Home Prices Dropping Slower

With real estate, it's worth celebrating when the bleeding is slowing.

For the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale region,, home prices dropped year over yera in June by 13.94%, according to First American CoreLogic Media, which compiles data on the housing market.

That's an improvement over May's year-over-year drop of 16.34%.

Nationally, housing prices fell 7.8 percent in June compared to June of last year, representing the smallest year-over-year decline recorded in 2009.

June's decline was a 0.7-percent improvement over the 8.5 percent decline in May.

Other findings on the national level:

* Month-over-month declines have been moderating in the first half of 2009. Between January and June 2009 home prices improved by 3.3 percent. This is the first time in four years that the spring and summer seasonal price trend exhibited its normal pattern.

* The seasonal improvement in home prices in the first half of 2009 is a positive sign, but it is important to note that a decline in distressed sales, rather than an increase in traditional home sales prices, was responsible for the uptick. If the decline in distressed sales is sustainable, and not simply a result of recent foreclosure moratoriums, this could be the first step toward recovery, which will then be followed by outright price increases that will result in continued upward price trends.

* Nevada (-25.4%) remained the top-ranked state for annual price depreciation barely edging out Florida (-25.1%), which, unlike other hard hit states, is experiencing worsening price declines in 2009. California (-17.0%) continued to improve in June and its depreciation rate is the lowest since October 2007. Arizona (-16.2%) and Illinois (-14.8%) round out the top five states for price declines.

* More than 15.2 million U.S. mortgages, or 32.2 percent of all mortgaged properties, were in negative equity position as of June 2009. June's negative equity share was slightly lower than the 32.5 percent as of the end of March 2009, and it reflects the recent stabilization of home prices.