Eleven cities hit new lows in home prices in December [Updated]

February 22, 2011 | 7:08 am

Home prices in the nation's largest metropolitan regions continued their descent in December.

The widely followed Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Index, which tracks the real estate market in 20 major U.S. cities, showed that prices dropped 2.4% in December from the same month a year earlier, the third consecutive year-over-year decline.

The index fell 1% in December from November, marking the fifth consecutive monthly decline.

"Despite improvements in the overall economy, housing continues to drift lower and weaker," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor’s index committee.

Eleven cities posted new lows since home prices peaked in 2006 and 2007.

Those cities were Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Detroit; Las Vegas; Miami; New York; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Seattle and Tampa, Fla. Nine of those cities had posted lows with November's report as well -- New York and Phoenix are the new members of this group.

On a month-over-month basis, only Washington eked out a gain, up 0.3%.

California's coastal cities have also held up a bit better than other parts of the country during the renewed home-price decline, though they are starting to show more weakness than in past months. Month over month, Los Angeles was down 1.3%, San Diego fell 0.7%, and San Francisco dropped 1.0%.

Standard & Poor's also released its U.S. National Home Price Index, which is a broader measure of national home prices released quarterly. That index fell 3.9% in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with the prior quarter, and 4.1% from the fourth quarter 2009.

[Update 10:10 a.m.: In a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning, Robert Shiller, co-creator of the index and a professor at Yale University, said a home-price drop in “realâ€