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Quebec City adopts a new regulation to limit the conversion of rental residences into condominiums

Quebec City adopts a new regulation to limit the conversion of rental residences into condominiums

Quebec City adopted on Monday strict regulations aiming at limiting the transformation of apartments into condominiums.

 Henceforth, according to a regulation voted by the town council, buildings with residences will have to be empty during 10 years before being able to be converted into condominiums. Until now, since the moratorium adopted by Quebec in 2002, it sufficed for an owner to prove that a building did not have any tenants to present themselves at the Rental Board and to obtain the permission to transform it into a complex of condominiums.

The City, according to municipal councillor Geneviève Hamelin, adopted this “extreme” measure because the vacancy rate of the residences in Quebec City is very weak, it is located around 0,3%.

 The City adopted its regulation to protect its rental residences park for the families. “To maintain a housing vacant during ten years, is not something trivial. One must really be motivated. One must be willing to make the conversion into condominiums”, explained Geneviève Hamelin.

 

According to Quebec City, several owners were tempted to find an arrangement with their tenants to put a term to their lease.

 

The APQ thinks that these provisions are extreme and excessive. We made a point of putting the provisions of this new regulation in context: the range of the regulation is not absolute, nor permanent, and all the requests for conversion will be treated, on a case-by-case basis, by the executive committee.

 At the time of an interview granted by Me Robert Soucy of the APQ with TVA Nouvelles, we specified that

 “If one waits 10 years to ask for a conversion into condos, it is likely that some residences  will remain unused”.

 The APQ studies at present all the provisions of this regulation and the laws of the Rental Board surrounding the conversion of a building of rental residences into condominiums in order to determine if the APQ will go ahead with this file by disputing the decision of Quebec City.

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Québec Landlords Association (1)

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