U.S. home prices improved for the third straight month in July, indicating that the housing markets may be on its way to recovery, a report issued Tuesday.

The prices for the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 major cities rose 1.6 percent from June, the third straight month, to a reading of 143.05. They went up 1.4% in June.

Home prices were still down 13.3 percent from July 2008 but annual declines have tapered off in all 20 cities for the sixth straight month.

"The rate of annual decline in home price values continues to decelerate and we now seem to be witnessing some sustained monthly increases across many of the markets" said David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's.

The index is still about 33 percent below its peak in mid-2006. When prices are falling, consumers still think they should still wait as they can buy later for less.

The 20-city index topnotch was Minneapolis with prices up 4.6 percent, the biggest gain during July. It was followed by San Francisco and Chicago with 3.3 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.

Prices in Las Vegas and Seattle are still falling where the fell 1.1 percent and 0.1 percent respectively.

Las Vegas has become the city hardest hit by foreclosures.

The Case-Shiller indexes measure the movements in home prices increases and decreases with prices in January 2000 as the base with a reading is 100; so a reading of 150 would mean that home prices increased 50 percent since the beginning of the index.