Last updated January 29, 2008 9:32 p.m. PT

November house prices were up from year earlier

But it was also the fourth consecutive month of declines

Seattle-area house prices nudged up in November, compared with a year earlier, while continuing a long march toward negative territory, according to a national index.

Prices rose 1.8 percent from November 2006 -- the smallest increase since February 1996, according to Standard & Poor's S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. Prices declined 1.4 percent from October.

"We're going to go negative," local land-use economist Matthew Gardner predicted.

Seattle-area prices should drop about 5 percent this year, he said. "That will turn around next year, but it's going to be anemic going forward."

Values will hold up better within the city of Seattle than in the metro area, Gardner said Tuesday. "The closer you are to urban centers, the more stable your house values are going to be."

Patrick Newport, U.S. economist for the analysis firm Global Insight, noted that Seattle, Charlotte, N.C., and Portland -- the only three cities with annual S&P increases for November -- all posted gains that were lower than the 4.3 percent annual increase in the Consumer Price Index that month.

Earlier this month, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported that, in December, the median sales prices of houses in Seattle and King County posted their first annual declines this decade. The prices -- $455,975 in Seattle and $435,000 in King County -- were down 1.5 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively, from December 2006.

S&P's index provides a good way to track the course of the housing market because it looks at repeat sales of the same houses, while adjusting for factors such as foreclosures, sales between family members, remodeling, neglect and time between sales. It does not give an actual dollar value.

The Seattle area remains far from the record 8.4-percent annual drop in S&P's 10-city index and the 7.7 percent decline in the 20-city index. Both composites dropped slightly more than 2 percent from October.

"We reached another grim milestone in the housing market in November," Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, said in a news release. He noted that, in addition to the 10-city index, 13 of 20 metropolitan areas also set record low annual growth rates, eight areas and both composite indexes have had more than a year of falling prices, and 14 areas and both composites posted the largest monthly drop on record in November.

Commenting on the national numbers, Newport proclaimed: "House prices are in a freefall."

The annual changes ranged from a drop of 15 percent in Miami to a 2.9 percent increase in Charlotte, which was just ahead of Seattle. Seattle's monthly change was seventh, with declines in all 20 cities, ranging from 0.8 percent in Portland to 3.6 percent in Los Angeles.