As the moving season approaches, new building owners fear they will have to pay their tenants for generators or motels out of pocket as Hydro-Québec is slow to connect their buildings.
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India Venne is a real estate entrepreneur. She is currently constructing a building with seven residential units in the municipality of Lanoraie, in Lanaudière. His building will be handed over on June 1, 2023. At this point, five tenants need to move in, with two more due to move in on July 1st.
These are 1,300 square meter apartments, soundproof, with large windows, quartz countertops, security camera system and garage.
The problem: The building has no electricity, possibly for a few months. “We submitted a follow-up application to Hydro-Québec in January. It has now been four months and no one has analyzed our file. “It’s stressful,” says the 26-year-old.
However, India has other buildings on the same street built in 2019 and 2020 and has never faced such a situation. “We had never experienced such delays with our other buildings; we spoke of a waiting time of one to two weeks. But there we may have to rent generators, buy gas and spend thousands of dollars for months when the connection is long overdue,” she said.
Hydro’s answer
At Hydro-Québec, we reply, “Because the connection requires changes to the network, engineering work is required.” Until the engineering is complete, we cannot give the customer a timeline.”
Building in India requires technical analysis. Hydro needs to replace a transformer. For those cases, which Hydro-Québec describes as not “easy,” demand — and delays — have exploded since the pandemic and are generally between 12 and 18 months.
“The problem is that you can’t call Hydro-Québec a year in advance to make your connection. Your electrical room needs to be ready for connection,” explains India Venne, who says she is not the only building owner experiencing these inconveniences.
“If only we were given a deadline. Will they come in a month, three months, ten months? We don’t know, we are in the void. I have families and remote workers that are going to need the internet, so I need to prepare a plan B…” she says.
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Cover the costs
“People take Hydro-Québec for granted,” notes Mélanie Bergeron, real estate agent at Proprio Direct. “We tell ourselves Hydro-Québec is easy, it’s easy…but no. It can be easy with address changes and ownership transfers, but when it comes to new connections we have several examples in the media where it takes a really long time,” she says.
In the case of India, if there is a delay in the connection, it will be difficult to bear the costs. “There is a limit to rent increases. The owners can still catch up a bit, but they have to bear these costs,” she says.
“We lack housing and we are trying to develop in a difficult environment with interest rates, material prices and labor shortages. In my opinion, this is the least we can do to provide electricity to our tenants when they move,” concludes India Venne.