At 28, Henry Zavriyev owns more than 1,000 rental units in Montreal. An empire he has been building since 2017 by acquiring and reselling buildings in the metropolis. His transactions earned him nearly $13 million, according to calculations by the To have to, to the detriment of many tenants, whom he has faced in more than 130 cases at the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL) in a few years.
The duty has listed the addresses acquired by Henry Zavriyev since 2017, i.e. around forty buildings located in around ten districts of the metropolis. These 1,200 units were, in many cases, offered at affordable rent before Mr. Zavriyev and his partners strongly encouraged tenants to vacate the premises. They then carry out renovations to rent them sometimes at double the price or to make significant profits on resale.
” He started from nothing “
Henry Zavriyev has been talked about more than once in the media. He is trying to convert two residences for the elderly downtown and in Montreal North and to evict dozens of tenants in the Saint-Michel district and the borough of Saint-Laurent, according to Radio-Canada and the newspaper Metro. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg according to data compiled by The duty.
An actor in the world of real estate who worked alongside Henry Zavriyev professionally describes his career as a real ” success story “. In 2012, Mr. Zavriyev moved to Montreal at the age of 18 after spending time in Boston. “He started with nothing. He worked for $10-$12 an hour in moving companies and combined part-time jobs, ”says the man who preferred to preserve his identity so as not to harm his business relationships.
In 2017, Mr. Zavriyev carried out one of his first transactions in the metropolis, in cash, by acquiring a rooming house with 16 rooms on rue Saint-André, in Ville-Marie, for the sum of $340,000.
After doing renovations and going to TAL for four cases, he sold the building in 2019 for a profit of $540,000. This transaction allows him to take out several hundreds of thousands of dollars in mortgages to acquire new properties.
“It was business [les maisons de chambre] that the world did not want to touch, properties in ruins almost abandoned by their owner”, mentions to the To have to the real estate professional who worked with the investor. He points out that the secret of Henry Zavriyev’s success is not being afraid to take risks by seeking private loans with high interest rates. Despite our repeated requests for interviews by telephone and e-mail, Henry Zavriyev and one of his close associates could not be reached by The duty to comment on this article.
Since February 2022, Mr. Zavriyev has thus acquired 291 rental units. In particular, he took out a $51 million mortgage at an interest rate of 25% for the purchase of four buildings at the end of March, in the borough of Saint-Laurent. Radio-Canada reported on May 11 that the tenants of these buildings are under strong pressure to leave their homes under the pretext of renovations.
Triple the cost of rent
Once freed from their occupants, some of the homes acquired by Mr. Zavriyev are being rented out again, following renovations, by his property management company Leyad, which currently has a rental fleet of 13 buildings. These offer accommodation whose rent varies from 1050 to 3000 dollars. Among the lots, there is a seven-unit building on rue de Bellechasse, in the borough of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, purchased last year for $1,130,000.
Christian Dinelle and Corinne Leblanc have lived in this seven-unit property with their son for ten years. They occupy a four and a half for 525 dollars a month. The couple, who depend on social welfare, have been offered increasingly large sums of money to end their lease because of major works.
“He first offered $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. And finally $20,000,” recalls Christian Dinelle. “He said it could serve as cash down of a condo or a house. »
On the Leyad site, one of the renovated four and a half of the same building is now offered “from” 1650 dollars per month.
“He started calling us, harassing us. He showed up several times in front of the house to offer us money, but we refused,” alleges his spouse.
More than 130 files at the TAL
When the couple refused to leave the premises, one of Mr Zavriyev’s companies sued them before the TAL to evacuate them in order to carry out major renovations, before withdrawing from the hearing last month. An approach used with many of Mr. Zavriyev’s other tenants at his various properties, found The duty by analyzing some 130 TAL cases involving it and by collecting testimonies from several tenants and their lawyers.
“He seems to be using the legal system to discourage tenants and encourage them to give up their right to stay in the premises”, analyzes lawyer Manuel Johnson, who represents Christian Dinelle and Corinne Leblanc, who opened a file at the TAL against Mr. Zavriyev last month. They are claiming, among other things, punitive damages for the “harassment” and “trouble and inconvenience” they claim to have suffered.
Martin Gallié, professor of housing law at UQAM, indicates that withdrawals are the daily lot of the TAL because the vast majority of cases are settled amicably. “It’s barely 10% of what is evaluated as requests for retakes, enlargements, etc. who goes to court. Everything happens under the coat, ”says Mr. Gallié.
Refusing to leave her four and a half on rue Saint-Jacques, where she has lived for 14 years, Katherine Digby currently lives in the middle of a construction site started in the five-unit building acquired for 900,000 dollars by Mr. Zavriyev the year latest.
“I said no, I’m going to go back anyway after the works [dans mon logement]. The next day, I received a notice of change of assignment”, which would have legally forced her to leave. She has since contested this opinion before the TAL in the context of a case which is currently suspended.
Mr. Zavriyev also acquired, in 2020, three buildings on Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine totaling 52 dwellings. Less than a year later, he resold those for nearly $2.9 million. In the meantime, tenants have been pressured to vacate the premises.
“The heating was at 12°C this winter. We had to call the police and the city […] He started to settle it after January, ”says Sonia Moscote, who still lives in her accommodation on Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine. She says she refused to leave her apartment despite tempting offers of several thousand dollars made verbally to terminate her lease.
Last year, Henry Zavriyev also bought two adjoining buildings located on boulevard Joseph-Renaud, in Anjou. He carried out major renovations there and took legal action with at least four tenants benefiting from subsidized rent to increase their rent under “clause F”, which allows owners of new or renovated buildings less than five years ago to impose rent increases without restrictions.
These vulnerable tenants, however, only have to pay 25% of their income for housing, the balance being paid by the State.
“I was wondering if I was going to undergo a renoviction,” says the tenant, who won his case at the TAL in mid-May. He continues to pay a quarter of his income for housing. Apartments in this building are now listed “from $1,260” per month on Mr. Zavriyev’s property management site.
Targeted rooming houses
In 2017, Mr. Zavriyev made one of his first transactions by buying a rooming house on rue Saint-André, in Ville-Marie, to resell it in 2019 for two and a half times as much as a single-family residence under a permit granted by the borough on April 10, 2018.
By email, the borough specifies that this conversion was possible for the investor since it took place before the moratorium put in place in November 2020 by Ville-Marie and other central boroughs concerning changes in the use of houses. rooms, which often serve as the last defense for people at risk of homelessness.
However, another 34-unit rooming house belonging to Henry Zavriyev in the Sud-Ouest (one of the boroughs targeted by the moratorium) has been emptied of several of its tenants in recent months, while 29 files have been opened in TAL in connection with evictions and cases of “harassment” experienced by tenants.
Met by The duty, several of them said they were offered money to leave the premises; an amount that many initially accepted without being made aware of their right to remain in the premises, for which they are fighting today.
“I felt intimidated for a while,” says Lyle Kelliher, before showing us his lease termination notice related to major works. “I would have to find another accommodation, but I don’t know where,” worries the tenant, who is currently paying $380 a month for a room in a neighborhood in full gentrification.
Work is also underway in this building on Ash Avenue, in Pointe-Saint-Charles, noted The duty visiting the places. The emptied rooms have been renovated and their doors are now fitted with code locks. Some tenants we met noted that these rooms were thus transformed into studios, even if the permit granted to Mr. Zavriyev’s business by the borough rather provided for “adding a common kitchen on each floor”, which was not realized during the visit of the To have to.
A tenant of this rooming house also won her case in December 2021 after asking the TAL to invalidate her lease termination agreement which she had accepted without having been made aware of her right to remain in the premises.
“The money she was dangled and the skilful words of the landlord’s agent convinced her that this was the only option available to her,” says the rendered decision, which notes that ” the court finds that the consent of the tenant has been vitiated” in this case.
Joined by The duty, the person in charge of housing on the executive committee of the City, Benoit Dorais, condemns all of the “owners who are determined to use all sorts of strategies to make housing a commodity”. Despite the regulatory efforts taken by the City of Montreal “to support tenants who are victims of renovictions”, this phenomenon “exceeds the limits of our municipal capacities”, argues Mr. Dorais, who thus calls for a reform of the Civil Code of Quebec.
According to Professor Martin Gallié, the best way to curb the current wave of renovictions is to set up an effective municipal or provincial inspection mechanism and to provide the courts with real sanction mechanisms, commensurate with the profits made by the companies. real estate investment. “Today, you can make millions in profits from the sale of a simple triplex. If we make a recovery in bad faith or if we do not do the work requested, we will pay, at most and exceptionally, $20,000. But most of the time it’s $4000. »