Done!

Papers are signed, I have more keys than I know what to do with, and I am, as of today, legally responsible for a really nice duplex in NDG. Woot! I can't wait to move in. Now if I can just get all the paperwork from the Vancouver sale and the all the money transactions to be completed, I will be one happy and blessed woman. Can't say this transaction was difficult or complicated, especially when I was surrounded by very competent folks. My real estate agents rock, my notary rocks, and even my banker rocks!

Now I just have to invest in a filing cabinet to store all the paperwork I've been accumulating for the past few months.

One piece of paper that I am not looking forward to receiving is the invoice from the city of Montreal for the privilege of buying a property. Montreal charges a "welcome tax" to home owners, and apparently not just first-time buyers. Every time you buy a property in town you pay this tax. My bills will be around $4,275, not cheap. I was curious to find out how this tax was used by the city, because honestly, Montreal also charges you also quite a bit of money every year for municipal taxes. A quick search of the city's web site returned nothing. I then turned to my trusted Google. And I found this really interesting description on the web site for the city of Hampstead:

The phrase "welcome tax" has a history which came about for reasons other than a "greeting" tax for new residents. In short, in 1976 a new method of municipal financing was proposed by a judge named Jean Bienvenue and, when adopted, became known as "la taxe de Bienvenue". Because "bienvenue" translates to "welcome" in English, the tax became known as the "welcome tax".

Interesting. But what exactly does this new method of financing finance? That I could not find, only that this tax will need to be paid within the next 60 days.

Welcome!