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Record-breaking residential sales in Greater Montreal continued in April, increasing for a 50th consecutive month, according to the latest numbers from the Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers. But it isn’t just home and condo sales that are booming. Investment in land, retail, hotel, industrial properties and apartment buildings is also picking up.

As analyst Vincent Shirley and co-author Jenny-Kate Sgarbi note in an Altus Group Montreal Flash report released last week, while total sales of investment property across Canada declined last year because of softening markets in Vancouver and Toronto, here in Montreal, investment volume jumped 18 per cent, to the tune of $6.5 billion in sales.

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The bulk of investment dollars went into apartment buildings in 2018, Shirley said, with the value of sales increasing 22 per cent compared with 2017 figures, to a total of $2.1 billion or about one-third of all real estate investment activity in the Montreal area. But the most notable increase, Shirley said, was in the industrial sector, which posted the largest absolute year-over-year dollar increase, rising $474 million to $1.2 billion.