Inspecting a Tenanted Plex in Quebec: Unit Access, 24-Hour Notice and the Uninspected Unit

In a rented duplex or triplex, your inspector is not just looking at a building: they are walking into homes lived in by people who are not party to your transaction. Access therefore runs through their rights, and those rights come with a schedule. This article covers that schedule from the buyer's side and what it means for your inspection condition; the same rules seen from the seller's side are in our guide to selling a property with a tenant in place.

In a tenanted plex, the inspector walks into someone's home

Until the sale closes, the landlord is the seller. The tenant has a lease with the seller, not with you. You have no standing to enter the unit or to make any request of the tenant: legally, your inspector's visit is a visit arranged by the seller.

That changes how you plan. In an owner-occupied house, the inspection is set between two parties, buyer and seller. In a tenanted plex, it is set among three or more: every tenant has to be notified, and every notice has a lead time. The general course of an inspection is covered in our pre-purchase inspection guide.

Article 1931: 24 hours' notice

Article 1931 of the Civil Code of Quebec requires the landlord, except in an emergency, to give the tenant 24 hours' notice of the intention to have the dwelling visited by a prospective buyer. A pre-purchase inspection is not an emergency, so the notice applies.

Those 24 hours are a minimum stacked on top of everything else. The inspector has to be booked, the seller has to be reached, and it is the seller who sends the notice to each tenant. An inspection set in the morning for that same afternoon does not meet the rule, even if the inspector happens to be free.

Notice is given unit by unit. In a triplex that means three notices and three tenants, and a single notice sent too late is enough for a door to stay shut on the day.

Between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.: the window that bounds inspection day

The Civil Code's rules on access to a dwelling also provide that visits take place between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. For a single unit, that window leaves room. For a plex, it forces an order: inspecting several units plus the common areas takes hours, and the day can neither start earlier nor run late to make up lost time.

In practice, start with the units, where access is constrained, and leave for last what depends on no tenant: the exterior, the visible roof, the common areas, the basement if it is not rented. A day that falls behind in the morning can cost you a unit in the evening.

Every unit, inside the inspection condition's deadline

The inspection condition in your purchase offer has a deadline. The 24-hour notice, the inspector's availability and the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. window all have to fit inside that period, which is not extended simply because the building is rented.

Work backward. From the deadline, set aside the time to read the report and, if needed, to bring in a specialist. What remains is the usable window for the visit, and within it every notice has to go out at least 24 hours ahead.

The best practice is to group every unit on the same day, with one notice sent to all tenants at the same time. An inspection spread over several days multiplies the notices, the possible absences and the chances that a door stays shut.

What a buyer cannot demand of a tenant

You cannot demand access without notice, or outside the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. window. Nor can you approach the tenant as if they owed you anything: until the sale, their obligations run to their landlord, and none to you.

The tenant's obligation is about access. Anything beyond that, moving a piece of furniture, opening a storage space, answering a question about the heating or a past water leak, is goodwill. A furnished, lived-in unit is inspected as it stands, which limits what the inspector can see: the back of a cupboard, a floor under a rug, a wall behind a bed.

The useful route runs through the seller: it is up to them to explain the process to their tenants and ask for their cooperation, well before inspection day.

The uninspected unit: a blind spot to write into the offer

Sometimes a unit stays locked: the tenant is away, the notice went out too late, the visit was cut short. The report then covers the building minus that unit, and it only flags what was not seen if the inspector takes care to note it.

That blind spot has to be handled in writing, before the condition expires, not discovered after closing. Two approaches can be negotiated: provide in the offer that the inspection deadline is extended for any unit that could not be visited, or make access to every unit an explicit condition of your commitment. The wording is drafted with your broker.

What you should not do is let the condition lapse on the assumption that the locked unit looks like the others. In a plex, nothing guarantees that the units were renovated at the same time or maintained the same way: the one you did not see is exactly the one you know nothing about.

The sequence, from acceptance to report

On the day the offer is accepted, book the inspector and ask the seller for the list of units and how they reach each tenant. As soon as the date is set, the seller sends the notice to all tenants at once, leaving more than the 24-hour minimum to absorb anything unexpected.

The day before, have the seller confirm that every notice was received. On the day, units first, common areas after. That evening, list what was seen and what was not. If a unit is missing, the clause written for that case applies before the deadline, not after.