Buyer's Guide

Buying in Laval: The Six Sectors

By Georges Matar · May 19, 2026 · 6 min read

Buying in Laval is not buying into a uniform suburb. It is buying on a 246 square kilometre island that, according to Statistics Canada’s 2021 census, counts 438,366 residents and 169,785 occupied private dwellings, up 5.9% since 2016. Between a house in Laval-Ouest and a condo beside Montmorency metro, the transit, the tax bill and the regulatory constraints have nothing in common.

Here is what gets verified before making an offer. General information only: confirm your file with a lender and a notary.

Six sectors, fourteen neighbourhoods, one city

Laval was created in 1965 by merging fourteen municipalities. Their names stayed on as the names of the neighbourhoods, and for the organisation of services the territory is grouped into six sectors:

Sector	Neighbourhoods
1	Duvernay, Saint-François, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul
2	Pont-Viau, Laval-des-Rapides, Renaud-Coupal
3	Chomedey
4	Sainte-Dorothée, Laval-Ouest, Les Îles-Laval, Fabreville-Ouest, Laval-sur-le-Lac
5	Sainte-Rose, Fabreville-Est
6	Vimont, Auteuil

The split is not decorative. It follows the geography of the island: sector 2 is the densest and the closest to Montreal, sector 4 is the most waterfront and the most spread out, sector 1 is bounded by the Rivière des Prairies on the east. The North Shore guide places Laval in its regional setting.

Transit separates the sectors more sharply than the postal code

This is the criterion that divides Laval most clearly, and it can be verified down to the station.

The metro. Three orange line stations have served Laval since April 28, 2007: Cartier, in Pont-Viau, then De la Concorde and Montmorency, in Laval-des-Rapides. The whole metro corridor sits in sector 2.
The exo train. The Saint-Jérôme line stops at De la Concorde, Vimont and Sainte-Rose. It therefore links sectors 2, 5 and 6 to downtown, and De la Concorde is the only direct train to metro connection in the city.
The REM. The Deux-Montagnes branch has been in service since November 17, 2025. Two of its stations, Sainte-Dorothée and Île-Bigras, are in Laval, both in sector 4.
The Pie-IX BRT. The bus rapid transit has run since November 7, 2022 between boulevard Saint-Martin in Laval and avenue Pierre-De Coubertin in Montreal. Its extension toward rue Notre-Dame continues until the fall of 2027.

Chomedey, sector 3, has no metro station, no train station and no REM station. It is served by the highways and by STL buses. That is neither a flaw nor an advantage: it is a trade-off to make with your eyes open. Before you commit to a sector, time the actual commute you will make, at the hour you will make it, rather than measuring the distance to the nearest station on a map. A station five minutes away that runs on a commuter schedule and a station five minutes away on the metro are two different lives.

Transfer duties: the step at $500,000

Since the 2026 budget, Laval applies 3% to any amount above $500,000. Quebec law lets a municipality set a higher rate beyond that threshold, capped at 3%. Before, Laval taxed that portion in steps of 1.5%, 2% and then 3%.

The 2026 Laval grid, combining the indexed provincial brackets with the municipal rate:

Bracket	Rate
Up to $62,900	0.5%
$62,900 to $315,000	1%
$315,000 to $500,000	1.5%
Above $500,000	3%

A purely illustrative example, computed with those official rates alone: on a base of $500,000 the duties come to $5,610.50. On a base of $642,750 they come to $9,893. The $142,750 above the half million cost $4,282.50 on their own: about 22% of the base, but more than 43% of the bill.

Watch the base of the calculation: it is not the price paid, but the greatest of three amounts, the consideration furnished, the consideration stipulated and the market value, the last being the value on the assessment roll multiplied by the comparative factor in force. Buying below the assessment does not necessarily cut the bill. The account arrives in a single payment, due within 30 days of receipt, and the municipal council has asked the administration to study instalments from 2027. The welcome tax calculator and the welcome tax guide cover the rest.

The tax account, the assessment roll and the water charge

The 2025-2026-2027 triennial roll has been in force since January 1, 2025 and reflects market conditions as of July 1, 2023. Average values entered on that roll: $622,300 for a single-family home and $437,400 for a condominium. That value, not your purchase price, is the base of the property tax.

In the 2026 budget, worth $1.293 billion, the residential property tax rate was frozen. The account still went up: on average 4.3% for a single-family home and 5.6% for a condominium. The gap comes mostly from water pricing, which moved from $337 to $486 per dwelling. Keep that last phrase in mind, per dwelling: a duplex pays it twice. Property taxes and the true cost of a first purchase fill in the picture.

The school tax is a separate bill, at the single provincial rate of $0.07899 per $100 of adjusted standardised assessment for 2026-2027, down from $0.08423 the year before, with a basic exemption on the first $25,000.

What gets verified in Laval and nowhere else

The planning by-law has changed. Since November 2022, the Code de l’urbanisme, by-law CDU-1, replaces the old L-2000 zoning by-law, the L-9500 subdivision by-law, the L-9501 construction by-law and seven others. Zoning is now organised by types of milieux rather than by classic zones. A sheet for each address can be consulted in the City’s Info-règlements portal. A zoning document dated before 2022 no longer proves anything.

Flood zones. Laval is an island, ringed by the Rivière des Prairies and the Rivière des Mille Îles. The flood elevations the City applies come from a study completed in 2014 and approved by the Government of Quebec. The provincial regulatory framework, however, was modernised and came into force on March 1, 2026, with four intensity classes, from low to very high. The first set of new generation maps covers precisely the Rivière des Mille Îles and the Rivière des Prairies, but its publication, planned for August 1, 2026, was postponed by Quebec. A waterfront property is therefore bought knowing that the map covering it may change, with effects on insurance, financing and the right to rebuild.

The certificate of location and the inspection. Demand a current certificate, issued after the most recent work, and read the pre-purchase inspection guide. If you are buying for the schools, verify the actual catchment for the address rather than a neighbourhood’s reputation: see school districts and property values.

The market, as it is measured

According to APCIQ statistics reported for August 2026, Laval recorded 255 sales, down 20% year over year, against 1,514 active listings, up 10%. The median price stood at $642,750 for a single-family home and $449,000 for a condominium. These are measurements of the past, not forecasts, and a Laval median says nothing about the value of one specific address.

If you are looking at an income property instead, read buying a triplex in Laval and investing in Laval. My Laval page gathers the rest.

Targeting one sector in particular in Laval? Write to me: we look at the zoning, the flood elevations and the tax account for the address before drafting the offer.