The trend of home prices declines continues but is moderating indicating that the housing market may be starting to turnaround, according to data released Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price index of 20 major cities fell by 18.1 percent in April from a year earlier. It marked the third straight month the decline was not a record. The index has fallen every month since July 2006.

The 20-city slice of the S&P/Case-Shiller index registered a drop of 0.6 percent from March to April, compared with a 2.2 percent drop in the prior month.

"The pace of decline in residential real estate slowed in April," says David Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. "Thirteen of the 20 metro areas also saw improvement in their annual return compared to that of March."

“The stock market bottomed in March and measures of consumer confidence have turned upward. This report shows that these better spirits are also appearing in the housing market,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the S&P index committee.

Eight of the 20 metros recorded price gains from March, with Dallas posting the largest increase at 1.7 percent, the index showed. Every city except Charlotte, N.C. reported some kind of improvement in their monthly return compared with March.

The 20-city index is off almost 33 percent from its peak in the second quarter of 2006, which means home values are now around 2003-levels.

Hardest hit remain Phoenix, AZ and Las Vegas, NV where home prices have lost more than half their value since their peaks.

Phoenix homes have lost 35.3% of their value over the year, was the worst performing market over that period followed by Las Vegas at 32.2 percent and San Francisco at 28 percent.

Denver prices fell the least over the same period with 4.9 percent drop, followed by Dallas and Boston with 5 percent and 7.7 percent decline respectively.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index monitors repeat sales on a specific group of homes in each city where sales between related parties, such as family members, are excluded.