St. Louis housing prices dropped 0.04 percent in the first quarter, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight reported last week. That’s not bad, considering that OFHEO’s national index fell 1.7 percent, the largest quarterly decline on record.

St. Louis home prices were rising as recently as the fourth quarter, and they’re still up 1.72 percent in the latest 12 months.

OFHEO’s index relies on sale-price and refinancing data to estimate home-price trends. Some competing indicators show bigger declines here.