I believe what the National Post did, in the above projections, is say that, post-bubble, most US cities ended up at price levels that were 54% above their 1998 levels. So they took the same 54% increase and applied it to Calgary housing prices from 1998.
There are many US cities that have experienced quite substantial plunges, much more dramatic than the graph shown for the US as a whole. For example, some segments of the San Diego housing market (low end condos, I think) have plunged up to 50% from their peak levels.
We are actually lucky in Calgary that housing prices had peaked quite some time ago. Vancouver prices had continue to rise until this May and held onto those levels through the summer, but are now coming down quite hard. The CMHC is going to end up holding a big, burning bag of smelly and steaming Vancouver mortgages. I fear this will have national ramifications.
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