L.A. home prices have appreciated - you just have to go back far enough

The new Case-Shiller report shows a 0.8 percent drop in L.A.-area prices from January to February - the latest indication that the housing market has yet to fully recover. But keep in mind that Case Shiller is an index, with a base value of 100 as of January 2000. So by that measure, the price of a typical L.A. home has appreciated by 59.5 percent, topped only by Washington, D.C. (75.7 percent) and NY (59.6 percent). Of course, there is a catch to those numbers: They're down by huge amounts since the market meltdown. L.A., for instance, peaked at 173.9 percent appreciation in September 2006. It's been pretty much all down since then. Other cities, as of February:

--San Diego 49.7
--Boston 46.2
--Miami 39.5
--Portland 29.6
--Seattle 28.99
--San Francisco 24.6
--Tampa 23.9
--Denver 21.8
--Dallas 12.7
--Minneapolis 10.2
--Charlotte 8.1
--Chicago 5.4
--Phoenix 4.1

Cleveland, Vegas, Atlanta, and Detroit have negative appreciation.