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If you’re thinking of getting into the market to buy a house, you should know: Waiting could cost you. Prices in Montreal have been rising steadily during the past few years, and the momentum doesn’t seem to be slowing.

According to Royal Lepage’s most recent House Price Survey, prices were up 5.9 per cent this fall over last year in Greater Montreal and seven per cent in the city centre.

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While that doesn’t sound like much relative to the double-digit increases seen in Vancouver and Toronto in recent years, it’s no chump change. The median price of a home in Montreal centre is now $532,026, which is $35,000 more than last year. In the Greater Montreal area, it’s $418,731, or a difference of $23,000.

In other words, if you’ve been putting off buying a house in the last year or so, you now could be paying tens of thousands more for the same type of property.

For many Montrealers, the logical solution is to look to the suburbs for cheaper housing. Not surprisingly, the exodus is now resulting in record sales and higher prices there, too. In Montreal East, prices in the third quarter of 2019 increased by 8.5 per cent year-over-year, and the price of two-storey homes in the region jumped 11.3 per cent.