Luxury Real Estate Market in Montreal: The Data

Your property is worth $900,000 and you are wondering whether it belongs to a different market than your neighbour’s at $600,000. The answer is yes, but not for the reasons usually given. This segment stands apart through a measurable constraint: fewer buyers, more months of inventory, and fewer similar sales to establish a price. Here are the figures and their date.

In the statistics, the upper range has no fixed threshold

The APCIQ residential barometer, published every quarter, contains a table 3 titled “Conditions du marché par gammes de prix,” market conditions by price range. It splits each territory into five bands and gives, for each one, the inventory, the sales and the number of months of inventory.

In the second quarter of 2026, for the single family home, the upper band does not start at the same price everywhere: $950,000 in the Montreal metropolitan area, $1,220,000 on the island of Montreal, $930,000 in Laval, $2,930,000 in sector 9, central Montreal.

There is no million dollar threshold, then. The boundary is relative to the local market and recalculated every quarter: three months earlier, Laval’s was at $920,000 and the island of Montreal’s at $1,200,000. The APCIQ does not publish in that document the method that sets them.

The practical consequence. Your property belongs to this segment according to the city, not according to an absolute figure. A $1,000,000 house is in the upper band in Laval. In sector 9, it is only in the second of the five bands.

How many sales above the threshold, in Montreal and in Laval

Here is table 3 for the single family home, upper band, over the twelve months ending in the second quarter of 2026. Sales and inventory are monthly averages over the twelve months, and months of inventory is their quotient.

In Sainte-Dorothée, four sales a month above $1,120,000, roughly fifty over twelve months, for the whole sector and all house configurations combined. That is the pool your comparables have to come out of.

Months of inventory, the signature of the segment

The same table shows the spread inside a single territory. Laval, single family home, same twelve months:

The number of months of inventory goes from 2.2 to 7.6 between the second band and the last: roughly three and a half times as long to clear the stock, at the observed pace of sales.

The APCIQ sets the interpretation thresholds itself: below 8 months of inventory the market favours sellers, between 8 and 10 it is balanced, beyond 10 it favours buyers. Laval’s five bands are therefore all classified as a seller’s market, but the last one is the only one coming close to the line. In Sainte-Dorothée, it crosses it: 10.3 months, a buyer’s market, while the three other bands where sales were recorded remain classified as a seller’s market. Same sector, same quarter, two markets.

What time on market says, and what it does not

Watch out for a common confusion. The APCIQ writes, about the number of months of inventory, that “this measure is different from the average selling time.” The first figure describes how the stock clears at the pace of sales; the average number of days on the market counts the days between the signing of the brokerage contract and the sale.

And here is what I did not find: neither the barometer nor the APCIQ monthly release publishes time on market by price range. Selling times are released by property category and by geographic sector, never by price band. Nobody can quote you an official time on market for Laval’s upper segment, then.

What does exist is time on market by territory, and it rises with the local price level. In the second quarter of 2026, for the single family home: 32 days in the Montreal metropolitan area, 30 days in Laval, 41 days on the island of Montreal, 48 days in Sainte-Dorothée where the median price was $775,500, and 64 days in sector 9 where it was $1,980,000. That is not a statistic by price band, and I will not present it as one. For the selling timeline, see how long a sale actually takes.

Pricing in the upper range when comparable sales are missing

This is where the small number of transactions becomes your problem. The comparables method starts from similar concluded sales and adjusts, and the way to audit it is set out in the article on real estate comparables. What changes when the sample is thin is written in the Manuel d’évaluation foncière du Québec, the province’s property assessment manual, published by the Quebec government.

The Manuel says first that the comparison method “produces excellent results” in a homogeneous environment “where sales are numerous enough to allow statistically conclusive analysis.” Then it names the limit: “The main difficulty encountered in applying this method is the scarcity, if not the absence, of transactions involving comparable properties.” It even puts a figure on the need: using statistical modelling requires “a sample of at least 50 to 60 observations.” Sainte-Dorothée’s upper band produces about fifty a year, all configurations combined.

What happens then. The Manuel is explicit: comparison is to be preferred where comparable sales are numerous enough, and “another method must be considered for the remaining assessment units, in particular those of a unique or uncommon character.” That other method is the cost approach, which “may be the only one detailed enough” for constructions that are hard to compare with others, “such as highly individualized luxury residences.”

The Ordre des évaluateurs agréés du Québec, Quebec’s order of chartered appraisers, describes the same logic: the chartered appraiser compares the results of the three methods, cost, comparison and income, then keeps the value obtained by the one “offering the highest degree of accuracy for the kind of property.” That is why two competent professionals reach two different figures on the same property: they do not weight the same methods, because the data do not settle it. Before a meeting, the home value estimator gives an order of magnitude, nothing more.

Why the assessment roll drifts further in this segment

The same Manuel documents a bias few owners hear about. In describing the residuals of a regression model used in municipal assessment, it writes that this “reflects a fairly systematic reality in property assessment, namely that low end properties are generally overestimated by the regression equation, while high end residences are, on the contrary, underestimated.” Hence the instruction that follows from it: avoid grouping high end and low end properties in the same analysis segment.

That bias bears on the statistical model, and no source consulted puts a figure on the average gap between the roll and market value by price band. The roll answers a different question from yours in any case, since it reflects the market at an earlier reference date. For the procedure and the deadlines, see contesting your municipal assessment.

Publishing a sale price: the rule does not change with the price

A belief circulates that high value transactions get published more freely, sign and figure included. They do not. The OACIQ advertising guideline, section 7.2, updated on June 17, 2026, calls it a prohibited practice to advertise the sale price of a property or any percentage from which the amount can be deduced. Nor may the broker state the price initially asked as entered in the brokerage contract. Even with both parties’ agreement, publishing the price before the deed is signed “must remain exceptional.”

The guideline on the protection of personal information, section 7.2.4, completes it: until the deed is published in the Registre foncier, the price is confidential, and the comparable sheets given to a client must be masked of anything identifying the seller. No price band escapes it. The detail is in the article on the list price and the sold price.

Frequently asked questions

My house is worth $950,000 in Laval. Am I in the upper range? Within the meaning of the APCIQ table for the second quarter of 2026, yes: Laval’s upper band starts at $930,000. That boundary moved from $920,000 to $930,000 from one quarter to the next, so it will be different again in the next barometer.

How much longer does it take to sell in this segment? No official source publishes time on market by price band. What is published by price range is the number of months of inventory: 7.6 months in Laval’s upper band against 2.2 in the $310,000 to $470,000 band.

Why do two brokers give me two very different prices? Because the number of comparable sales is low, and the Manuel d’évaluation foncière itself acknowledges that the limits of the comparison method “depend on the number of sales and their representativeness.” Ask for the list of sales used, their dates and the adjustments, not only the final figure.

The municipal assessment is well below what I am being told. Is that normal? Two causes add up: the roll’s reference date is earlier than the current market, and the Manuel notes the underestimation of high end residences by regression models. That does not set your selling price.

To go further, read how to read Montreal and Laval market data and the method for auditing comparables.

Want to know which band of the barometer your property sits in? Write to me. You will get the sales used, the number of months of inventory for your price range and the date of the data, in writing.

Georges Matar

Residential Real Estate Broker · RE/MAX DU CARTIER INC.

Contact Georges