Home prices are up nationally, but that's still not being felt in the Greater Tampa-St. Petersburg market.

In Tampa-St. Pete single-family home prices, which includes distressed sales, fell 4.1 percent in March compared with the year before, a study released Wednesday by CoreLogic says. That beats the 6.38 percent price drop in February but is well behind the national home price improvement of 1.7 percent.

In Florida, home prices were down 5.3 percent, ranking it seventh in the nation behind Idaho (down 11.1 percent), Nevada (down 8.8 percent), Illinois (down 8.2 percent), Maryland (down 6 percent), Alabama (down 5.6 percent) and Utah (down 5.4 percent).

Florida's decrease was a full percentage point behind Washington and West Virginia, which had the eighth largest drops at 4.3 percent including distressed sales.

When distressed sales are removed from the equation, home prices in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater fall even further by 5.2 percent compared with February's decline of 7.6 percent. That brings the area more in line with the rest of the state, which experienced a 5.2 percent decrease in prices when distressed was excluded, while the rest of the nation improves by 1.9 percent under the same measures.

CoreLogic predicts that home prices will fall another 2.6 percent in March 2011, once again staying in-line with projections in the rest of the state. Nationally, home prices are expected to fall by a half percent this time next year.