Seller's Guide
The Process of Selling a House in Quebec: The Steps
Between the first meeting with a broker and the signing at the notaire, a residential sale goes through about ten …
You are preparing your property for “the buyer”. That generic buyer does not exist. The household that bought a condo on the island of Montreal in August 2026 and the one that bought a bungalow in Laval the same month do not have the same size, the same budget or the same financing constraints. Here is what public data lets us say about the buyers in each segment, and what it does not.
Who bought what in August 2026, by territory
APCIQ publishes every month the sales concluded through the Centris system, broken down by property category and by territory. The August 2026 figures, released on September 4, 2026, give the following picture.
| Territory and category | Sales in August 2026 | Median price | Days on market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Island of Montreal, condo | 562 | $475,000 | 72 |
| Island of Montreal, single-family | 306 | $820,000 | 57 |
| Island of Montreal, plex of 2 to 5 units | 179 | $870,000 | 54 |
| Laval, single-family | 160 | $642,750 | 40 |
| Laval, condo | 74 | $449,000 | 63 |
| Laval, plex of 2 to 5 units | 21 | data not released | data not released |
Read the first column before the prices. On the island of Montreal, the condo accounted for 562 of the month’s 1,047 residential sales. In Laval, the single-family home accounted for 160 out of 255. These are not two similar markets at different prices: they are two different publics.
For Laval, APCIQ flagged the August median price for plexes with two asterisks: the number of transactions that month was too small to produce a reliable statistic. Over the first eight months of 2026, those Laval plexes show 209 sales and a median price of $890,000. A missing monthly figure is information, not an oversight.
The general context matters too. Across the metropolitan area, 20,128 listings were active in August, 18% more than a year earlier, for 2,853 concluded sales, down 13%. The buyer in your segment has more choice than in August 2025. To follow these series month after month, see how to read the Montreal and Laval market data.
The buyer profile starts with household composition
Sales tell you what changed hands. The census tells you who lives on the territory. Together, the two explain a great deal.
Montreal is a city of renters and small households. In the 2021 census, Statistics Canada counted 816,340 occupied private dwellings in the city of Montreal. Owner households occupied 36.4% of them, renters 63.6%. One-person households made up 41.8% of the total, and average household size was 2.1 people. The single detached house accounted for only 7.1% of occupied dwellings, against 56.9% for apartments in buildings of fewer than five storeys.
Laval is almost the exact reverse, point by point. Still in the 2021 census, Laval counted 169,785 occupied private dwellings, 66.6% of them owner-occupied. One-person households formed 27.9% of the total, but four-person households 16.2% and households of five or more 9.5%. Average size reached 2.5 people. On the dwelling side, 36.8% of units had three bedrooms and 20.5% had four or more.
These figures describe all households, not only those that bought. They do explain, however, why 63% of Laval’s August 2026 sales were single-family homes: the local pool is made of larger households, already owners in two cases out of three.
What a first-time buyer can actually reach
The ability to buy is not a matter of guesswork: it is framed by rules. CMHC (la SCHL) requires a minimum down payment of 5% on the first $500,000 of the price, then 10% on the portion above. The purchase price has to stay under $1,500,000 for an insured loan to be possible. The maximum ratios are 39% for gross debt service and 44% for total debt service.
Apply those rules to the August 2026 median prices and the gap becomes concrete.
| Segment, August 2026 median price | Minimum down payment with an insured loan |
|---|---|
| Condo, Laval, $449,000 | $22,450 |
| Condo, island of Montreal, $475,000 | $23,750 |
| Single-family, Laval, $642,750 | $39,275 |
| Single-family, island of Montreal, $820,000 | $57,000 |
Between the Laval condo and the Montreal single-family home, the cash required goes from $22,450 to $57,000. It is not the same buyer who clears both thresholds. The household that is already selling a property arrives with accumulated net equity; the first-time buyer arrives with what they have saved. The affordability calculator shows which income matches your price bracket, before you set that price.
The $500,000 step is not cosmetic either. Going from $499,000 to $520,000 pushes the required down payment from $24,950 to $27,000, an amount that adds to the transfer duties and the notary’s fees.
Where investors are active, according to the available data
The plex segment is the one targeted by buyers who count on rent. On the island of Montreal, 179 plexes of 2 to 5 units sold in August 2026, at a median price of $870,000, down 1% over one year. Across the metropolitan area, 307 plexes sold, at a median price of $856,000. In Laval, 21 plexes changed hands during the month.
The rental market explains that demand. According to the CMHC survey conducted in October 2025, the vacancy rate for privately initiated apartments reached 2.9% in Montreal, against 3.1% for Canada as a whole, and the average rent for a two bedroom unit stood at $1,346, up 7.2%. In its mid-year update published on June 9, 2026, CMHC notes that asking rents have remained relatively stable in Montreal and that the easing observed is concentrated in the most expensive segments.
Watch out, though, for what the data does not cover. The Statistics Canada release on residential real estate investors, published on October 18, 2023 from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program, covers six provinces, and Quebec is not one of them. No official source therefore lets me put a number on the share of investor buyers in your sector. What can be verified is the volume of plex sales and the conditions of the rental market. The financing rules specific to that segment are detailed in the guide to income plexes in Montreal and Laval.
What this buyer profile changes in your preparation
A bungalow or a two storey home in Laval. The likely public is a household of three people or more, often already an owner. The number of bedrooms, the parking and the state of the basement are criteria a buyer can count and verify. The average selling time there was 40 days in August, the shortest of the segments observed. A property listed too high in a market where listings are rising loses its initial window, as the guide on preparing a house before the sale explains.
A condo on the island of Montreal. The likely public is a one or two person household. The average selling time reached 72 days in August, against 55 a year earlier, and the median price of $475,000 held steady over one year. In this segment, what makes a buyer back away is documentary before it is aesthetic: condo fees, the state of the contingency fund, the maintenance logbook, the minutes. Prepare that file before the first showing, relying on the obligations described in the article on condo fees and the contingency fund.
A plex. The likely public does the math. Leases, declared income, tax bills, energy bills, upcoming work: those documents are worth more than a repainted kitchen. A buyer who has to reconstruct a building’s rents alone adjusts the offer downward to cover that uncertainty.
In all three cases, the same logic applies to renovations. A spending decision that forces you to list above the bracket where your segment’s buyers sit shrinks the pool instead of widening it. No official Quebec source allows anyone to state that a given renovation adds a precise percentage to the sale price.
What these numbers do not say
They describe past transactions. The August 2026 sales were negotiated in July and in August, and the Statistics Canada census dates from 2021. Nothing in these series predicts who will buy your property, at what price, or within what time frame.
A median price is not an estimate of your property either. It is the midpoint of one month’s sales, across an entire territory. The value of your property is established by a comparative analysis based on concluded and adjusted sales, a method detailed in the article on auditing real estate comparables.
Frequently asked questions
Can my broker tell me who is going to buy my house? No. They can show you who did buy, in your category and in your sector, based on the concluded sales of the past few months. The difference between those two sentences is the whole difference between a data point and a promise.
Are millennials still buying single-family homes? APCIQ’s statistics classify sales by property category and by territory, not by buyer age. So I cannot give you a breakdown by generation from an official source. What can be verified is that the single-family home accounted for 160 of the 255 Laval sales in August 2026.
My condo has been listed for 60 days. Is that abnormal? In August 2026, the average selling time for a condo on the island of Montreal was 72 days, and 63 days in Laval. A selling time is compared to the average of your category and your territory, never to that of the single-family home next door.
Should I target investors for my duplex? You prepare the file that every plex buyer will ask for, investor or owner occupant. Leases, income, taxes, work done and to come. The rest belongs to the buyer who shows up.
To go further, read the guide to preparing a property before it goes on the market and the method for auditing the comparables you are shown.
Want to know who bought in your category and your sector over the past few months? Write to me. You will receive the concluded sales, by category and by territory, with the date of the data.
Georges Matar
Residential Real Estate Broker · RE/MAX DU CARTIER INC.
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