The digs in these towns make Manhattan real estate look like bargain basement specials.

While New York real estate continues to be the most expensive in the United States, eclipsing cities like San Francisco and Honolulu, money management company Credit Sesame says when globally comparing cities, Manhattan is in fact laughably cheap.

At $1,068 per square foot, life in Gotham is an unattainable lifestyle for middle-income families, certainly in comparison to Phoenix ($79), Atlanta ($132) or even San Francisco ($520) and Honolulu ($614).

But when we talk about housing inflation in the United States, some perspective is in order.

Per Credit Sesame, which gathered data over the course of three years via 14 sources (including Factiva, Trulia, the New York Times and Iraq Daily Times), cities that way more expensive than The Big Apple are:

Hong Kong, $1,118

Copenhagen, $1,317

Helsinki, $1,366

Madrid, $1,395

Beirut, $1,448

Singapore, $1,561

Luxembourg, $1,563

Stockholm, $1,516

London, $1,590

Oslo, $2,099

Paris, $3,287

If any of these cities are out of your price range, there’s always Houston where a square foot will cost you just $54. Good news considering everything’s bigger in Texas.

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What would you pay for a Park Avenue home originally designed by Sister Parish and Albert Hadley in the late 1960s for Brook Astor? Believe it or not, you still have to pay through the nose and cough up many millions for such a primo property, but it’s going down, down, down.

Originally listed at $46 million (well, prices are a bit higher in NYC), the Huffington Post reports the 14-room property was slashed 37% to $29 million. Hey, at that price it’s being called a “fire sale!”

On the market since May 2008, it swings through the entire 16th and part of the 15th floors of 788 Park Avenue. It features five bedrooms and four-and-a-half baths, six terraces, five fireplaces and ample views of Park Avenue and Central Park. Are you sold yet?

The so-called slashing is all part of the real estate wake-up call during a recession that makes us question such obscene prices – for an apartment, no less. When the market was flourishing, those with the liquidity didn’t flinch about the New York City real estate market, but rather, flexed their muscles by showing they could get in there and compete. Now it’s time to correct all that excess.

Had consumers refused to pay the soaring prices in the first place, they could have altered the market while directing their wealth elsewhere, perhaps investing in alternative fuels, electric cars or developing fair trade companies. Or how ’bout some text books for public schools?

According to HuffPo, other luxury residences are dipping down to the price level of insurance executive bonuses. A penthouse on the 40th floor of 15 Central Park West is down 40% from $80 million to around $47 million. An apartment in the newly renovated Plaza is down $38 million from $55 million. And a 14-room property in the Dakota (where John Lennon once lived) is now just $19.5 million, down 19% from $24 million in June.

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