OTTAWA — Canadian home resale prices continued their good news-bad news trend in September, falling by 1.8% from a year earlier but rising 1.3% over August, according to the Teranet-National Bank house price index released Wednesday.

There’s even good news in the year-over-year figure, even though it’s the 10th consecutive month to post a decline, according to Marc Pinsonneault, senior economist at the National Bank Financial Group.

Mr. Pinsonneault says the rate at which housing prices are falling from last year’s values has been slowing steadily since May, when the price difference peaked at a 6.9% drop between 2008 and 2009. August 2009’s prices were 3.4% lower than the year-ago period.

September was also the fifth month in a row to see housing prices rise from the previous month.

“The September monthly rise of 1.3% was the smallest in four months but still vigorous,” said Mr. Pinsonneault. “The vigour is consistent with an improvement in market conditions over 2009 to date — more homes have been selling and fewer have been coming on the market.”

Prices were up from August’s figures in all but one of the six metropolitan markets surveyed. Montreal’s prices fell by 0.2%, even though home sales in that city are on the rise.

Mr. Pinsonneault said Toronto, where prices slid 1% year-over-year, is on the verge of a full recovery from the economic downturn. If prices there rise as much in October as they did in September — 1.5% —they will be back to their peak of August 2008.

“On balance, there was broad-based strength in this report, which is consistent with other measures of the Canadian housing market,” said TD economics strategist Ian Pollick.