Understand Hampstead before you commit to an address
Hampstead is a garden suburb of about seven thousand people laid out in 1914 on the model of Hampstead Garden Suburb in London. Curved streets, no through traffic, a park at the centre and almost nothing but houses. It is entirely surrounded by Montreal and Côte-Saint-Luc, it has essentially no commercial tax base, and it charges 0.7610% on a median detached house assessed at $2.12 million. Figures come from the province's assessment roll and municipal budget file, measured the same way in all 28 municipalities here. It sits in the Montréal agglomeration, so part of what an owner pays here funds services set by a council this municipality does not control.
The cost of living in Hampstead, and what a home costs
Two calculators on Quebec's own rules: semi-annual compounding and the real minimum down payment tiers, and the closing costs this province actually charges.
Rent or buy in Hampstead
Whether buying here beats renting, and the year it turns over. Both households start with the same cash, so the comparison is not rigged either way.
Mortgage calculator
Semi-annual compounding, the CMHC premium under twenty percent down, and the 9% Quebec sales tax charged on it in cash at closing, the highest in the country.
Then work out whether Hampstead is the right part of the region
No neighbourhood guides for Hampstead yet. What is here instead is the whole region on one comparable footing.
What buying in Hampstead actually involves
That combination (no commerce and expensive houses) is what a purely residential municipality costs. About $16,100 a year on the median detached house, second only to Westmount in this region, and there is no industrial park or shopping centre anywhere in the town to spread it across. Hampstead's own council has been explicit about this constraint for years; it is not mismanagement, it is arithmetic, and any small residential enclave that demerged in 2006 faces the same one.
What the money buys is a genuinely intact plan. There are no through routes, the streets curve to discourage speed, the tree canopy is among the densest on the island, and the town's own security patrol supplements the agglomeration police. The town is also small enough that services are personal in a way a borough of Montreal cannot be. Whether that is worth several thousand dollars a year more than the same house would cost in Côte-Saint-Luc is exactly the question the calculators here are for.
The town is almost entirely detached houses on curved streets with no through traffic, which is exactly what the 1914 plan intended and exactly why there is nothing commercial to share the tax burden. Everyday shopping is in Côte-Saint-Luc or Snowdon, a short drive in either case.
Much of the stock is interwar and post-war and a good deal of it has been substantially enlarged over the last thirty years. That makes permit history unusually important here: additions, basement conversions and detached garages are common, and what was approved is not always what was built.
Moving to Hampstead: check these before you commit
- The annual bill, which on a Hampstead-priced house is among the largest municipal charges in Quebec.
- The town's construction and renovation rules, which are detailed and enforced.
- School options and their catchments, which do not follow municipal boundaries here and are the reason many families move to this specific corner of the island.
- The permit history for any addition or basement conversion, which in this town is common.
- How the property is served for parking and access, since the street pattern deliberately limits both.
The 1,264 detached one-dwelling houses on Hampstead's 2026 roll are what the median above describes. The roll was built against market conditions on 1 July 2024 and is fixed for three years, so it is a market value rather than a current one.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Hampstead figure below is cited, stamped with the period it describes, and editable, because a number for the whole city rarely describes your purchase. Appreciation and investment returns are assumptions rather than facts, and they are labelled that way. Read the methodology for how the line is drawn.
- Prices, rents and tax rates: published statistics and the official schedules.
- Nothing here is a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice.
Where the Hampstead figures come from
- Rôles d'évaluation foncière du Québec: rôle 2026, fichiers par municipalité · Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Habitation, via Données Québec · retrieved Supports: Every property on the 2026 assessment roll of each of these municipalities, with its predominant use, its number of dwellings, its physical link and its value, The median detached one-dwelling residence in each municipality, computed identically across all twenty-eight, The market conditions date each roll was built against: 1 July 2023 for twelve of them and 1 July 2024 for sixteen
- Rapport financier des organismes municipaux: données prévisionnelles non auditées 2026, Simple occurrence · Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Habitation · retrieved Supports: The 2026 residential property tax rate adopted by each municipality, in dollars per $100 of assessment, Special rates for debt service, operating and investment activities where a municipality levies them, under the taux-unique code as well as the taux-variés résiduelle one, The 2026 decree population of each municipality, The adopted-rate file itself rather than the dataset page that lists it, so the next reconciliation is a fetch rather than a search
- Données prévisionnelles non auditées 2026: description des postes · Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Habitation · retrieved Supports: Which code carries which adopted rate: general CPALB01724 taux unique or CPALB01726 taux variés résiduelle, debt CPALB01736 or CPALB01738, operating CPALB01747 or CPALB01749, investment CPALB01758 or CPALB01760, That a special rate adopted at a single rate is recorded under a different code from one adopted per property class, which is the distinction this layer reads both halves of
- Rental Market Survey, Montréal CMA: October 2025 · Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation · retrieved Supports: An average two-bedroom rent of about $1,200 across the purpose-built stock of the Montreal CMA, A vacancy rate of 2.9%, Survey zones that do not correspond to municipal boundaries, which is why this layer carries one regional figure rather than twenty-eight
- Réorganisation municipale: les municipalités reconstituées et le conseil d'agglomération · Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Habitation · retrieved Supports: The reconstitution of fifteen municipalities on the island of Montreal and four in the Longueuil agglomeration on 1 January 2006, The division between local competences and agglomeration competences. Police, fire, water production, arterial roads and public transit, The agglomeration council's power to set the levy that funds them
- Regulations amending the Insurable Housing Loan Regulations and the Eligible Mortgage Loan Regulations (SOR/2025-55) · Canada Gazette, Part II · retrieved Supports: The $1.5 million insured price cap, which only three of these twenty-eight municipalities' median detached houses exceed, 30-year insured amortization for first-time buyers and new builds