The housing bust came late to Boise, Idaho. While home prices in other cities around the U.S. began their drastic descent in 2007, Boise’s home prices didn’t start feeling the pinch until the end of 2008. Housing in Idaho’s capital wasn’t hit particularly hard by the subprime mortgage crisis, but it certainly was affected by the economic downturn. High unemployment and a wave of job-loss-related foreclosures have caused home prices in the City of Trees and its surrounding suburbs to plunge.

This year alone, Boise homes suffered a drastic 13.4% loss in value. Next year won’t offer relief either, with prices projected to slip another 2.5%. These drops landed Idaho’s capital city high on our watch list of cities with decreasing home prices.

“Prices in Boise Proper specifically haven’t come down quite as much as people expect, but in other areas around the city, prices have come down as much as 50% from where they were a few years ago,” says Cristina Pescaru, a Realtor with Gold Key Real Estate in Boise. “I think we absolutely haven’t seen the bottom of the market here.”

The folks at Local Market Monitor, a Cary, N.C.-based real estate research company, compiled a list of the cities that suffered relatively big home price hits this year with more projected through the next 12 months. LMM sifted through market data for more than 300 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and Metropolitan Divisions (MSADs), as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. The company, which releases quarterly housing market reports, crunched home prices from October 2010 through September 2011 and calculated price projections through September of next year.

Every one of the markets that made our list suffers from a glut of foreclosures. “Foreclosures are continuing to weigh down home prices in hard-hit foreclosure markets as the average sales prices of foreclosure-related sales drop,” explains Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac, an Irvine, CA-based foreclosure listing site. Cities that made our list like Arizona’s Phoenix and California’s hard-up hubs Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield also rank among RealtyTrac’s top 20 metro foreclosure rates. Fifty percent or more of all completed home sales this year in these cities were distressed (either preforeclosure or bank-owned) — a factor that pulls the prices of non-distressed homes both in terms of appraisals and home seller efforts to compete for buyers.

Not surprisingly, the nation’s foreclosure capital, Las Vegas, Nev., experienced the worst price drops of any major metro this year. The Sin City’s home values slid 15.2% versus last year and Local Market Monitor expects another 5% drop during the next 12 months. More than half of all completed sales were distressed.

There is some hope to be had by owners located in other cities across the country: the home price hemorrhages nearly every market experienced in the past several years are subsiding. Nationally, prices dropped only about 4.5% this year. Compared with the roughly 35% loss the U.S. housing market as a whole has taken since the economic downturn, this year’s drop, while agonizing, means the freefall is over. “A lot of markets are still going to have some problems economically, but overall I think in most of the country’s cities, we are seeing a bottom in home prices,” says Ingo Winzer, founder and president of Local Market Monitor. He cautions that a bottom in no way translates to a speedy price recovery. Rather he expects prices to hover at these lower levels for years.

Here are top five cities where housing prices are falling:

#5 Fresno, Calif.

Fresno, Calif. Photo: ZUMA Press/Newscom

Home Price Drop from Oct. 2010 to Sept. 2011: -11%
Projected Home Price Drop through 2012: -9.9%
Average Home Price: $154,200

#4 Tucson, Ariz.

Tucson, Ariz. Nancy Brammer/iStockphoto

Home Price Drop from Oct. 2010 to Sept. 2011: -11.9%
Projected Home Price Drop through 2012: -11.1%
Average Home Price: $169,900

#3 Phoenix, Ariz.

Phoenix, Ariz. Nancy Brammer/iStockphoto

M.S.A.: Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ
Home Price Drop from Oct. 2010 to Sept. 2011: -13%
Projected Home Price Drop through 2012: -3.3%
Average Home Price: $152,000

#2 Boise, Idaho

Boise, Idaho Zailong Bian/iStockphoto

M.S.A.: Boise City-Nampa, ID
Home Price Drop from Oct. 2010 to Sept. 2011: -13.4%
Projected Home Price Drop through 2012: -2.5%
Average Home Price: $139,000

#1 Las Vegas, Nev.

Las Vegas, Nev. AP Photo/Julie Jacobson

M.S.A.: Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
Home Price Drop from Oct. 2010 to Sept. 2011: -15.2%
Projected Home Price Drop through 2012: -5.1%
Average Home Price: $121,900

Click here to see all of the Cities With Dangerously Falling Home Prices