Understand Laval before you commit to an address
Laval is the entire Île Jésus (two hundred and forty-six square kilometres and four hundred and sixty thousand people, the third-largest city in Quebec) and it has been a single municipality since fourteen towns and villages were merged in 1965, sixty years before anyone was arguing about mergers on the island. It is the only suburb in this region with metro stations of its own. Figures come from the province's assessment roll and municipal budget file, measured the same way in all 28 municipalities here.
The cost of living in Laval, 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 Laval
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 Laval is the right part of the region
No neighbourhood guides for Laval yet. What is here instead is the whole region on one comparable footing.
What buying in Laval actually involves
Laval charges 0.5798%, mid-table for the region, on a median detached house assessed at $593,300, about $3,400 a year. What that buys is a genuinely complete city rather than a suburb: its own hospital network, its own school boards, a large industrial and commercial base along the 440 and the 15, and the Carrefour Laval retail cluster. The 2007 orange line extension to Montmorency is the reason the southern half of the city functions the way it does.
The city is far too big to have one housing market. Chomedey, Sainte-Rose, Vimont, Duvernay, Sainte-Dorothée and Laval-des-Rapides are different in age, in price and in what the commute looks like, and the median above averages all of them. Two other things to weigh: much of the northern half is agricultural land that will not be developed, and the flood mapping along both rivers was redrawn after 2017 and 2019 and changed what is buildable on a number of streets.
The three metro stations serve one corner of a very large island, and most of Laval is nothing like walking distance from them. The practical transit question here is always which sector, and for most of the city the honest answer is a bus to the metro or a car.
Housing runs from 1950s bungalows in Chomedey and Pont-Viau through 1980s subdivision to new construction in Sainte-Dorothée and the northern sectors, along with a large stock of duplexes and small apartment buildings. That range is why a city-wide median is close to meaningless here, and why the sector matters more than the municipality.
Moving to Laval: check these before you commit
- Which sector of Laval: the difference between Chomedey and Sainte-Rose is larger than the difference between two municipalities elsewhere on this list.
- The real distance to a metro station, since only the southern part of the city is near one.
- Flood zone mapping on any property near the Rivière des Prairies or the Rivière des Mille Îles.
- Which sector the address is in, because Laval's markets differ more than most municipalities do from each other.
- The real journey to a metro station from the address, rather than the distance on a map.
The 73,749 detached one-dwelling houses on Laval's 2026 roll are what the median above describes. The roll was built against market conditions on 1 July 2023 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 Laval 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 Laval 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