Most Hamilton duplexes and triplexes that relist were priced for the wrong buyer the first time. The seller set one price for a tenanted building as if it were empty, or copied other listings' asking prices, and the building sat. In September 2026 the average Hamilton home took 44 days to sell, with 2,522 homes for sale, according to our Hamilton market report for September 2026. A mispriced multi doesn't stand out in a pile that big. It sinks.
The multiplex numbers make the trap easy to fall into. Our Hamilton duplex, triplex and fourplex report shows a median asking price of $799,900 for a triplex and $749,900 for an up-and-down duplex over the last 12 months. Those are asking prices from listings. Nobody has paid them yet.
I'm Mike Johnson. I list homes for Found Spaces, I've sold more than 300 properties since I was licensed in 2017, and I own multi-family property in Hamilton myself. So I sit on both sides of this. I know what a landlord hopes the building is worth, and I know how an investor tears the same building apart on a spreadsheet. Most relists live in the gap between those two people.
One building, two buyers, two prices
A tenanted duplex and a vacant duplex are two different products. They just share an address.
The vacant one can go to anybody. A family can move into the main floor and rent the basement. An owner-occupier can live upstairs and house hack. An investor can set fresh rents. More buyers means more people at the table.
The tenanted one goes to a much smaller crowd, mostly investors, and investors price off the rent roll. They don't care that your kitchen is nicer than the one down the street if the tenant in it pays well below today's rents and has no plan to leave.
The mistake behind most relists is pricing the tenanted building off vacant sales, or off the median asking price, then waiting for an owner-occupier who can't use it. That buyer looks, sees the lease, and walks. The investors who are left do their math, come in low or not at all, and six weeks later the listing gets pulled and put back up with a new photo and a smaller number.
My view: if your building is tenanted, its first price has to be a tenanted price. Hoping for a vacant buyer is how you end up on your second listing.
What I actually do before I write any number down is put two prices on one page, tenanted and vacant, side by side, pulled from both boards that list Hamilton homes, so the seller can see the gap in dollars before we pick a lane. Some sellers look at that gap and decide to sell with tenants. Some decide the gap is worth working through the steps to deliver it empty. Either choice is fine. Picking neither is what costs money.
The rent roll sets the ceiling
An investor's best offer has a hard top, and your leases set it.
Take the asking rents on both boards over the twelve months to October 16, 2026. A self-contained unit in a Hamilton house had a median ask of $1,800 a month and a three-bedroom-plus house had a median ask of $2,650. Now say, purely as an example, one of your units pays $1,200 because the same tenant has been there for years. That's $600 a month below the median ask, or $7,200 a year, and the buyer can't just fix it. Rent increases on a sitting tenant are capped by the rules.
It also hits how much the buyer can borrow. CMHC lets up to 100% of the gross rent count toward qualifying on a two-unit home. On a three or four unit building it drops to 50% of gross rent (or the net rent), and the buyer needs at least 10% down. Low rent in a triplex shrinks the buyer's mortgage and their price at the same time.
Picture a triplex with three good tenants, all paying a few hundred dollars under market. The owner lists at the triplex median asking price because the building is clean and the roof is new. Every investor who opens the rent roll lands on the same number, well below the list price, because the rents only carry so much debt. The roof doesn't change that math, and neither does the paint. After a relist at the rent-roll price, it sells. The money was always going to land there. The only question was how many weeks it took.
If you want to see how buyers do this math, our underwriting standard for NOI, cap rate and price per door lays out the same steps a serious investor will run on your building.
The law decides who can buy it
Every landlord asks me this first: can I just sell it empty? The honest answer is that the Residential Tenancies Act sets the order of events, and you don't get to skip steps.
A sale does not end a tenancy. The buyer steps into your shoes and takes over the leases.
If the buyer wants to live in a unit, an N12 for the buyer's own use only works on a month-to-month tenancy, and it carries the compensation the Act requires. If the tenant is still inside a fixed-term lease, that door is closed for now. The other route is an N11, where the tenant agrees to leave. That's a choice the tenant makes, and in practice it usually comes with a payment.
So selling it vacant is possible. It just has to be planned, agreed and timed. A listing that promises vacancy without a signed N11 or a valid N12 path is a listing that falls apart after the offer, and that's another way buildings end up relisted.
Showings follow the law too. Every one needs 24 hours' written notice, and showings happen between 8am and 8pm. A tenant who feels ambushed can make a building show badly. A tenant who gets clear notice, a set window and a thank-you usually keeps the place tidy.
What a relist actually costs you
Sellers think a relist is a fresh start. Buyers don't see it that way.
Listing history is easy to find. Sites like HouseSigma show when a property came off the market and went back on, often with the old price right beside the new one. An investor sees that and reads it as a seller who has already blinked once. They offer accordingly.
The wider market makes this worse right now. Hamilton had 332 sales in September 2026, down 29% from a year earlier, and 1,059 new listings that same month, according to our Hamilton market report. The average freehold price was $659,721, down 10%. That's a lot of choice for buyers. A building that misses in its first two weeks has fresh competition arriving every day.
There's a quieter cost too. Every week the building sits, you're still paying the mortgage, the taxes and the insurance, and your tenants are still putting up with showings. Their patience is part of what you're selling.
What I'd do this month before listing a Hamilton multi
Gather every lease, the current rent for each unit, the date of each tenant's last increase, and whether each lease is fixed-term or month-to-month. That one sheet decides most of your pricing.
Then run both numbers. Price it tenanted from the rent roll. Price it vacant from recent sales of similar empty buildings. Look at the gap honestly, and check the per-unit asking prices in our Hamilton multiplex report as a reality check on what's competing with you, keeping in mind those are asks. If the vacant number is much higher, talk to your tenants early about whether an N11 makes sense for them. Some tenants are happy to move with help. Some aren't, and you'll want to know that before you list, because finding out after the photos go up is how timelines slip.
Prep the building for the buyer you picked. For a tenanted sale, that's clean books, working smoke and CO alarms, and any open repair requests closed out. For a vacant sale, that's paint, light fixes and a proper clean of each unit.
You can see how we approach these buildings on our Hamilton investment properties page.
Questions people ask
Can I sell my Hamilton duplex with the tenants still living there?
Yes. The sale doesn't end the tenancy, so the buyer takes over the existing leases on the same terms. Any last month's rent deposit you hold moves to the buyer on closing, so have that amount written down before you list. Buyers' lawyers will ask for it.
Do my tenants have to let buyers in for showings?
They do, as long as you give 24 hours' written notice and the showing falls between 8am and 8pm. Grouping showings into a few set windows each week usually works better than many scattered ones. It's easier on the tenants, and buyers get a cleaner place to walk through.
Is it better to drop my price or take the listing down and relist?
A relist rarely hides anything, since listing history shows up on public sites buyers use every day. If the first price was wrong, a clear price change on the live listing is often more honest and gets the same result. The better fix is getting the tenanted or vacant price right before day one.
Find out what your building is really worth
If you own a duplex, triplex or fourplex in Hamilton and you're thinking about selling, start with a number. Get your instant home evaluation to see where your property sits today. Then, if you want both prices on one page, tenanted and vacant, you can reach me directly through my page and we'll work through your rent roll together.