Montrose

Montrose exists for one primary reason: Trail. It was founded on a plateau above the Columbia River in the 1940s specifically for smelter workers looking to get out of the valley smoke, and that identity as a bedroom community holds firm today. If you’re trying to understand the market here, you start and end with its relationship to the regional employment hub just seven kilometers down the road. This isn’t a destination town; it’s a quiet, stable place for people who work at Teck, the Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital, or FortisBC to come home to.

The lifestyle is exactly what you’d expect from a village of just over 1,000 people. It’s a commuter town with an older demographic. The median age is 44.8, and with nearly a quarter of the population over 65, it’s clear many who settled here during their working years have stayed put. The housing stock is a direct reflection of this stability. It’s almost entirely single-detached homes (97.7%), many dating back to the mid-century. The town itself is built out on a plateau with a constrained land area of just 1.46 square kilometers, leaving no room for significant expansion. This isn’t a market for speculative flips or rapid appreciation; it’s defined by long-term homeowners and very little turnover. The physical geography puts a hard cap on new supply, which keeps the market exceptionally predictable.

From a lending perspective, the economic picture is a double-edged sword. The positives are a solid median household income of $94,000 and a low 4.4% unemployment rate. But the concentration risk is impossible to ignore. Beyond a gas station and a restaurant, the local economy is non-existent. The town’s prosperity is directly tied to the health of major employers in Trail. While healthcare and retail provide some local employment, manufacturing—driven by the smelter—still accounts for over 21% of all jobs. A significant downturn there would be felt immediately and deeply in Montrose, and there’s no diverse local economy to cushion that kind of blow.

For us, that profile warrants a conservative approach. We see Montrose as a steady, if economically narrow, community. It’s a reliable place for a first mortgage for a buyer with a secure job in Trail or for a retiree looking to pull out some equity, but its limited growth potential and dependency on a single employment centre require a cautious valuation. Our maximum loan-to-value here is 60.0%. It’s a reflection of the town’s solid, predictable character and its primary economic vulnerability. We’re comfortable lending here, but our exposure will always be managed in line with the fundamentals of a classic one-industry town.