Conversation

March 2022 a prospective buyer of my building started coming around trying to get my neighbours and I to move out. These were get-rich-quick flippers led by a 19 year old. They bought the building and proceed to try and "renovict" us. My neighbours and I resisted and got a lawyer once we needed one.

A year later they gave up and sold the building to another real estate investor who is more of an established get-rich-slow type. They walked into the legal shitshow the previous buyer had created and tried to carry it on.

They failed and finally they fired their lawyer, and signed every demand we gave them to drop their pursuits to evict us, fearing the embarrassing number of claims we had open against them that we would likely win. My neighbour, who had no physical lease and very little documentation, even got them to sign a new lease with him at his current rent.

So 16 months later we are all still in our apartments, with our rent unchanged. It's certain that this landlord or another will come around and try again at some point, but we collectively have maintained our 3 apartments at some of the cheapest rents in Montreal. Not to mention humiliating 2 different sets of landlords in court at the Tribunal Administratifs du Logements. Total victory.