Although the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price indexes kept dropping in February, some good signs did appear.

For the first time in 16 months, the benchmarks' fall didn't set new records, according to the latest monthly results released on Tuesday. That was seen as at least some sign of progress for the heavily depleted housing market.

Nearly all of the major metro areas followed by the index, which benchmarks existing single-family home prices across the country, showed improvement from January.

"We will certainly need a few more months of data before we can determine if home prices are finally turning around," said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee, in a statement.

All 20 metro areas covered by the indexing series produced a monthly decline in February. However, some 16 of the 20 metro areas saw an improvement in their monthly returns compared with January. "Furthermore, this is the first month since October 2007 where the 10- and 20-City composites [benchmarks] did not post a record annual decline," added Blitzer.

Still, average U.S. home prices are at similar levels to where they were in the third quarter of 2003. From the peak in mid-2006, the 10-City Composite Index was down 31.6% and the 20-City Composite was down 30.7% through February 2009.

From the U.S. housing market's peak through February 2009, Dallas has suffered the least. Average home prices in that metropolitan market were down 11.1% from peak levels in June 2007. Meanwhile, Phoenix was down 50.8% from its peak in June 2006.

Cleveland was the only metro area having a record monthly decline, returning -5.0%. Besides that metro area, home prices in Charlotte, New York and Washington were the only areas showing larger declines in February than the previous month.

But all 20 major metro areas remained steeped in double-digit declines from their peaks. In fact, 10 of those posted February declines of greater than 30% and seven of those—Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Francisco and San Diego—in excess of 40%.

On an annualized basis, three metro areas fared the best:

• Dallas dropped 4.5% and turned in the best performance, returning -0.3%

• Denver fell some 5.7%

• Boston lost 7.2%

The three worst-performing cities continue to be from the Sunbelt, all reporting negative returns in excess of 30%:

• Phoenix was down 35.2%

• Las Vegas declined 31.7%

• San Francisco fell 31%