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VANCOUVER – While they may have similar economies and geographies as their "twin" U.S. counterparts, Toronto, Winnipeg and Halifax have much stronger housing markets than their American peers, a new real estate survey shows.

The Century 21 Canada report released Tuesday said while prices are higher in Toronto than its Chicago twin, and in Winnipeg compared to its Minneapolis/St. Paul counterparts, the Canadian housing markets have more stability.

The same goes for Halifax, even though its prices are lower by comparison, than its Boston twin.

The picture is more mixed for Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver and their twin U.S. cities of Washington, Houston and Seattle.

"National capitals Ottawa and Washington, D.C., oil centres Calgary and Houston and West Coast ports Vancouver and Seattle have price trends reflective of their economic and geographic similarities," Century 21 Canada president Don Lawby stated.

"However, when you compare business centres Toronto and Chicago, Midwest hubs Winnipeg and Minneapolis and East Coast centres Halifax and Boston, the Canadian cities are doing much better than their American twins."

For instance, the survey show prices are significantly higher and the market much stronger in Toronto than in Chicago as of the end of March same day cash advance.

In Toronto, the average price fell four per cent to $394,099, while in Chicago the average price fell 34 per cent to US$249,901.

It also took an average of 37 days to sell a house in Toronto, compared to 168 days in Chicago.

In Winnipeg, the average price increased three per cent to $209,628, whereas in Minneapolis and St. Paul the average price fell 24 per cent to US$148,317 and 36 per cent to US$105,858 respectively.

The average price of a home in Halifax rose seven per cent to $282,499, compared to a 28 per cent drop in Boston to US$394,550.

Length of time to sell a house was similar in the two cities.

Housing prices moved one per cent higher Ottawa and three per cent lower in Washington. It also took more than twice as long to sell a home in Washington.

Calgary home prices are significantly higher than Houston, but selling times are shorter.

That said, Calgary also has greater price declines than Houston, or an 11 per cent drop compared to four cent, the survey showed.

Average prices were $380,737 in Calgary in March compared with US$200,233 in Houston.

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When Andrew Reid was growing up he was faced with a unique problem – his father was the famous pollster Angus Reid.

"I think I was a little more confused than the average kid," he says. "You have to imagine driving to the cottage with a guy who knows everything. I don’t mean that as a criticism. But Angus is good at everything he does, and I’m this kid sitting in the back seat wondering what he’ll do with his own life."

Angus Reid does throw a big shadow.

Starting from scratch in a one-man office above a Winnipeg 7-Eleven store in the early 1980s, he built a market research empire with thousands of employees and offices around the world.

Just as George Gallup pioneered the research industry by sending interrogators with notebooks from door to door, Reid revolutionized the market research business by replacing the notebook with the telephone.

At the beginning, citizens were flattered to vent their opinions on everything from carbonated water to federal politics, and Angus Reid became a household name. But in the late 1990s, Reid sensed the industry’s upward climb was slowing.

Cellphones, fax machines and answering services were multiplying and refusal rates from irritated citizens were eroding the credibility of opinion surveys.

In 2000, Reid stepped off the elevator at the top floor and handed the business to the Paris-based firm Ipsos for $100 million.

His company became Ipsos-Reid and Angus, at the age of 52, went home with $30 million in a sack.

Not an easy act to follow.

Andrew Reid says he didn’t want to become some half-baked version of his dad.

"I always loved art and design, and it was different from my dad’s area of expertise. So I poked around with video games and 3-D and studied at Vancouver Film School. Email, websites, search engines – the world was evolving quickly and I was learning to use digital technology as a tool for reaching out to people."

In those days, every company was mounting a storefront on the Internet – and Andrew was good at building smart-looking websites. In the spring of 2000 he hired three art school cronies and incorporated a new Vancouver company called Vision Critical. But the dotcom craze had just bottomed out and it was not a good time to be starting a tech company.

"We were running as hard as we could just to stay in one place. Some weeks I had to make payroll out of my own pocket."

Andrew felt that the market research industry wasn’t taking advantage of the digital revolution fast online cash advance.

"Virtual reality has enormous potential," he says.

"And no one was taking advantage of it. I was thinking – what if we built a virtual store and used it for product testing? Retailers and manufacturers were already spending a fortune on real stores of bricks and mortar to test products. Why couldn’t we develop the same consumer feedback for a lot less money with a 3-D virtual store?"

His father Angus looked at Andrew’s concept and liked it. Angus says, "I knew he was really onto something. I thought it had huge potential."

At this point Angus had been retired for four years and was restless.

"I’m not the type of guy who’s happy to relax and play golf. I need a challenge, and I didn’t have one. Andrew was arguing that we could reinvent the market research business by using the Internet instead of the telephone, and that appealed to me.

"So I volunteered to buy into the company and become its CEO."

With Andrew’s Web-based market research ideas and Angus’ financial leverage, the company began to grow like a science project. Its most successful product quickly became the "custom online panel."

What’s a custom online panel?

"It takes a bit of explaining," says Andrew.

"When we started, no one knew what an online panel was. People in the research business didn’t even know what it was. We’d explain it to marketing guys in big international companies and they’d give us a blank look."

An online panel is like a focus group, except there are thousands, or tens of thousands of members sitting out there in cyberspace.

Members are usually given an incentive of some kind (e.g., Aeroplan points) for participating in surveys. Vision Critical provides the software, Web hosting and research advice to help companies set up their own panels and divide them into groups that represent the diverse segments of society.

"The software is simple," says Andrew.

"It takes about an hour to learn how to use it."

Angus Reid says Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates took the modern office – the secretary, the filing cabinet, the typewriter – and put it all inside a desktop computer.

He says Vision Critical is doing the same thing with market research.

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