The steady climb seen in U.S. home prices paused in July, according to Denver-based default management and collateral valuation firm Integrated Asset Services (IAS). The company’s latest IAS360 House Price Index released Tuesday shows that residential home prices nationally slipped 0.5 percent, after four straight months of gains. IAS’ U.S. housing benchmark remains ahead fractionally for the year, but is still 16.2 percent below its high in June 2007. According to Dave McCarthy, president and CEO of

Integrated Asset Services, we’re not out of the woods yet. “We are seeing normal seasonality with a slight July pullback,” McCarthy said. “We will see waves of volatility while the markets correct themselves and settle down. Meanwhile, there’s an awful lot going on down at the neighborhood level that will take time to normalize at the top.” Conspicuous among the nation’s 10 major metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) were the 3.8 percent declines in both Denver, which had been reliably stable since the first of the year, and San Francisco, which had jumped almost 8 percent from February. Also notable was a sizable 4.8 percent monthly drop in home prices in Las Vegas. While this hard-hit region has fallen month over month since August of 2006, July’s plunge represents the largest percentage drop to date, IAS said. “A lot of this volatility has to reflect Washington’s near-term influence on price behavior through actions like the foreclosure moratorium,” McCarthy commented. “We’re already seeing buying activity moving around in different price segments.”