Seattle's home prices slip in August

Seattle's home prices have begun to decline, although on an annual basis they're still outperforming major metropolitan areas, according to the monthly S&P/Case-Shiller home price indexes released today.

Based on the prices through August of single-family homes in 20 of the nation's major metro areas, the overall index shows the eighth consecutive month of negative year-over-year returns and the 21st consecutive month of decelerating returns from the previous month.

Seattle showed an August-July price decline of 0.1 percent coming off a July-June gain of 0.2 percent. Year-over-year, Seattle's prices grew 5.7 percent, the highest among the metro areas. San Diego's values, by comparison, dropped 8.3 percent for the year ending in August.