s remedies:

• Notice missing or incomplete: application to fix the rent within 2 months of the start of the lease.
• Rent higher than the amount declared: application within 10 days of entering into the lease.
• False statement: 2 months from becoming aware of it.

The TAL can also award punitive damages where the notice was knowingly omitted or falsified. So ask for the leases and the Section G entries before your promise to purchase. An inflated rent can be rolled back months later.

Screening a tenant without breaching the Charter

The Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms forbids refusing housing on any of these grounds: race, colour, sex, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age except as provided by law, religion, political convictions, language, ethnic or national origin, social condition, and a handicap or the use of any means to palliate a handicap.

The Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse accepts that you verify ability to pay: proof of regular payment of a previous rent, and a credit check with consent.

You may not require a social insurance number, health insurance number, passport number or driver’s licence number, nor bank statements, T4 slips, pay stubs or the employer’s contact details. Nor the number of occupants, nor the age and sex of the children. The rule that income must be three times the rent circulates widely but rests on no text.

The security deposit is illegal

The Civil Code is unambiguous: a landlord may demand in advance only the first term of rent, and never more than one month. No other sum, whether as a deposit or otherwise, and no post-dated cheques. A “damage deposit” or a “last month” collected at signing is illegal. Your protection is your screening, a written and photographed condition report, and the Tribunal.

Changing the lease and raising the rent

To change any lease condition, rent included, the written notice must fall in a precise window.

The tenant has one month from receipt to answer. Silence counts as acceptance. If the tenant refuses, it falls to the landlord to apply to the TAL within the month following the refusal, failing which the lease renews at the current rent.

Since January 1, 2026, a simplified rent-setting method applies to notices given from that date. The base is the three-year average of Quebec’s consumer price index, 3.1% for rents beginning between April 2, 2026 and April 1, 2027. Added to it: the share of tax and insurance increases above that base, and major work, recovered at 5% a year. The TAL publishes its calculation tool. Your property taxes therefore count, but only for the excess.

You cannot refuse to renew a lease

The tenant has the right to maintain occupancy, and the lease renews by operation of law on the same terms if no notice of modification is given. A landlord has no right of non-renewal. There are three ways out, and no fourth.

Repossession. For you, your parents, your children or a relative you support, with notice at least 6 months before the end of a 12-month lease. The tenant answers within the month; silence counts as a refusal, and you must then apply to the TAL within the following month. The Tribunal may impose an indemnity covering moving expenses. A tenant aged 65 or over, in place for 10 years and whose income does not exceed 125% of the low-rental housing threshold, is protected, with exceptions.

Eviction. Three kinds of work only: subdivision, substantial enlargement, change of use. Notice 6 months before the end of a lease longer than 6 months. The indemnity rose sharply: reasonable moving expenses, plus one month’s rent per year of uninterrupted lease, capped at 24 months and never under 3 months.

The moratorium. Until June 6, 2027, no tenant may be evicted on those three grounds, with exceptions. Repossession remains possible. A plan built on carving a triplex into larger units is therefore frozen.

Non-payment of rent

Rent more than three weeks late opens the door to an application at the TAL to terminate the lease and evict, together with the rent owed, interest and costs. Frequent late payments can also suffice if you show serious prejudice. But if the tenant pays everything before the decision is rendered, the eviction can no longer be carried out.

Repairs, access and work

You must keep the dwelling habitable. For an urgent and necessary repair, a serious leak, no heat in winter, a failing staircase, a broken lock, you may enter without notice. But if the tenant cannot reach you despite documented attempts, the tenant may have the work done and withhold the cost from upcoming rent, receipts in hand.

Outside emergencies: 24 hours’ notice to verify the condition of the dwelling or to show it, between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. For major work, written notice at least 10 days ahead, carried out between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

On assignment and subletting, you have 15 days to answer, and your silence counts as consent. A sublet may be refused only for a serious reason; an assignment may be refused without one, but the lease is then terminated on the date set out in the notice.

Your records and your returns

Rents are reported federally on form T776 and in Quebec on form TP-128, one form per building. Separate current expenses, deductible in the same year, from capital expenses, which are added to the cost of the building. Revenu Québec requires the original supporting documents: without them a deduction can be denied.

Handing management to a third party

The opposite is often said, wrongly. A contract by which an owner engages someone as intermediary to lease the building is indeed a real estate brokerage contract under the Real Estate Brokerage Act, as soon as there is remuneration. But the Act adds that this intermediary is not required to hold a broker or agency licence, even though one may be issued on request.

So the manager who finds your tenant is not necessarily regulated. A licence holder, by contrast, answers to the OACIQ, the mandatory forms and the indemnity fund.

You inherit leases, not just walls. Write to me: we read the leases, the Section G entries and any pending notices before you make an offer.

Georges Matar

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

Contact Georges