The price of a typical home in the Seattle-Tacoma area, according to the national S&P/Case-Shiller index, continued in the same downward direction in February it's been heading since the summer. The index, which ties today's prices to a standard established in Jan. 2000, showed a 2.7 percent decline over the same month a year ago.

Most of the other 19 U.S. markets, however, saw far worse drops. Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas all saw price declines of more than 20 percent. Only Charlotte, N.C., saw appreciation, at 1.5 percent.

Here's a look at how the Seattle-Tacoma area has been trending in the last several months, according to the index:

February: -2.7 percent
January: - 1.3 percent
December: 0.5 percent
November: 1.8 percent
October: 3.3 percent
September: 4.7 percent
August: 5.7 percent
July: 6.9 percent

For those looking for a longer-range perspective, the index also shows that a typical house in the Seattle-Tacoma market has gained 79.9 percent since 2000.

A new list from Forbes ranks the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area as having among the worst homeowner debt, leaning heavily on the percentage of mortgages with a second mortgage or home equity loan.

Now that the market, banks and real estate industry are dealing with the many ripple effects of over-lending risky products to borrowers who mostly shouldn't have been borrowing -- aka the subprime debacle -- attention is turning to another recent phenomenon: saddling a first mortgage with another, smaller one.

The magazine says 26 percent of mortgages in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area have a second mortgage or home equity loan, putting it No. 13 in the country. You can find the whole Forbes story here.

Problem arise when a home saddled with two loans begins to lose value and can't be sold or refinanced, because the house is worth less than the combined loans. Anyone concerned about such scenarios in Pierce County?