Here's a look at a national housing market measure that tracks prices by quarter: U.S. home prices posted their sharpest first-quarter decline since the government began tracking the data 17 years ago, according to The Associated Press.

The Washington, D.C.-based Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said Thursday that home prices fell 3.1 percent in the first quarter compared with last year. The index also fell 1.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, the largest quarterly price drop on record.

This particular index follows only transactions purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and which meet their conforming guidelines, meaning the loans could be for no more than $417,000 last year. As of Feb. 2008, that figure could go as high as $729,750 in some parts of the country. (The conforming loan limit in Pierce County is $567,500.)

I took a look at the report and Washington saw year-over-year appreciation in the federal index of 2.9 percent, though a quarter-to-quarter drop of 0.38 percent. Several states, in fact, posted modest gains, though there were some notable exceptions, primarily in the areas you would expect: Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona.

And a couple of Washington cities stood out for their house appreciation stats: Wenatchee came in No. 3 (+8 percent) and Yakima No. 17 (+5.7 percent) among the country's top 20 metropolitan areas for year-over-year price increases. The Tacoma area was ranked No. 140 (+1.6 percent), the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area was No. 93 (+2.8 percent) and the Bremerton-Silverdale area was No. 176 (+O.48 percent).

Here's a graphic from the report showing how Washington has tracked in recent quarters: