Throughout the mortgage crisis and the subsequent overall economy downturn, Charlotte has bucked national trends. Standard & Poor's S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, a measure of U.S. home prices, posted an annual decline of 11.4% in the January 10-city composite index. The 20-city composite index recorded an annual decline of 10.7% with Las Vegas, Miami and Phoenix experiencing the largest declines, while Charlotte, N.C., posted the ONLY annual gain in housing prices among the 20 markets tracked. The year-over-year price of existing single-family homes grew 1.8 percent in the Queen City in January, according to the Index.