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After Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau advised dissatisfied tenants to become landlords, the Montreal Journal reveals that she bought her first home in 2006 for $770,000. And this without a mortgage.

She and her spouse were previously tenants in Old Montreal. They bought a luxurious house in L’Île-des-Sœurs.

The couple then used this residence as financial leverage to buy other houses. This residence was then sold in May 2022 for $2.4 million.

The Journal de Montréal recalls that the average price of a house is $593,000 in Montreal, whereas it was only $298,000 17 years ago.

“If someone buys a house in [770 000$] counting in 2006, and even today in fact, is that she comes from an environment that has a lot of money or has saved a lot of money. It’s almost impossible, ”says the financial advisor and president of ASF Wealth Management, Michel-Olivier Marcoux, in an interview with the Montreal daily.

“We agree that it is not the common man who can afford that. Having $770,000 lying dormant in a bank account is not at all what the middle class is capable of doing,” underlines the professor at the School of Urban Planning at the University of Montreal, Jean -Philippe Meloche, in an interview with the Journal de Montréal.

The minister’s press attaché, Philippe Couture, replied to the Montreal daily that “this information concerns the private life of Madame Duranceau. There will be no comments in this regard”.

Recall that, on June 12, France-Élaine Duranceau had suggested to dissatisfied tenants to invest in real estate, while she was in an interview with Noovo Info.

“You cannot use a right that is not yours, to assign a lease to someone else, on terms that you decide when it is not your building. The tenant who wants to do that, well, he has to invest in real estate and take the risks that go with it, ”she said. A statement that had sown controversy.

Mr. Meloche also points out that “people who don’t need credit to access property have by far better access”.

“That’s one of the problems right now. Those who have acquired capital all their life are outbidding and competing with young people who have no accumulated capital and want to enter the market,” he adds.

For his part, Mr. Marcoux observes that even young people “with good salaries” have difficulty accessing property and often ask their parents for help.

“For 5 years, I have seen more and more of them. 20% of a $500,000 property is $100,000. It’s not easy to accumulate, especially with the rents which are still expensive,” he says.