Home Prices Up for Seventh Straight Month

New York, NY, Feb. 23, 2010--Home prices rose for the seventh straight month in December, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index released Tuesday.

The index rose 0.3 percent from November to December, to 145.87. The index was off 3.1 percent from December last year, nearly matching analysts' estimates that it would fall by 3.2 percent.

Only five of 20 cities in the index showed declines from November to December. The index is now up more than 3 percent from its bottom in May, but still 30 percent below its May 2006 peak.

On a quarterly basis, U.S. home prices fell 2.5 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2008.

The Case-Shiller indexes measure home price increases and decreases relative to prices in January 2000. The base reading is 100; so a reading of 150 would mean that home prices increased 50 percent since the beginning of the index.