Real estate values in much of the Bay Area are continuing to fall, according to a report released Tuesday.

Home values in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and San Mateo counties — dropped 1.9 percent in January from the month before and were down 1.7 percent year over year, according to the latest Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price report.

San Francisco was one of 18 of 20 metro areas with year-over-year declines. The only areas with gains were San Diego, at 0.1 percent, and Washington, at 3.6 percent. Eight metro areas — Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Tampa, Fla. — had year-over-year drops of 6.7 percent or more.

“Keeping with the trends set in late 2010, January brings us weakening home prices with no real hope in sight for the near future,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of SP’s index committee, said in the report.

Pointing to a potential “double dip” for the nation’s real estate market, 11 cities — Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Tampa, Fla. — reached new lows from the market’s peak in 2006 and 2007.

“The housing market recession is not yet over, and none of the statistics are indicating any form of sustained recovery,” Blitzer noted. “At most, we have seen all statistics bounce along their troughs; at

worst, the feared double-dip recession may be materializing.”

Although San Jose is Northern California’s largest city, it’s not included in the Case-Shiller report because its metro area is not one of the nation’s 20 largest.

Earlier this month, however, DataQuick Information Systems reported that the median sale price for existing single-family homes in Santa Clara County was $495,000 in February, down 3 percent year over year.

The Case-Shiller indexes are designed to track the values of typical single-family homes in a region.

Contact Frank Russell at 408-920-5876. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercspike.

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_17726918