As US home prices continued to fall at record-breaking pace, Los Angeles saw some of the sharpest declines in the third quarter, a prominent index showed yesterday.

Home prices in the Los Angeles area, which includes Orange County, were down 27.6 percent compared with the third quarter of 2007, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of home prices.

Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco were also among the hardest hit cities.

Home prices for the US National Index, which covers the entire nation and is compiled quarterly, dropped to 2004 levels. The national index is down 21 percent from its 2006 peak

The third-quarter national decline was greater than the respective annual declines in the second and first quarters of the year, which were 15.1 percent and 14 percent respectively, the index showed.

David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor's, said: "The turmoil in the financial markets is placing further downward pressure on a housing market already weakened by its own fundamentals."