Home prices depreciate in 17 states over the past year, while Wyoming, Utah, Alabama and North Carolina Show Gains and the rest continue to have stable home values and a half dozen others even showed moderate price growth, according to the most recent analysis of repeat sales by the First American LoanPerformance.

Although most states 33 in total saw at least modest price appreciation in the past years, the trend has already been reversed in some states. Prices have been falling for two months in New York, for example. But the state still makes LoanPerformance's list of 27 states where prices are up between 5 and 10 percent, because all of the gains made in the last year have been erased.

The observations were included in an announcement of the release of the First American;s September 2007 LoanPerformance Home Price Index(HPI).

An estimate by a recent First American CoreLogic report cited that 247 of 381 metropolitan areas tracked are found not to be keeping pace with inflation while in some areas home prices are falling.

Prices were falling in 88 markets, and appreciating a less than 3 percent in 159 others, according to First American CoreLogic's fourth quarter Risk Monitor report. With inflation averaging around 3 percent, homeowners whose properties appreciate at a slower rate experience a decline in value in real terms.

Many of the top 30 metro areas LoanPerformance says experienced price declines during the past year also show a higher-than-average number of foreclosure filings, according to the most recent numbers from data aggregator RealtyTrac Inc.

Riverside-San Bernardino, for example, had the third-highest rate of foreclosure filings per household in the nation -- one filing per 43 homes -- according to RealtyTrac. The rate of foreclosure filings per household exceeded the national average of one filing per 196 homes in Phoenix, Miami, L.A., Orlando, Tampa, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Miami and Atlanta.

Metro areas where prices fell in the last year but the rate of third-quarter foreclosure filings was below the national average included Boston, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Philadelphia.

Foreclosure filings include default notices, notices of auction sales and bank repossessions, and the number of filings may exceed the number of homes in foreclosure because some properties are subjected to more than one filing.