San Diego home prices were pummeled again in February, returning the county's price decline to a record clip after the price freefall slowed in January, according to a report released Tuesday.

The decline in prices from the same month a year earlier hit 19.2 percent, the largest locally during this housing recession and the biggest drop since the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index started calculating home prices in 1987. And when compared with January, the year-over-year gap widened by its largest margin yet, indicating that the fall in prices might be accelerating.

Countywide home prices peaked in November 2005, according to the index, and have been on a steady decline since. But the last five months have been especially brutal, with prices dropping 15 percent and the county posting a monthly decline of greater than 3 percent.

Kelly Cunningham, an economist with the San Diego Institute for Policy Research, said the monthly decline of 3 percent will not continue for long.

"I hope not. Gosh, that's well over 30 percent decline if it continue on for a year. I don't think that's going to happen," said Cunningham. "But of course I've been saying the worst is here for a while now and then it gets worse."

He said he expects prices to decline through this year and then hitting a bottom before 2009.

San Diego's price decline has significantly outpaced a national index compiled by Case-Shiller. A composite of 20 major metropolitan areas has declined 12.7 percent from the year before.

San Diego was among the leaders nationally in price decline, with an annual decline only slightly smaller than Las Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

February's monthly decline was the largest yet, falling 3.6 percent from January.

Case-Shiller's data is delayed because it tracks the sales of homes compared with their previous sales prices, a method some housing analysts consider more accurate than the median price, which measures the middle point of prices with half of homes selling for more and half for less.

How long prices will decline for is impossible to predict, most analysts agree. And the role of easy money in the form of no-down-payment, no-verified-income loans makes this housing recession impossible to forecast, said James Hamilton, an economics professor with UC San Diego.

"It's a more extreme boom up and it's a more extreme down," he said. "So as far as where prices are headed and when they'll stabilize, I don't think you can tell because I really feel we're in uncharted territory."

Contact staff writer Zach Fox at (760) 740-5412 or zfox@nctimes.com.