Hopem has a legitimate claim to being the Quebec property management standard. Plenty of 1,000-unit operators have run their accounting on it for twenty years, and the trust handling is rock-solid. But the platform was architected in the desktop era, and every property manager we talk to who's switching cites the same reasons. If you're reading this, you're probably already on the way out — this guide is about doing the move cleanly.
Why operators leave Hopem
The complaints converge into a pattern:
- Desktop-era UX. The interface assumes a trained operator at a workstation, not a property manager on a building site with a phone.
- Limited AI and automation. Rent follow-up, lease renewal alerts, and tenant communication sequences are still manual. On a large portfolio that's measurable payroll.
- No first-class mobile. Remote work, site visits, and after-hours tenant issues all want mobile access that Hopem doesn't really deliver.
- Opaque per-seat pricing. Costs scale with staff count in ways that punish you for growing the team. Budgeting is hard; predicting renewal cost is harder.
- Slow feature velocity. New capabilities ship infrequently. The competitive gap versus modern platforms widens each year.
None of that makes Hopem a bad tool for operators who value continuity. It does make it a bad fit for operators trying to scale headcount-efficiently.
What data you actually need to export
Before you touch anything, map the full dataset. Missing one of these in the export is how migrations go wrong.
- Tenant list with full contact info (name, phone, email, language preference, move-in date)
- Active leases with dates, rent, deposits (zero in Quebec, but relevant for other provinces), unit assignment, co-signers
- Payment history for at least 24 months — this is what lets you rebuild the rent ledger and answer past-due questions
- Maintenance records — ticket history, vendor used, cost, completion date, recurrence notes
- Owner statements for the last 12 months minimum, especially if you manage for third parties
- Vendor list with contact info, services, billing terms, insurance certificates
- Trust account balances reconciled to the penny before any migration step begins
- Scanned documents — signed leases, TAL filings, inspection reports, correspondence
The step-by-step process
1. Export data from Hopem. A full CSV export usually requires raising a support ticket. Don't assume the self-serve export covers everything — verify each table above arrived. Budget a week for back-and-forth to get the full dump.
2. Clean and normalize the data. This is the step nobody budgets for and everybody regrets skipping. Deduplicate tenants (the same person often lives in multiple units over time and ends up as two records). Canonicalize addresses to a single format. Standardize date formats (Hopem exports mix DD-MM-YYYY and YYYY-MM-DD depending on the report). Flag archived leases separately from active ones so they don't pollute the current ledger.
3. Import to the new platform. Most modern platforms provide CSV import or, for larger portfolios, concierge onboarding where the vendor's team handles the load. Use the concierge option if it's offered — the hourly cost is lower than your own time, and the vendor has done it a hundred times.
4. Verify the load. Spot-check 10% of accounts by hand: tenant contact info, lease dates, rent amount, year-to-date payment history. Reconcile the rent ledger balance per tenant to what Hopem shows on cutover day, to the penny. Any discrepancy gets investigated before you go live.
5. Train staff on the new system. Budget one to two weeks of side-by-side use where staff operate in both platforms. Record the workflows that differ most — how rent is applied, how a late notice is sent, how a work order is dispatched — and build short internal guides.
6. Run parallel for 30 days. For the full first month post-cutover, keep Hopem read-only and operating alongside the new system for critical workflows. You will find edge cases — a recurring charge that didn't transfer, an owner statement template that breaks, a vendor payment schedule that got lost. Parallel operation catches these before they become customer-facing incidents.
What to look for in the replacement
The non-negotiables after leaving Hopem, if you're staying in Quebec:
- Native TAL form generation (Form 2, Form E, Form G)
- Bilingual UI and tenant communication
- AI rent follow-up, or the platform won't recoup the staff time savings that justified the switch
- A real API, so you can connect accounting, listing portals, and reporting tools without manual exports
- Working mobile apps for both staff and tenants
- Transparent pricing without per-seat gotchas
Tenaivo checks these boxes — see the side-by-side at /en/vs/hopem and the portfolio management workflows at /en/features/portfolio-crm. Other options exist, and the Quebec landlords guide on this site covers the alternatives too.
Realistic timeline
- 200-unit portfolio: 2–4 weeks total, assuming clean data and no custom reports to rebuild.
- 500-unit portfolio: 4–6 weeks, with roughly half the time in data cleanup and reconciliation.
- 1,000+ unit portfolio: 6–8 weeks, and worth engaging a dedicated migration partner or using the vendor's concierge service.
Rush these timelines and you will find your reconciliation errors on day 45 instead of day 15. Neither is fun, but one is significantly cheaper.
The close
Migration feels daunting when you're standing on the Hopem side looking across. The week of ticket-chasing to get the export, the weekend of data cleanup, the staff retraining — it's real work. But the payoff shows up fast. Most operators we've moved report 5–10 hours a week of admin reduction by month two, and the cash flow improvement from automated rent follow-up lands in the first 30 days. The hard part is starting. Once you're a week in, the rest is execution.