Home-price appreciation is slowing, a welcome trend for potential buyers but a troubling one for homeowners still looking for relief from underwater mortgages.

Single-family housing prices rose 4.4% in the year that ended in the second quarter, the slowest annual pace since 2012, according to a report released Tuesday by National Association of Realtors.

The association found that median prices for existing single-family homes grew year-over-year in 122 of 173 metropolitan areas it tracked, while prices declined in 47 metro areas. Only 19 areas showed double-digit year-over-year price increases, a substantial drop from the 37 cities that showed such increases in the first quarter.

Economists said price appreciation is slowing in part because buyers, including investors, have become more cautious and are pulling back from the market amid the big price gains of the past year. At the same time, those higher prices persuaded more homeowners to put their homes up for sale, adding inventory and reducing the urgency to buy.

Those trends are good news for potential buyers, who have had to deal with heated competition for a relatively small number of homes on the market in many cities as well as a near percentage-point increase in 30-year mortgage rates since May 2013.

However, the trends serve as a warning to some owners who bought their homes near the peak of the market and still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun. A report from real-estate research firm,

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