How to Choose an Investment Property Broker in Westmount

What separates a broker who can price a Westmount plex from one who can only price the building it stands on? For a buyer treating a property as an income stream, the answer decides whether the numbers still hold after closing. A duplex or triplex is a home and an investment at once, and a broker who can discuss only the first half is reading only half the deal.

Two markets, one city, opposite signals

The second quarter of 2026 pulled Montreal's property types apart. Across the census metropolitan area, the median plex price reached $874,000, up 5% from a year earlier. Condominiums barely moved, rising 1% to $430,000, while the single-family median gained 3% to $645,000. Same city, same quarter, different directions.

Speed told the same story. Plexes changed hands in an average of 43 days, six days quicker than a year before, while condominiums took 48 days, six days slower. A rising price paired with a shortening sale window is the signature of demand outrunning supply, and it is exactly the pattern an income buyer wants a broker to recognise on sight.

Why an income property asks harder questions

A plex earns its keep from tenants, so its value follows rent as much as it follows renovated kitchens. Two Westmount buildings with identical square footage can be worth very different amounts once the leases are read. That is the gap a generalist can miss. Square footage and recent comparables price a home; they do not price an income stream.

The buyer's protection is a broker who evaluates both sides. Ask what the cap rate looks like for comparable buildings on nearby streets, and whether that figure rests on real leases or on hoped-for rents. A capitalisation rate is simply net operating income divided by price, and a small change in the assumed rent moves it more than most buyers expect.

A building that looks cheap on price per square foot can look expensive the moment the rent roll is on the table.

What a rent-roll review should cover

The rent roll is the document that turns a nice building into a real number. Before an offer, it deserves a line-by-line read: current rent for each unit, the lease-end dates, which tenants are below market, and what the units would fetch on turnover. In Quebec, rent increases are governed by criteria set through the Tribunal administratif du logement, so a below-market unit cannot simply be reset to market the day the deal closes. A broker who understands that will price the building on what it earns now, not on a spreadsheet of wishful rents.

Turnover is where optimism meets a bill. Bringing a long-tenanted unit up to current condition costs money, and that cost belongs in the purchase math from the start, not as a surprise in year two. Aguinaga has led more than 50 renovations and developed a nine-unit building from the ground up, and that background is the reason a rent-roll conversation on one of his files tends to include the renovation figure alongside the rent figure. A broker who has carried the cost of turning over a unit can tell a buyer what a kitchen or a bathroom in a building of that age is likely to run, before the offer rather than after.

The active-listing backdrop

There is more to choose from than a year ago. Quarterly active listings across the metropolitan area averaged 20,735, up 14% year over year, giving buyers room that recent seasons did not offer. Yet plex sales still fell 5% and condominium sales fell 10%, so wider choice has not meant easy buying. The policy interest rate sat at 2.25% in August 2026, which shapes what a mortgage costs and, in turn, what a given rent can support. An income buyer reads all of these together, and so should the broker across the table.

How to interview a broker for a plex

The questions that separate an income-property broker from a generalist are concrete. What are the comparable cap rates for this neighbourhood, and what rents do they assume? What do recent renovation costs run for a building of this age in this borough? Which of these leases sits below market, and what does provincial rent regulation allow on turnover? A broker who answers these in specifics, rather than in reassurances, is reading the whole deal.

The generic advice says to ask about years in business. That is worth knowing, but it does not reveal whether someone can model an income stream. A residential transaction is one decision about a place to live. A plex is two decisions at once, the home and the return, and the agency worth signing with is the one that can hold both in view.

LJ Aguinaga is a licensed real estate broker in Montreal and the owner of LJ Realties.