How Boston's housing market stacks up

Single-family house prices in the Boston metropolitan area have dropped 3.7 percent over the past year, according to the S&P/ Case-Shiller home price index, released earlier this week, which measures price changes in 20 large metropolitan areas.

Boston falls somewhere in the middle. Detroit's prices have plunged 11 percent and Tampa's nearly 8 percent. Countering the general trend, Atlanta house prices are up 1.6 percent and Seattle's up almost 8 percent.

Most interesting is that Boston's index indicates an improvement. That isn't surprising given that the metropolitan area housing market went into the downturn in April 2006, earlier than other cities.

"Boston has shown improvement since the beginning of the year, where its annual growth rate measured minus 5.5 percent," Standard & Poor's said in its press release. Translation: the local market is still in decline but the size of that decline has tapered off.

More data will be required before declaring that an upturn is under way. And the mortgage crisis is a wild card.