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More signs of weakness are emerging in the housing market.

While home prices are still rising, the gains are slowing. National home prices rose 4.3% in January, down from a 4.6% gain in December 2018. Price gains in January were two percentage points lower than the increase in January 2018, and they increased at the slowest pace since April 2015, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price index.

Some cities are still exhibiting price resilience. Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Minneapolis reported the highest year-over-year gains in the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city index. Vegas was on top at a 10.5% year-over-year price increase, followed by Phoenix at 7.5% and Minneapolis at 5.1%n.

But several cities that had seen the strongest gains are now faring worse than average. In Seattle, annual price gains fell from 12.8% to 4.1% from January 2018 to January 2019, according to S&P. Price gains in San Francisco eroded from 10.2% to just 1.8% over the same span.

Analysts attribute much of the weakness in home prices to an increase in mortgage rates, which rose from 3.95% in January 2018 to a peak of 4.95% in November 2018, according to S&P. Rates have slid since late last year, recently dropping to 4.28%. But as S&P noted, “it remains to be seen” if the decline in mortgage rates will revive home sales and prices.

Read more:U.S. Consumers Are Souring on the Housing Market

Data on housing starts is volatile and prone to seasonal impacts like harsh weather. Nonetheless, the numbers aren’t particularly encouraging. February housing starts fell 8.7% to a 1.16 million annualized rate from an upwardly revised 1.27 million rate in January.

Overall, single-family starts are down 10.6% this year, compared with 2018, while multifamily starts declined 8.5%.

Starts have averaged about 1.5 million units since 1980, according to analysts at Jefferies Global Fixed Income. That indicates that housing construction “has a way to go” before reaching normalcy, they wrote in a note out Tuesday, and are still well below excess levels.

“While the pace of housing activity has decelerated, there are no signs of threatening excesses such as inventory overhangs and a surge in delinquencies,” they wrote.

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Shares of home builders and related stocks are up 18% this year, according to the S&P Homebuilders Select industry index. But the trend lately has been negative. The index is down by 0.4% in March. That’s well below its 3.1% average return for the month of March over the past 10 years, according to FactSet.

Investors can still find pockets of opportunity. Brian Bythrow, manager of the Wasatch Micro Cap fund (ticker: WMICX), says that home builders targeting entry-level and manufactured housing are holding up quite well. He holds shares of Skyline Champion (SKY), which specializes in manufactured and modular housing, and LGI Homes (LGIH), a builder focused on the entry-level market. The quality of manufactured housing has improved sharply, he says, and orders are holding up well at the more-affordable end of the market.

“The low end of the market is probably getting the biggest benefit of the economy’s gains with jobs and wage hikes,” Bythrow tell Barron’s.

Shares of both stocks are beating the broader housing sector. Skyline is up 29% this year while LGI has advanced 33.5%.

Write to Daren Fonda at daren.fonda@barrons.com