Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:23 on 2026-04-28 Permalink Reply  

• Ian 08:45 on 2026-04-28 Permalink

  I found it interesting that there was no link to the registry, so I looked it up & found out why:

  It is not available to the public.

  “The new registry of vacant buildings in Montréal will be available soon. In the meantime, certain boroughs continue to post their respective lists prepared prior to the coming into force of mandatory vacant building registration, on January 1, 2026.”

  You can pay, borough by borough, but these lists are not available for every borough and there is no guarantee of how complete they are.

  https://montreal.ca/en/how-to/get-list-vacant-buildings-borough

• Joey 09:09 on 2026-04-28 Permalink

  So the city already has lists of vacant buildings, certainly comprehensive enough to know that the number of buildings on the registry is too low. What is the point of the registry, then? From CBC:

  “Once the list is more complete, Braun said the city can talk to owners about why the building is vacant. In the midst of a housing crisis, she says the city wants to increase the housing supply and discourage speculation.”

  But also:

  “Strict enforcement is needed, but he cautions that the city needs to think outside the box about what else it can do to encourage owners to repair or repurpose their buildings more quickly.

  “‘Fines will not revitalize a building,’ he [Dinu Bumbaru[ said. ‘It might help sort of wake up the owner, but sometimes we’ve seen owners who couldn’t care less. For them, $10,000 is not much.'”

  I wonder what productive activity the city could do with the time, money, energy and goodwill spent on a needless registry that won’t lead to any measurable change. A cynic might posit that the city came up with this registry scheme to indefinitely delay even having to pretend that they’re thinking about maybe one day doing something about vacant buildings.

• Jonathan 09:44 on 2026-04-28 Permalink

  I thinks it’s a bit of an unfair critique. The registry has only been in effect since Jan 1 2026. That means it has been 4 months since buildings have to be registered. I think we should be looking at the record after the first year of implementation, at the earliest. Also, the form to register the building is available here: https://montreal.ca/en/register-vacant-building

  It doesn’t seem that the objective of the bylaw is to have the public access a list of vacant buildings, but I would expect eventually (again, maybe after the first year of implementation), it would be available on the open data portal of the city. Right now only the Ville Marie borough has that data available, and for 2022. I can see they also have a database from 2025 where you can find vacant commercial building across all boroughs.

  The article mentions the bit about the law requiring maintenance of a building. But it’s a bit confusing because it doesn’t strictly have to do with vacant buildings, but all buildings, even though it was part of the same bylaw that was voted on at the end of 2023.

  Additionally, it looks like the law was codified in January 2026. All aspects of the law including on the maintenance of buildings. While it doesn’t mean that they can’t enforce a law beforehand, usually it is much easier to enforce once it’s been codified because it becomes officially part of the legal ‘guidebook’, easily accessible to enforcement officers and residents (i.e. can’t argue you didn’t know about it).

  All to say that I would take a look from Jan 2027 and see where the city is at.