Selling Your Home in Winter in Quebec: The Obligations

Choosing the month you list is settled elsewhere. What never is: once the decision is made, fall and winter add obligations that do not exist in June. They touch your photos, the access to your door during showings, and what you have to declare about a property that is half buried in snow.

Selling a home in winter in Quebec: what the season changes

Here is Laval, because that is where the house lives. Every line comes from the APCIQ monthly release, drawn from the Centris system; the last column counts all categories.

Time on market doubles, the price barely moves. Do not read the gap between $615,000 in December 2025 and $627,000 in May 2026 as a winter discount: a median describes the properties sold that month, not yours at two points in time. What really falls is the competition: 235 new listings in December 2025 against 664 in May 2026.

The month that serves your type of property is dealt with in when to list your property in Montreal. What follows assumes the decision is made.

The summer photo posted in January: the accuracy rule

Pulling out the July photos, when the hedge was green, is not an aesthetic question. It is a regulatory one.

What the OACIQ requires of the listing. Its guideline on representation, solicitation, promotion and advertising is clear: the description sheet “must contain accurate, verified information and reflect the reality of the property.” Article 112 of the Règlement sur les conditions d’exercice d’une opération de courtage, sur la déontologie des courtiers et sur la publicité prohibits any advertising that is false, misleading, incomplete or liable to cause confusion. The broker must also keep the description sheet and the Déclarations du vendeur up to date, so that the information given to the public reflects reality at all times.

Where the line is drawn in black and white: the generated image. When an image is produced by artificial intelligence, the advertisement must carry a clear and visible notice of the kind “Image generated by artificial intelligence.” The OACIQ specifies that this requirement applies in particular where AI is used to “artificially transform a seasonal atmosphere or lighting,” that images which fundamentally alter the real appearance of a property breach the regulations, and that the broker must keep the original versions on file and make them available on request.

What no text says. I found no rule published by the OACIQ requiring a date on an authentic, unretouched summer photo posted in January: the explicit rule bears on the transformed image. What I recommend is therefore a matter of judgment, stating the month the photo was taken in the listing. A July photo captioned July is verifiable; the same one with no caption, next to a snow covered yard, leaves the buyer to draw the conclusion alone.

The old photos: copyright, and an insurance exclusion

The OACIQ is explicit: when a seller hands old photos to a broker, the broker must verify who the author is, and if it is not the seller, obtain from the seller a signed copy of the contract or licence entered into with the photographer. That check is necessary even where the photos were taken for the same seller during an earlier listing of the same property. A licence may perfectly well prohibit reuse. Without clear confirmation, a new shoot is needed.

Two numbers to measure the stakes. The Copyright Act allows statutory damages of $500 to $20,000 per work, so per photograph, calculated on the number of photos and not on the number of uses. And the guideline adds the sentence that should settle it: the FARCIQ professional liability insurance excludes claims related to a copyright infringement.

The photographer’s invoice and licence therefore go in the file before the listing, not after.

Clearing the access during showings: an obligation, not a courtesy

Liability itself is dealt with elsewhere: articles 1457, 1465 and 1467 of the Code civil du Québec, insurance and the contract are in snow removal and owner liability in Quebec. Hold on to article 1465: the custodian of a thing is bound to make reparation, “unless he proves that he is not at fault.” The proof of your diligence is yours to make.

What listing adds is duration. An open house gets prepared once. A January listing takes showings for weeks, announced two hours ahead, sometimes the day after a storm. Your diligence is therefore not a gesture, it is a regime: a written snow clearing contract that names the trigger threshold, the stairs, the porch and the walkway, not only the asphalt, and abrasive within reach. Call your insurer about the coverage limit on your civil liability section before the first showing. The order of steps before a listing is in the seller’s guide.

The DV 00001 questions that only make sense in the cold season

The mandatory Déclarations du vendeur sur l’immeuble form, version DV 00001 (V24 06/2022), runs thirteen pages. Six of its questions only make sense in winter, and they are the ones the fall seller fills in fastest.

D8.6 and D12.8 are two admissions about use, not two admissions of a defect: a regular row of icicles tells you about the insulation and ventilation of the attic, and a room that is hard to heat gets measured in February, not in July. Sections D3 to D14 all open with the same words, “To your knowledge,” and the form asks that the available documents supporting the answers be given to the broker: invoices, warranties, plans, specifications, permits, reports, notices and leases. The rest of the form is explained in the seller’s declaration.

What the snow hides, and what the form does not ask

The form bears on what you know, not on what is visible. The snow therefore changes none of your answers: it only changes what the buyer and the inspector can verify for themselves.

There is no question at all on the condition of the exterior cladding. The wall, the siding, the exposed foundation: nothing. The roof has its own section, D8, with the type of covering, the year and the documents. The wall does not.

The pool has no section. It shows up at D2.11, among the additions and alterations made since acquisition, and at D3.5, where “removal or filling in of a pool” appears as landscaping work. A note adds that a positive answer to D2.8, D2.9, D2.10 or D2.11 may require a new certificat de localisation, which takes weeks to order.

What is left is D14.5: could other elements have an impact on the value of the property, the income it generates, the expenses it creates or the use that can be made of it. The crack you know about and the snow covers goes in there, then gets detailed in D15. As for drainage, D9.4 asks whether the property has a French drain and whether a system allows access to inspect and clean it: two answers the snow does not prevent. A well advised buyer will not give up on what could not be seen: the verification will be pushed to spring, in writing. Prepare your answer before the request comes.

Selling in winter: the energy bills the buyer asks for

The January buyer almost always asks for twelve months of billing. The buyer is right to ask, and no rule requires you to hand it over.

The form asks nothing about the amount of your bill. It asks for the energy source of the main heating system (D12.1), the year the furnace or the main components were installed (D12.3), whether a maintenance contract exists (D12.6) and the problems that have already occurred (D12.7). The cost, never. What does bind you is elsewhere: if you answer yes to D12.7 or to D12.8, the OACIQ expects the documents that support the answer.

The seller is also the only one who can pull the history. Hydro-Quebec offers the Portrait de ma consommation tool in the Espace client: hourly, daily, monthly and annual consumption, in kilowatt hours or in dollars, a comparison with the same period last year, and a two year chart set against the average outdoor temperature. The Espace client also gives access to the billing and payment history.

One clarification that protects you: that history describes your household, your thermostat and your habits, not the buyer’s. Hand it over as a statement, never as a forecast.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to remove my summer photos from the listing in January? Nothing requires it if the photo is authentic and unretouched. If it has been transformed, for example to change the season or the lighting artificially, the notice “Image generated by artificial intelligence” becomes mandatory.

I am reusing the photos from my 2023 listing. Is that allowed? Not automatically. The OACIQ asks the broker to verify who holds the copyright and to obtain the signed licence, even where the photos were taken for you during an earlier listing of the same property. Find the photographer’s invoice before you promise those photos to your broker.

Does the snow excuse me from declaring a crack I know about? No. A known crack is declared at D5.2 if it affects the basement or the foundation, and any element liable to have an impact on the value or the use of the property is declared at D14.5, then detailed at D15.

To go further, read buying a home in winter, which describes the spring verification clauses your buyer is going to propose, and the dates for a temporary carport, because a shelter set up on the driveway decides the facade photo as much as the parking.

Listing this fall or this winter? Write to me. We settle the photo question, the snow clearing contract and the energy history before the first showing, not after.

Georges Matar

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

Contact Georges