Quebec passes anti-lease-transfer law
Quebec has passed Bill 31, outlawing lease transfers. CBC examines the other provisions in the law.
I’ve been a tenant all my life, and I have to admit, since discussions began about this bill, I never realized lease transfers were even allowed. It never arose for me, but I would’ve assumed the landlord could veto a new tenant not chosen by themselves. And now that’s the law.
jeather 15:04 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
The “a tenant is assumed to refuse an eviction unless they say they accept it” is a good change, the compensation is . . . partially good but probably not enough money, and tht you can sue if the landlord lied about evicting you is good. So is punitive damages for the lease, though I cannot imagine how you can prove that without an actual registry.
rob 16:20 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
Tennants need to start organizing – as a tenant, if you move, PLEASE let the new tenant know what your rent was. Rent increases follow the same rules regardless of renewal or new lease. The rent on a new lease can only be increased by the same amount as a renewal. A new tenant can request that the rent be fixed by the TAL and not the arbitrary “market value” the landlord wants to charge.
The last bit of Article 1978.2. is also nice: “A lessor who is given notice of the lessee’s intention to assign the lease may refuse to consent to it for a reason other than a serious reason referred to in the first paragraph of article 1871. In such a case, the lease is resiliated on the date of assignment indicated in the notice sent by the lessee.”
With that said, after a refusal, a tenant would not be responsible for the rest of the lease.
JaneyB 16:21 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
Citizens seem to be creating just such a rental registry. Website here: https://rentalregistry.ca/en/qc
DisgruntledGoat 18:15 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
Call me cynical but anything that depends on individuals opting in will never make a material impact.
Ian 19:05 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
…and as per usual if you can’t afford a lawyer, good luck.
Kate 19:25 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
I haven’t always known who was moving into a place after I was leaving. Maybe we need to start a tradition where we leave info about the apartment rent somewhere like, maybe, taped inside the toilet tank lid, you know? A thing most apartments will have, but landlords won’t be looking at.
jeather 19:46 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
I’ve seen it recommended that you mail them a copy of the lease.
Kate 21:58 on 2024-02-21 Permalink
Not a bad idea, but once you’ve been in a place a few years with annual rent increases, the original lease doesn’t prove anything.
jeather 08:56 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
You have the lease and the record of the last increase, surely? You can send a void cheque or a copy of an etransfer or just “hey this is what I was paying”.
dhomas 10:26 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
@JaneyB What’s to prevent unscrupulous landlords from entering a higher rent into that registry?
As a landlord, I keep every tenant lease. However, most of my tenants have not. I had a tenant in the past contact me to get a copy of her lease, after she had moved elsewhere.
The idea of mailing a letter to “Current Occupant” at the address of your old appartment sent July 2nd is a good one, though. This ensures that the letter won’t be intercepted by the landlord as the new tenant should be there, and gives them time to contest the rent. Smart!
steph 14:53 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
Too many people are scared the action would ruin the landlord reference they may need in the future. Grow a spine, no one needs a reference from a crook.
Kate 15:04 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
So wait. Someone has already signed a lease for $1500 a month, then they get a postcard from the previous tenant saying “Hi, my rent till June was $750” – can they negotiate a lower rent after the fact?
Tim 15:13 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
If I can add onto Kate’s question: what if they signed a lease where the landlord honestly stated that the previous rent was $750? Could they get a reduction even if they acknowledged the increase in the lease? I’m thinking that the answer is Yes, but don’t really know.
Joey 15:49 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
I can understand the rationale by putting some guardrails up around lease transfers – I don’t think it’s ideal that landlords can be stuck with problem tenants simply because their tenant transferred a lease. I have no idea if this occurs, but presumably a tenant could auction off their lease to be transferred, no? That being said, the only protection tenants have against illegal increases is the inclusion of the previous rent in the new lease – and we already know that landlords do not always include it, and, too often, they simply lie about the rent to justify an exorbitant (illegal) increase.
The government has decided to ‘solve’ this problem by completely eliminating lease transfers – i.e., removing any and all power that tenants had (as a group) – and by making it riskier for landlords to lie about the previous rent. So tenants have their power completely removed while landlords have theirs slightly reduced (in theory! As others have stated, there are many valid reasons not to want your first interaction with your new landlord to be a hearing at the TAL). It feels more and more like we are moving from rent control to ‘rent control’ – as more and more landlords take advantage of their expanded power, it becomes harder for their by-the-book peers to avoid bending the rules a little. Par for the course with most social policy in this province lately.
So two things continue to perplex me. First, why you would choose *this* basket of reforms in the midst if the current housing crisis seems insane to me. I suppose you could argue that there is value in making the market more attractive to potential landlords, given that expanding the supply of rental units will be critical to improving the housing situation. But to remove the one effective method tenants have at preventing the *potential* for illegal rent increases (and not having to fight landlords post hoc) seems nuts if there is no counterweight on the landlord side to disincentivize illegal increases. Again, if vacancy rates were high, this might make sense. But a shortage is automatically good for landlords and bad for tenants – so why put your finger on the scale at this particular moment in time? (And, yes, some of the tenant protections included in the reform are good and long overdue.)
Second, if you’re going to do a big reform, your project should include at a bare minimum the establishment of a mandatory lease registry system – you could easily collect that information through the tax system (just as the feds now ask questions about whether you sold a primary or non-primary residence). Landlords are already including all their expenses on their tax returns. You could manage it in such a way that only tenants can see the rental history of their apartment, and you could create automatic fines for landlords who refuse to submit their figures (maybe it holds up their tax refund). But really, the province should have gone further. Since residential leases are standard documents and typically follow standard timelines, lengths, etc., there’s no reason to be using paper-and-pen leases anymore. You want to rent an apartment? Make sure the information, including rent history, is up to date in the provincial database. You select a tenant. You log in and generate a lease. The tenant logs in and signs it. The information is accurate, centralized and transparently available to the landlord, the tenant and the government. In fact, under such a system, the government could reject the lease if the increase is too high or hasn’t been justified.
Who benefits? Who doesn’t?! Landlords no longer have to worry about lease transfers sticking them with deadbeat tenants. Tenants no longer have to worry about either being ripped off or having to take their new landlord to court to avoid being defrauded. The government has access to a complete set of rental market data they can use to guide decisions around real estate development. And the system would even partially pay for itself, given that there will probably not be an immediate decline in landlord shenanigans.
A real social democrat would go even further and propose that, under such a model, the relationship shouldn’t even be between the tenant and the landlord – the province should vouch for both parties, such that the province collects rent from the tenant and remits it to the landlord. Take a small percentage of all rent and put it in a pot – the pot covers rent for landlords whose tenants are deadbeats and reimburses tenants who are being ripped off by their landlords. You own property and play by the rules – you get rent paid by the province on the first of the month, even if your tenant hasn’t paid. Your landlord won’t remove the mould in your apartment? You keep paying rent to the province, which holds on to the funds until the situation is resolved and uses the floating pot to conduct repairs when landlords demonstrate their negligence.
Nice to daydream…
steph 16:57 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
@Kate
Yes, exactly. Negotiation might be difficult, but you can ask the TAL to fix the rent increase along the calculation. This application usually happens when the landlord didn’t include the information, or he lied in section G and the tenant finds out on moving day from the previous tenant moving out…
I don’t know the answer to Tim’s question. that’s like a any tenant accepting a 10,000 rent increase… I can’t expect that to pass.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-tables-bill-31-housing-1.6873292 says: “Duranceau said landlords still have to fill out Section G of a lease, which indicates how much the previous tenant paid per month. A tenant can then ask the provincial rental board to fix the rent retroactively based on the old rent within 10 days of signing the lease.”
I have no idea where that 10 days comes from.
H. John 17:09 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
@Kate & @Tim The answer to both your questions is that the tenant can apply to the TAL to set the amount of the rent. In your scenario Kate they would start with the $750 and add the percentage set for the increases in that year.
H. John 17:11 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
@steph
“The application to set the rent must be made within these time limits:
within 10 days of signing the lease
within two months of the start of the lease, if the tenant has not received notice of the rent paid in the previous 12 months
within two months from the day the tenant discovered that the landlord made a false statement about the rent paid in the previous 12 months”
https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/leases/
Kate 19:29 on 2024-02-22 Permalink
Thank you, H. John!