If you own real estate in New York, you have been no doubt telling yourself and anyone who would listen that prices here were not going to fall like they were in the rest of the country. Limited supply, increasing urbanization of the country, enduring appeal, tight co-op loan restrictions were probably among your reasons. And if you looked at rental or sale real estate ads for the city, where some studios rent for $4,000 a month or sell for $600,000, you would not worry about a downturn. But now some data suggests New York may not be totally immune.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index out yesterday showed home prices in 20 major markets were down an average 15.3% from a year ago and 1.3% in the latest month of survey data, April. Yesterday the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise said that nationally home prices fell 0.8% in April and 4.8% over the last year. The Pacific region lost the most--down 2% in a month--and the east south central did best--up 0.9%.

Case-Shiller shows that New York peaked in June 2006 at 215.83 on their scale and has slid steadily ever since. The April number was 193.93 (up slightly from the month before.) But Case-Shiller looks at the whole metro area, all five boroughs, parts of Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester, Long Island and even a bit of Pennsylvania. When people think of New York prices, they think of Manhattan. Today The Real Estate Group of New York issued figures showing an uneven market that has been mostly stagnant all 2008. Across Manhattan non-doorman one-bedroom rental prices are down 4% to $2,859 for the last 12 months. (With a doorman it's up slightly. Two-bedrooms were down a little in both categories.) Of course, I'm a renter and prospective buyer, so I've been telling everyone prices will fall.

A developer outside San Diego is hoping the old buy-one-get-one-free deal will lure customers. If you buy a $1.6 million home in San Pasqual Valley, he'll throw in an Escondido row home, which he values at $400,000. The San Diego Union Tribune says the Michael Crews Developers insist the prices are legit, not just holdovers from the boom. They say the rowhouses originally sold for $540,000 but now are going for $400,000.

They told the paper only one person has made an offer -- and they don't want to take on an extra house. Instead they want Crews to take their old house off their hands. In this real estate market, who wants more house, even if it is at current prices? But meanwhile this offer is making the rounds in the blogs and on TV as the latest internet craziness.

Of course this all seems desperate. But that's making Crews a star for today. But is it a ham-fisted and awkward kind of promotion? No, for that you'll really need to check out the Michael Crews blog. He "blogs" in press release style that Michael Crews Offers Two Homes for the Price of One. In February, 2007, he offered homebuyers a free truck. What's the most fun is to check out the comments on his stories like this one entry from two years ago . An anonymous commentator says: "Did you know that the San Diego Business Journal recognizes Michael Crews Development as one of San Diego's Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies?" then goes on to spontaneously spout some other marketing stats. Later another obviously totally random person who has nothing to do with company exclaimed "I didn't know Michael Crews Development had won such an incredible award. I do know they have beautiful new homes for sale in San Diego County...."

Today a fellow blogger pointed me to this blog post, which basically shows a 50% price cut for homes in a California neighborhood. One home was sold for $855,000 in April 2006, and now two houses down, a similar one was listed for sale at $400,000 in April 2008.

The writer of the blog says, "Mr. Bernanke, that'll be $455,000 to keep the poor folks at 4565 Casa Nova from foreclosing, thank you very much kind sir."

But whose fault is it really, that there is such a disparity in home prices over two years? What if the real value of each home always was in the $400,000 range? Doesn't that just mean that the buyer from 2006 was stupid and overpaid for his home? Why do we automatically assume that it is the fault of the government that someone's house isn't valued high enough?