Understand Mont-Royal before you commit to an address
The Town of Mount Royal was laid out in 1912 by the Canadian Northern Railway on farmland above the tunnel it had just driven under the mountain. A garden city of radial avenues converging on a station, designed whole and built to the plan. That station is now on the REM, which put downtown seven minutes away and made the century-old premise true again. 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 Mont-Royal, 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 Mont-Royal
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 Mont-Royal is the right part of the region
No neighbourhood guides for Mont-Royal yet. What is here instead is the whole region on one comparable footing.
What buying in Mont-Royal actually involves
Mont-Royal's rate of 0.5237% is the lowest of the five enclaves and one of the lowest on the island, on a median detached house assessed at $2.13 million, so the bill of about $11,200 a year sits well below Hampstead's on a comparable house. The reason is the commercial and industrial strip along the Canadian National line in the town's north-east, which carries a meaningful share of the tax base. It is the same mechanism that makes Dorval and Boucherville cheap and Beaconsfield expensive, and it explains more of this region's rate table than anything else.
The REM is the change worth understanding. The Deux-Montagnes commuter line that ran through here for a century was closed, rebuilt and reopened as an automated metro with trains every few minutes, and Mont-Royal has two stations on it. That has been priced in, but not evenly: the town is large enough that a house at the far end of it is a genuine walk from either station, and the difference is visible in what things sell for.
The 1912 plan is legally protected and the town enforces it: setbacks, tree cover, roof forms and the radial street pattern are all governed, and the town has been willing to refuse work that does not fit. Anyone buying with a renovation or a replacement house in mind should establish what has actually been approved recently rather than what the zoning table implies.
The housing is mostly interwar and post-war detached, with a band of newer apartments near the commercial streets and the station. The older stock is now old enough that electrical service capacity, oil-tank history and foundation drainage are the standing questions, and none of them are visible from the street.
Moving to Mont-Royal: check these before you commit
- The real walking distance to Mont-Royal or Canora station, because the radial street plan makes distances longer than they look on a map.
- The town's architectural control, which reviews exterior work and is stricter than the island average.
- Whether the property backs onto the CN line or the industrial strip, which is where the tax base comes from and where the noise does too.
- Whether the property ever had a buried oil tank, and what documentation exists for its removal.
- The town's recent approvals for comparable renovations, which are a better guide than the bylaw text.
The 2,557 detached one-dwelling houses on Mont-Royal'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 Mont-Royal 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 Mont-Royal 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