Motel Raphael closed in 2009 after years as a “no-tell motel” and notorious crime magnet known for its hourly rates. Half of the 75-room structure was condemned and demolished. What remains is covered by plywood and defaced by layers of graffiti. It’s hard to imagine the property — located next to an on-ramp to a major highway at the foot of a busy commercial/industrial street — as prime condominium territory. But last month, developers asked for zoning changes that will allow for a 200-unit condo project on this land in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood.

It’s a similar story in a derelict part of western downtown, where the site of the former Seville Theatre, now a favourite gathering point for taggers and panhandlers, is being transformed into mid-priced condos. The project’s 450 units recently sold out in hours.

Welcome to Montreal in 2011, which some wags are dubbing the Year of the Condo.

Montreal’s real estate market, long an also-ran when compared with Toronto’s and Vancouver’s, has been picking up steam in recent years — another sign of Montreal’s robust economy and recovery from the recession. When the Brookings Institute ranked 150 cities based on their rebound from the global financial crisis in November, Montreal ranked 27th, ahead of Toronto (63) and Vancouver (92).

With one of the highest percentages of renters in Canada, Montreal has many potential condo buyers. These days, with interest rates low and consumer confidence strong, many are looking for ways to enter the real estate market.

Long popular with empty nesters and retirees, condos in Montreal are increasingly attractive to first-time buyers who see the benefits of home ownership over renting, according to a recent report by RE/MAX Canada. In fact, in 2010, condos represented 47% of all residential sales in Montreal, up from 45% the previous year. In addition, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. has said that it expects Montreal condo housing starts in 2010 to match the record (of just more than 10,000 units) set in 2004.

Montreal also registered the third-largest jump in home sales in November (8.2%) vs a month earlier, behind only Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. And more construction is on the way. In November, contractors in Montreal took out $600.7 million worth of building permits — a 17.7% jump from October, Statistics Canada reports. Across Canada, there was an 11.2% drop in building permits.

But while home ownership in Montreal remains much cheaper than in Canada’s most expensive markets of Vancouver and Toronto, a recent Royal Bank of Canada report says: “[It] has risen substantially in the past decade and has become increasingly more expensive compared to the national average.”

But with interest rates expected to rise and Ottawa tightening rules on mortgages in March, some people are wondering if the condo boom will turn to bust by yearend. IE