The Coachella Valley's real estate market might be strong enough to buck the national trend.

That's what local experts say despite some dire housing news on the national front Wednesday. The National Association of Realtors predicted a 0.7 percent decline in the median sale price for existing homes to $220,300, down from $221,900 last year.

That, the national real estate group said, would be the first year-over-year decline in the median price since about 1968, when records were first kept.

The NAR also revised its estimate of total sales this year of existing homes to 2.2 percent compared to an earlier forecast of a 0.9 percent decline.

New home sales are expected to fall 14.2 percent compared to a previous estimate of a 10.4 percent slide, the national Realtors group said.

But local figures released Wednesday show higher overall median prices and a somewhat more resilient market that isn't as hard hit as Riverside County or the rest of the country.

The median price for new homes in the valley edged down 2.3 percent in February to $429,990 compared to a year earlier, according to the California Building Industry Association.

"New home sales for February 2007 fell by 28 percent for the Coachella Valley from February 2006, but nearly 50 percent for all of Riverside County. So in that sense, the Coachella Valley is performing better," said Patrick Duffy, managing director of consulting for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, which co-released the latest numbers with the CBIA.

According to DataQuick, which formulates its information differently, home sales across the Coachella Valley dropped 25 percent last month compared with February 2006, fueled in part by a nearly 43 percent decline in new-home sales, the DataQuick report  shows.

Still, some industry executives and analysts believe the valley's unique demographics and a market with plenty of high-end homes, second homes and vacation homes positions it to run counter to the trend.

New-home builders in the valley are aggressively trimming inventory levels, and some real estate agents who focus on the luxury market are reporting brisk sales.

"There are a lot of things working in our favor," said Fred Bell, executive director of the Desert Chapter of the Building Industry Association.

The Coachella Valley remains a premier resort destination, it's attractive to Baby Boomers on the cusp of retirement, the local economy and job growth is favorable and the money supply and interest rates remain favorable, Bell said.

Such factors prompt real estate analysts and agents to remain generally bullish about an overall median home price increase this year, even if it's small.

Signs of improvement

The improvement from January to February was welcome news, and there are other signs at the state and national levels that indicate the real estate market could be stabilizing and on the mend, said Greg Berkemer, CDAR's executive vice president.

Other positive signs: the Desert Area Multiple Listing Service saw fewer new home listings in February compared with January, and there was a slight increase in the number of pending and closed sales, Berkemer said.

Beth Allen Bentley, an analyst who tracks the valley's home sales and prices for Brea-based Real Data Strategies Inc., said many factors are still in play. But she's expecting a slight overall increase in home prices for the year.

In other areas of the valley such as Indian Wells, Bentley said, where luxury homes are the norm, the market dynamics are markedly different.

"People don't move there because they got a bargain on a house," Bentley said. "They move there because they're wealthy and want to retire."