Home prices post 18.6 percent annual drop in Feb.

Seattle-area home prices fall less than U.S. average

Seattle-area home prices dropped 15.4 percent in February from February 2008, the ninth-smallest decline among the 20 metro areas in the widely followed Case-Shiller index.

Seattle prices fell 1.5 percent in February from January, the fourth-smallest monthly decline among the 20 metro areas.

By comparison, the average 12-month drop among the 20 cities in the index was 18.6 percent, and the average monthly decline was 2.2 percent.

The worst declines continued to be in the Sun Belt, where the real-estate bubble inflated the most, and the economically struggling industrial heartland. The biggest one-month decline, nearly 5 percent, was in Cleveland; Phoenix fell the most over the past 12 months, 35.2 percent.

According to the Case-Shiller data, home prices in Seattle peaked in July 2007; since then, they've fallen 20.9 percent. The 20-city composite index, which peaked a year earlier, is down 30.7 percent since then.