Tampa-St. Pete improves in home price rankings

The Tampa Bay area was seventh from the bottom in home price rankings, taking in 20 major cities across the United States.

The S&P/Case Shiller Index for December showed Tampa area prices falling 13.3 percent from a year earlier. Miami ranked in the group last with a 17.5-percent price decline, followed by Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles and Detroit.

It marks an improvement for Tampa, which three months earlier, in September, posted the biggest price decline among the 20 cities. The only price gainers on the December index were Portland, Seattle and Charlotte.

Nationally, the average price decline was about 9 percent, which makes this current housing slump worse than the last one in 1991, Case Shiller said. Prices fell 2.8 percent during the worst moments of the last housing recession.   

- James Thorner, Times staff writer