Understand Montréal-Est before you commit to an address
Montréal-Est is five thousand people and about twelve square kilometres at the eastern end of the island, the great majority of it petrochemical and heavy industry. The refinery corridor that has defined the east end for a century. Its median detached house is assessed at $386,800, the lowest of the twenty-eight municipalities here and less than a ninth of Westmount's. 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 Montréal-Est, 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 Montréal-Est
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 Montréal-Est is the right part of the region
No neighbourhood guides for Montréal-Est yet. What is here instead is the whole region on one comparable footing.
What buying in Montréal-Est actually involves
The industrial base gives a town of five thousand people a rate of 0.5225% and a bill of about $2,000 a year on the median detached house, which is the second-lowest in this region in dollars, after Mirabel's. It is genuinely inexpensive housing on the island of Montreal, twenty minutes from downtown outside rush hour, and that combination does not exist anywhere else on this list. Anyone comparing on price alone should look here before concluding the island is closed to them.
The reasons it is cheap are the reasons to look carefully. This is a live industrial environment with air quality, odour and truck traffic that vary by street and by wind, and the eastern refinery lands carry a long contamination history that has shaped what can be redeveloped and where. The east end is also the part of the island with the weakest transit, and the long-promised extension of the blue line and the Réseau structurant de l'Est have both moved repeatedly. Buy here understanding the trade rather than discovering it.
The town is small, industrial and almost entirely built before 1970, with a housing stock of duplexes and small detached houses at prices that exist nowhere else on the island. Those buildings carry the maintenance profile of their age, and a good number have been divided or converted over the decades.
Living next to a petrochemical complex is a specific set of considerations rather than a general worry: air quality monitoring, emergency planning, truck and rail movements and the resale question that all of it creates. None of that makes the town a bad purchase at these prices, and all of it should be understood before making one.
Moving to Montréal-Est: check these before you commit
- Air quality and odour at the specific address, experienced across different wind conditions rather than on one visit.
- Any environmental record on the lot, which in this municipality is a genuine question rather than a formality.
- The transit plan for the east end, and a realistic view of when any of it arrives.
- The emergency planning information for the industrial zone, which is published and specific.
- Whether a duplex or converted property is legally conforming, since divisions here are often old.
The 406 detached one-dwelling houses on Montréal-Est'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 Montréal-Est 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 Montréal-Est 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