Photo by Ronnie R.

The Case-Shiller numbers are out for December, and Washington’s housing market was the healthiest in the 20-city index over the past 12 months.

Home prices were up 0.3 percent from November to December, but were also up 4.1 percent from December 2009 to December 2010. While that may not sound all that impressive, it’s 6.5 percentage points better than the index as a whole performed, and 13 percent better than Detroit. Only San Diego was able to even eke out a gain of 1.7 percent on the year among the other 19 cities tracked by Case-Shiller. (A complete copy of the rankings can be found after the jump.)

That’s not to say that D.C. prices haven’t had their ups and downs over the past year. Prices were down from September to October and unchanged from October to November. The peak month for the past year appears to have been July. But at least there were some gains to be had last year.

It’s not like we’re back to the top of the boom either. Prices are roughly back where they were in October of 2008.