How to Choose an Investment Property Broker in Brossard

A buyer weighing a duplex or triplex in Brossard usually begins with a plain question: does choosing a broker for an income property differ from choosing one to buy a house? It does, and the difference has little to do with years in business. It rests on whether the agency can read a building as a home and as an income stream at the same time.

That distinction carries weight because the two sides of the market are moving in opposite directions. Across the Montreal CMA in the second quarter of 2026, the median plex price reached $874,000, up 5% over the previous year. Condominiums rose only 1%, to a median of $430,000. Plexes also changed hands faster, averaging 43 days on the market against 48 for condos. Same region, same quarter, two different stories.

Same quarter, opposite signals

Transaction volume fell almost everywhere. Residential sales across the Montreal CMA totalled 13,365 in the quarter, down 7% from a year earlier, while active listings climbed 14% to a quarterly average of 20,735. Yet the decline was uneven. Condominium sales dropped 10% and single-family homes 6%, while plexes held up best at a 5% decline paired with the strongest price growth of the three.

For a Brossard investor, that spread is the point. A plex earns rent, so its value answers to two questions at once: what would someone pay to live in it, and what would someone pay to own the cash flow it produces. A broker who prices it only on floor area and recent comparable sales is reading half the page.

Two properties inside one building

A plex earns rent, so a broker who prices it on floor area alone is reading half the page.

The gap between a building's asking price and its true cost shows up in the work it needs. A triplex built in the 1960s with original plumbing and knob-and-tube wiring can look affordable until the renovation budget lands. A broker who has watched those figures move over many projects can tell an investor, before the offer goes in, roughly what a kitchen turnover or an electrical upgrade runs for a building of that age in that stretch of the South Shore.

Aguinaga has led more than 50 renovations and developed a nine-unit building from the ground up. That history changes what a broker notices during a showing. Where a generalist sees a finished basement, someone who has managed the work sees whether the drainage was done properly and what it would cost to redo if it was not. A price opinion built on that knowledge holds up better than one built on the listing photos.

Reading the rent roll before the offer

A rent roll lists each unit alongside its tenant, the rent charged and the lease term. Reading it well is where an income-property purchase is won or lost. Rents that sit below market look like upside on paper, yet Quebec's rules on rent increases through the Tribunal administratif du logement limit how quickly a new owner can close that gap. A broker who understands the rent roll will flag which units are near turnover, which leases are recent, and where the stated income leans on a tenant paying under a decade-old lease.

Cap rate is the shorthand for all of this. It expresses net operating income as a percentage of price, and it lets an investor set two very different buildings on the same scale. A cap rate is only as honest as the rent roll behind it, though. An agency that can walk through how it reached the number, expense by expense, has earned a place at the table.

The questions worth asking in the interview

Before signing with any agency, an investor can test for this in a short conversation. Ask for comparable cap rates on plexes in the neighbourhood. Ask what recent renovation costs have run for buildings of that age nearby. Ask which units in the rent roll sit closest to turnover. A broker who works often with income property answers these in specifics. One who does not tends to steer back toward finishes and location.

Interest rates make the exercise timelier. With the Bank of Canada policy rate at 2.25% as of August 2026, borrowing costs sit lower than through much of the prior two years, which narrows the distance between rent and carrying costs and makes the income side of the math more forgiving. That is all the more reason to buy on figures that hold up rather than on a listing's stated income.

What the choice comes down to

An income property is two decisions carried in a single signature: the home someone would live in and the business someone would run. The agency worth signing with is the one that can discuss both with equal fluency and show its work on the cap rate before the offer goes in. In a Brossard market where plexes are outpacing condos on price and speed, that fluency is what separates a confident purchase from an expensive guess.

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