Congratulations Pasco County home sellers: You're the most realistic when it comes to pricing your hard-to-sell suburb-o-boxes.

Hillsborough County home sellers? Sorry. You're still a bit out of touch with the buying public.

As for Pinellas County home sellers, you're asking a lot for your real estate, but the market supports higher prices in places like St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tarpon Springs.

Call it the Tampa Bay Home Seller Reality Index™.

I judge sellers' sense of reality by comparing asking prices of conventionally sold homes with those of short sales. The first category of seller presumably charges what he wants for his home. The latter category of seller has fallen behind on mortgage payments and is dumping at a discount with the bank's consent.

The larger the pricing gap between conventional sales and short sales, the more unrealistic the home selling pool.

What do the numbers show? According to THIS CHART published by Tampa's Home Encounter, Hillsborough is the most unrealistic.

Conventional sellers in August asked $108 per square foot for their Hillsborough homes. Short sales in Hillsborough listed for an average of $84 per square foot. Consequently, Hillsborough had the smallest percentage of conventional sales among Tampa Bay counties, and short sales sold for only 77 percent of the price of conventional homes.

In Pasco, conventional sellers asked $86 per square foot. Short sellers asked $84. Not surprisingly, there was scant difference in the ultimate sales price between conventional and short sales. The best explanation is that widespread foreclosures have forced conventional sellers to discount.

Pinellas offers a bit of a twist. Conventional sellers asked $141 per square foot, largely reflecting the county's waterfront premium. Short sellers listed their homes for $129 per square foot on average. Short sale buyers can expect to pay about 90 percent of the price of conventionally sold homes.

Based on the numbers, Hillsborough's been "unrealistic" for much of this year. My educated guess is that many of the conventional sellers, particular those in pricey tree shrouded pockets of South Tampa and Carrollwood, are under little financial duress. They can afford to stick to their price.

But foreclosures - and thus short sales - predominate in low income sections of east Tampa and throughout the newer suburbs in New Tampa and Riverview. Those homes are priced to sell fast.

The hard truth is that Pasco, being more newly developed, has less distinctive real estate. If homes are largely interchangeable, you can't afford to cling to your high asking price. Buyers will seek out same model more cheaply priced down the street.

When you throw bank-owned properties into the mix, between 36 percent (Pinellas) and 44 percent (Hillsborough) of homes sales were "distressed" in August.