A surprise in Tuesday's release of the S&P/Case Shiller home price index: Tampa home prices remained flat from June to July, the first time the region hasn't experienced a month-by-month decline since August 2006.

Just a one month reprieve to be followed by further price plunges? Perhaps. The glut of homes on the market suggests prices will keep falling, though no one knows by how much.

And Tampa area home prices didn't look so good when measured year over year. From July 2007 to July 2008, prices plopped 19.4 percent. Cities that performed worse than us: Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco and San Diego.

Case Shiller publishes a 20-city index of which Tampa is a part. In July, 14 of the 20 cities showed monthly price declines. So we were in pretty select company for a change.

Here's a link to the index for July