Home prices, on average, ended August at $205,000, an almost 4% drop from last year, according to new figures compiled by Lender Processing Services (LPS), Jacksonville, Fla.
LPS noted that although values increased during the spring, prices fell on a sequential basis during the summer, declining 1% from July to August. LPS tracks values through a proprietary home price index, or HPI.
Kyle Lundstedt, managing director of the applied analytics division at the firm, said the outlook for early September wasn't much better. LPS is projecting another 1.1% decline in values.
Since residential home values peaked in June 2006, LPS' HPI is down 28.3%.
Of the 13,500 zip codes tracked in the index, only 5% experienced price increases in August.
LPS said average prices declined during August in all but three of the 26 largest metropolitan statistical areas, with Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis remaining unchanged.
The MSAs that had the greatest fall in values during August were in California, Arizona and Nevada.
Since the beginning of 2011, Atlanta (-10.5%) and Phoenix (-5.2%) had the worst price declines, while Detroit (10.8%) and Pittsburgh (4.5%) experienced the greatest rise in home values.
