It’s that time of year again. But why July 1?
80% of residential leases in province end on June 30, landlord group says
It’s the busy season for Paul Filgiano.
“A lot of businesses have extreme seasons, but we have an extreme season to our high season and that’s right now,” said the co-owner of NDG-based Meldrum the Mover.
About 80 per cent of residential leases in Quebec end on June 30, according to the landlord group Corporation des Propriétaires Immobiliers du Québec, and almost 200,000 households across Quebec — and more than 100,000 people in Montreal — will move at the end of the month.
Although July 1 is a “very busy day,” Filgiano said, “the busiest day of the year tends to be June 30.”
But, for professional movers like Filgiano, having so much activity concentrated into a couple of days isn’t a good thing.
“We could book out multiple times the size of our fleet if we’re just looking at the month of June, but what do you do with them the other 11 months of the year? Yes, there’s moving to be done but not with that big a fleet,” he said.
Things are slowly starting to change, he added.
The end of July is now busier than it used to be. However, most landlords still prefer to have leases that end on June 30.
“Most people believe that it’s better to have an apartment becoming available at the time where the demand is the strongest,” said Hans Brouillette, the director of public affairs at the CPIQ. “If you have an apartment for rent in November, you won’t have many clients; it’s going to be more difficult; the demand is not very strong at that time of year.”
For tenants, there are also some advantages — though there are risks as well.
“It’s easier for renters to find an apartment, because there’s a greater supply of housing at the same time. Renters have more choice. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people looking at the same time,” said Maxime Roy-Allard, a spokesperson for the Regroupement des comités logements et associations de locataires du Québec, a tenants group.
Since landlords have their choice of tenant, due to the high number of people looking, the risk that vulnerable people will be discriminated against is higher, he said.
So why exactly do so many Quebecers move on July 1?
Moving Day has existed in Quebec since the days of New France. The colonial government, worried about tenant farmers being evicted in the winter, took steps to prevent that. One of those steps was a 1750 law that established May 1 as the starting date for all residential leases. That same starting date was included in the 1866 Civil Code, which formed the basis for Quebec law until 1994.
Back then, this practice wasn’t uncommon.
Scotland also had an annual moving day — it was generally on May 25, but in some places it was on May 1.
New York City also had a May 1 moving day. It was already a longstanding tradition when it was codified into law in 1820. Boston, Chicago and Pittsburgh were also among the cities with fixed start days to residential leases.
By the early 1900s, there was growing concern about the disruption caused by the high number of children who moved to new schools at the beginning of May. There were also concerns that many students didn’t return to classes.
As early as 1903, The Montreal Gazette ran articles about the issue and was generally in favour of the idea of moving Moving Day to July 1. In 1935, bad weather on May 1 caused $100,000 in damages to goods being moved (almost $2 million in today ’s money) and one fatality.
In 1973, the Liberal provincial government of the day passed a bill allowing leases to start any day of the year. But, on May 1, 1974, things carried on largely as they had before. That December, another bill was passed extending all leases scheduled to end on April 30 by two months — establishing the practice we know today.
But what about Canada Day? Well, Dominion Day, as it was called back then, wasn’t as big a deal. The large annual festivities we know today wouldn’t start in Montreal until 1977.