Côte-Saint-Luc, measured rather than described
Official designation: city. Côte-Saint-Luc covers 6.8 km² in the Montréal region and counts 37,875 residents, which places it 31st in the province.
For scale: the Montréal RCM groups 16 municipalities totalling 2,170,228 residents. Côte-Saint-Luc accounts for 1.7% of them.
There’s no storefront in Côte-Saint-Luc. The file gets built by phone, by video and through online document exchange: that’s how brokering works now. The glossary covers the vocabulary if you need it.
At 5,562 per km², this is 1.6 times the average density of the Montréal region. For a file, that often means a condominium building, and therefore a second layer of lender verification.
Population and land area: Quebec municipal directory (MAMH open data). Exact figures and the date they were retrieved are listed at the bottom of this page.
I also build files in the surrounding area: Pointe-Claire, Dollard-des-Ormeaux and Montréal.
Transfer duty in Côte-Saint-Luc
In Côte-Saint-Luc, the transfer duty, the “welcome tax”, is calculated in brackets on the higher of the price paid and the standardized municipal assessment. With Quebec’s base schedule for 2026 (0.5% up to $62,900, 1% up to $315,000, 1.5% above), a $350,000 purchase comes to about $3,360 and a $500,000 purchase to about $5,610. Côte-Saint-Luc may have adopted higher brackets above $500,000: check its schedule before setting your reserve.
The bill arrives by mail weeks or months after closing. It does not go through the notary and cannot be financed in the mortgage: keep the amount in your reserve after the purchase. For your price, use the purchase costs tool.
Building the file, then shopping it
A file follows the same path everywhere in Quebec: a fifteen- to thirty-minute call, assembling the records, shopping the lenders whose criteria fit, your decision on offers compared on the same basis, then signing at your notary. I calculate your ratios before putting your name forward, because a refused application leaves a mark on the credit file. The five steps and the usual timing are detailed on the How it works page.
The document list, complete from the start
Three blocks of records, plus a fourth depending on the property: income (pay stubs, employment letter, notices of assessment, or returns and financial statements for a self-employed borrower), assets (three months of complete statements tracing the down payment), and debts (cards, lines, loans, with the monthly payment). For a condo, the syndicate’s documents are added and come from the syndicate, not from you. The full list and the reason for each item are in the guide Prepare a purchase file.
Short answers to the usual questions
Can you promise me a yes? No. No. The decision sits with the lender. What I can do is put your file where it has the strongest odds.
Does a condominium complicate the file? It lengthens it more than it complicates it. The lender wants documents that belong to the syndicate, so you depend on how fast they answer.
Is the posted branch rate the one I’ll get? Not necessarily. The posted rate is a starting point; the rate granted depends on the file and can differ between lenders for the same person.
Does my current institution have an edge? Not structurally. Loyalty weighs little against ratios. A lender you’ve never dealt with can easily make the better offer.
Does location narrow the choice of lenders? It can shade it. A few institutions restrict by area, financed value or lot size. You work around that by submitting to the right ones rather than to all of them.
Do we have to meet in person? No. I have no office in Côte-Saint-Luc and the file is built entirely at a distance. That’s how brokering works now. Go through the contact page.