U.S. home prices continued to fall in February and the pace of decline continued to quicken, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes released on Tuesday. The February 20-city price index was off 12.7 percent from the year before, in line with expectations of a decline in the 12.5 percent range, and down 2.6 percent from January. The 10-city composite index, which contains more large "bubble markets," posted a new record-low annual decline of 13.6 percent and a monthly drop of 2.8 percent. "There is no sign of a bottom in the numbers," said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's Index Committee. "Every one of the (metro areas) has now declined every month since September 2007," he said, and the declines have remained steep. Prices were down from January in all 20 metro areas and down for the year in 19 -- with Charlotte, North Carolina being the exception for the second month in a row. There were record annual declines in 17 of the 20 metro areas. As usual, the worst annual falloffs were in the previous bubble markets, with both Las Vegas and Miami down 19.3 percent. Along with Charlotte's 1.8 percent rise, Portland and Seattle had the best performances with annual declines of 0.5 percent and 1.3 percent respectively. "With new and existing homes available for sale still historical high, e.g. the months' supply of new units at a near 27-year high, some one million units (annualized) still under construction, and homes from foreclosed mortgages and cancelled sales also hitting the market, the supply overhang is going to persist and continue to apply downward pressure on prices," said Michael Gregory of BMO Capital Markets. "The deflation trend shows no signs of turning let alone ebbing." The housing plunge looks even worse, according to Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics, when he applies seasonal adjustment factors to the Case-Shiller data. "After seasonal adjustment, prices fell a huge 2.4 percent month-to-month," he said, "but this is not, alas, a fluke. The monthly declines have been accelerating steadily over the past year and this just marks another step on the way. The three-month annualized rate of decline is now a terrifying 22.0 percent." Robert Shiller, the Yale University professor who invented the index, said last week that U.S. home prices could eventually fall more than the 30 percent drop of the 1930s.