Fixes the percent of real-estate-owned transactions to total home sales for both Baltimore and the U.S. nationally.

At a time when home prices nationally are, if anything, showing signs of being too strong, the picture in Baltimore is the opposite.

According to CoreLogic, prices in the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson metro area were down 8% in the year ending June, the worst showing of the 100 biggest metro areas. Nationally, prices rose 6.5% in the 12 months ending June, CoreLogic says.

What’s driven that is a huge rise in foreclosure sales. Foreclosures — known in the business as real estate owned — accounted for 13.6% of all transactions in Baltimore in May — more than double the national average of 6.4%, according to Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic.

Maryland, despite being a so-called nonjudicial state where judges do not have to approve foreclosures, had a program that delayed foreclosures to give homeowners more a chance to fight them.

Excluding distressed sales, prices in the Baltimore metro area were up 2% year-over-year. That’s a huge divergence, especially given the gap between prices including and excluding foreclosures and short sales nationally was just 0.1% in June.

The rise in so-called REO activity is more an indicator of stalled foreclosures moving through the system than a sign of newer trouble in the city that was gripped by riots following the Freddie Gray death in April. Foreclosure inventories actually fell year-over-year in May, and job growth has picked up slightly in the Charm City, Khater says.

Notices of default number a few hundred per month — well below the peaks in 2009 and 2010 of around 1,700 per month, he says.

Other metro areas where prices have declined include Boston (-4.4%), Hartford (-0.1%), New Haven, Conn. (-1.8%) and Worcester, Mass. (-7%). Khater said that’s more a reflection of the languid economy in New England.

But 93 of the top 100 metro areas by population saw home price gains. Even with the massive drop in oil prices, the Dallas-Plano-Irving area saw an 8.6% gain and the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land area saw a 7.4% gain.

“It’s very different than the 1980s,” Khater said, speaking of Houston in particular. Not only did oil prices collapse then, but there also was a commercial real estate crisis as well as farmland value drop that preceded the skid in energy prices. This time, the economy is more diverse, and there’s also an acute lack of supply.