Understand Westmount before you commit to an address
Westmount is four square kilometres on the south-west slope of Mount Royal, three kilometres from downtown, and it has been the wealthiest municipality in Quebec for longer than anyone alive can remember. Its median detached house is assessed at $3.63 million on the 2026 roll (more than five times Montreal's own) and it was one of the fifteen island municipalities that were merged into Montreal in 2002 and voted themselves back out in 2006. 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 Westmount, 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 Westmount
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 Westmount is the right part of the region
No neighbourhood guides for Westmount yet. What is here instead is the whole region on one comparable footing.
What buying in Westmount actually involves
The tax bill here is the largest in this region and it is not close. Westmount's residential rate of 0.6583% is high but not extraordinary (Montréal-Ouest and Beaconsfield both charge more) and it is the assessment underneath it that does the work: 0.6583% of $3.63 million is about $23,900 a year on the median detached house, against $3,100 in Montreal and $1,800 in Mirabel. If you are moving here from almost anywhere else, the municipal tax line is a mortgage payment.
What being a demerged municipality actually buys is narrower than the argument in 2004 suggested. Westmount keeps its own council, its library, its recreation centre, its urban planning and its tree bylaw, and it is genuinely well run. Police, fire, water production, arterial roads and public transit are the agglomeration's, funded by a levy the agglomeration council sets and Westmount's one vote cannot move. Roughly half of what a Westmount owner pays is for services the town does not control, which is the arrangement every enclave on this list lives inside.
The housing is overwhelmingly pre-war and much of it is a century old: greystone rowhouses on the flat, larger detached houses climbing the hill, and a small number of purpose-built apartment buildings. That age brings the standing questions of old Montreal construction, which are the roof, the masonry pointing, the balconies and, on the older stock, knob-and-tube wiring that insurers will ask about.
The city runs its own library, arena, pool and public works, and the level of service is part of what residents are paying for alongside the agglomeration bill. It is also why the municipal side of the tax is high in absolute terms: there is very little commercial assessment on the hill to carry any of it.
Moving to Westmount: check these before you commit
- The actual tax bill rather than the rate: on a house at this assessment the two are very different conversations.
- Westmount's own planning and demolition rules, which are among the strictest in Quebec and constrain what you may do to a house here.
- Whether the address is above or below Sherbrooke, which is the line the market has priced separately for a century.
- The state of the masonry, the roof and any balcony structure, which on century stock is the real budget.
- What the city's permit process requires for exterior work, since it applies to more than you would expect.
The 1,028 detached one-dwelling houses on Westmount'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 Westmount 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 Westmount 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