Dallas-Fort Worth home prices fall only 1.6% in latest measure

Dallas-Fort Worth home prices fell by the smallest percentage in almost two years in the latest housing market snapshot.

D-FW prices were down only 1.6 percent in July from a year earlier in the closely watched S&P/Case-Shiller home price index.

And local home prices were up from June to July, the fifth consecutive month of increases. The July figure is also the highest point in the home price index since last September.

The small annual decline in North Texas home prices is a big improvement from earlier in the year, when the Case-Shiller index showed that prices were falling by more than 5 percent from 2008.

The just-released data is more proof that home price declines bottomed in North Texas in early 2009.

"The rate of annual decline in home price values continues to decelerate, and we now seem to be witnessing some sustained monthly increases across many markets," Standard & Poor's David Blitzer said Tuesday in the report. "These figures continue to support an indication of stabilization in national real estate values."

Analysts are keeping an eye on how the housing market reacts later this year when a popular federal home buying tax credit expires.

Nationwide home prices in July were still 13.3 percent below where they were a year earlier. But the index has been higher for three consecutive months, a strong indication that home prices have bottomed out.

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