Why can’t Quebec residents invest in certain properties?

Information for our Quebec members

Our mission is to enable every human to own real estate. This is a giant goal and a meaningful change toward enabling every person in Canada to participate in Ownership Society.

addy licenses its technology to enable Issuers and Dealers to engage large numbers of investors (1-10000+ individuals) in real estate investment transactions. In order to achieve this, addy created automated processes and services which help Issuers and Dealers comply with their legal obligations and more efficiently carry out and manage their operational needs.

One type of Registered Dealer in Canada is called an Exempt Market Dealers (EMD). An EMD is a firm that sells exempt products i.e. products that can be sold without a prospectus and is registered with the securities regulator in each individual province separately. Each province has its own initial registration requirements and ongoing legal obligations. The most onerous such legal requirement in QC requires many elements of the process and documents to be in French.

Issuers who would like to enable QC residents to invest in their properties must comply with the QC rules which require French versions of technical documents like the Offering Documents and audited IFRS Financial Statements. As these are technical documents produced by licensed professionals (Lawyers and Accountants); they come with costs that range from $25,000-$50,000 with no additional benefit to the underlying asset or investment and only exist to meet the French language requirements of QC.

As it stands, QC is an extremely expensive province (jurisdiction) to do business in. Providing such offerings to such a small number of investors makes little economic sense and would drag down the returns, this is why we need a large number of investors from the province. We did complete a few offerings last year that were open to QC residents at a high economic cost to our business. We know we can do the additional required work to enable QC; we just need to hit a critical mass of people in QC for it to make economic sense - otherwise the return for everyone will be reduced by those QC only costs to comply with QC rules and especially the French language requirements.

That said, it is our hope and belief that we will continue to grow our QC membership and that large pool of QC residents will make the QC only costs make economic sense for Issuers and Dealers. Stay tuned for great things!