The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area continued to see housing prices drop in May, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index released today. This time around the year-over-year decline came in at 6.3 percent. As you can see below, the newest numbers top off 11 months of of slowing gains and then decreases in the index for the region. (Month-to-month, prices dropped 0.5 percent -- below the 0.7 percent increase seen March to April.)

All 20 areas followed by the index also saw annual price drops, but some are pretty incredible compared to the ones we’re seeing here. Miami: -28.3 percent; Phoenix: -26.5 percent; Las Vegas: -28.4 percent. Perhaps year-round sunshine isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

By another measure, this area is outperforming some previously hot markets and shows values here are holding up stronger than elsewhere. The index ties the price of a typical house, and its appreciation, to what that house was worth in January 2000. In the Seattle-Tacoma area, the value of a typical house has grown 78.7 percent in the last 7 1/2 years. A few other areas have seen prices decrease so fast that appreciation for the same time period has fallen below this region’s. San Francisco’s price growth for the same time period, for example, is 62.7 percent, Phoenix’s is 57.3 percent and Chicago’s comes in at 50 percent. Each had bigger year-over-year price drops than our area in May.

Nationwide, the 20 metro areas tracked by the Case-Shiller index fell by a combined record 15.8 percent compared to May 2007. Here’s a look at year-over-year changes in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area:

May: -6.3 percent
April: -4.9 percent
March: -4.4 percent
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