It seems that almost half of the luxury home purchases in Montreal are made by foreign buyers, which has come as a bit of a surprise to analysts who assumed the Canadian city didn't have such a substantial share of international owners.

Roughly half the buyers of luxury homes in Montreal are foreign, Sotheby’s International Realty Canada estimates, after having combed through its own sales data about top-tier dwellings.

“Montreal was a bit of a shocker,” chief executive officer Ross McCredie said. “People don’t think of Montreal as having a large proportion of international buyers.”

Sotheby’s decided to conduct a study of Canada’s luxury home market after Mr. McCredie noticed that people were still defining luxury homes as those costing more than $1-million, which he thought was out of date.

Read More on theglobeandmail.com