Oregon Public Broadcasting

For the first time since the national housing slump began, Portland and Seattle are showing a drop in home prices, according to a national report out Tuesday.

For months, Seattle, Portland, and Charlotte, North Carolina, have bucked the national trend of declining housing prices. Now, Charlotte is the only city still showing gains. That’s according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Schiller Index. S & P vice president, Maureen Maitland, says the numbers show that the big Northwest cities are not immune to the national trend.

Maitland: “Portland and Seattle both finally entered negative territory this month. For these two markets, they both held up very well, they both have good strong economies, we just have to see if this is a short-term decline downturn for them, or if they’re going to continue down over the next couple months.”

An official with Oregon’s real estate lobby disagrees with the S & P report, saying it is less accurate than their own metrics, which still show modest increases in housing prices.