Home sales continue to skid nationwide, and the current real estate climate surely has created a buyer's market.

Yet for certain houses, the days of multiple bids and bidders are in no way a thing of the past.

Buyers are banging down the doors, Long & Foster Real Estate agent Phyllis Weinstock said, "when the house and the property warrant the money."

And location helps, too. Take Media, for example.

Dale Lippart's first flip house, a three-bedroom, one-bath twin in the borough, went under agreement of sale just seven days after going on the market. Four prospective buyers battled for the right to pay the $296,500 the property was listed for, or more.

"I wanted to break even, or make a little money," said Lippart. She had used the proceeds from the sale of her last house, in Cranbury, N.J., to buy the Media house, which she described as "neglected," for a below-market price in November.

While declining to say what she paid for the Media house, Lippart acknowledged that what she will make when it goes to settlement "pleases" her.

(Under Pennsylvania and New Jersey law, real estate agents and brokers are required to protect a seller's private information until the sale price becomes part of the public tax record after settlement.)

"I knew the market had changed," Lippart said. "But I did my homework, and that's what did it."

Within 48 hours of their Jan. 27 open house, also in Media, sellers Adam and Bethany Sacks entertained four offers for their four-bedroom, 11/2-bath twin, listed at $310,000.

"We had high hopes when we put it on the market, but the actual traffic exceeded our expectations," said Adam Sacks, giving credit for their quick sale to the town's popularity, his wife's decorating talents, the marketing expertise of his agent, Teresa Pointer of Long & Foster, "and God himself."

"Four offers is a lot in a single weekend," said Sacks, who has owned the house for six years and saw it appreciate significantly from the $175,000 he and his wife paid for it. The couple go to settlement Friday on a larger house at the edge of the borough to accommodate their expanding family (they just had a third child).

What made the Sacks house so appealing to multiple bidders, Pointer said, were the decor, the garage (a rarity in Media), the floor plan, and the central air-conditioning.

"The bidders were younger buyers attracted by what I call the 'Pottery Barn' style - nice, warm colors - and the openness of the layout," Pointer said.

Long & Foster agent Steve Seymour represented the successful bidders for the Sacks house, who declined to be identified.

"The couple . . . are the parents of a woman who is a first-time buyer," Seymour said.

The couple were surprised by the number of people, 30, who showed up for the Sacks open house, and the fact that there were three other bidders, he said.

They had an advantage over other bidders because their bid included an escalation clause - which, according to Noelle Barbone, Weichert's Delaware Valley regional director of operations, states how much higher the bidder is willing to increase the offer over the competition, up to a maximum amount.

Although Media is a big seller these days, Lippart's listing agent, Anthony DeCicci of Long & Foster, said location was just one ingredient in the mix for her sale. "Remember that there are listings here that aren't getting any bids," he said, "no matter how hot [Media] is."

Bidding wars clearly are not being fought on every block in every town in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, but there are enough of them to show that, as Lippart put it, the "market is not dead."

In fact, while the National Association of Realtors reported yesterday that existing-home sales had declined 0.4 percent in January from December's levels, the drop was lower than predicted.

In this region, yesterday's Prudential Fox & Roach HomExpert Market Report, which is based on data from Trend Multiple Listing Service, showed a 1.8 percent increase in the 2007 median sale price over 2006 and a decline in sales volume of 11.1 percent.

For all eight counties in the region, the largest increase in median price for 2007, 8.1 percent, was in Delaware County, where Media is the county seat.

Still, bidding wars are taking place in select parts of the entire metro area.

Long & Foster agent Cheryl Miller said buyers she was representing saw a house in Abington Township that had been on the market for two days, was listed at $509,000, and already had two bids.

By the time Miller's clients saw the house, the sellers and their listing agent, Judy Gordon of Quinn & Wilson, had accepted one of the offers, which was for more than the asking price.

"My clients were disappointed, but they could live with it," Miller said.

In Haddon Township, Long & Foster agent Amy Smith said, one house got three offers and sold in nine days.

Buyer's agent Harvey Howard said he lost houses in Haddon Township and Palmyra in the space of a week.

Even after some houses are sold, the bids just keep on coming.

On Sunday, Lippart said, she had an open house for her family, to show them the results of her work on her soon-to-be former house.

"Three people walked in to look at it because they thought it was a Realtor's open house," she said.

One of them put in a bid, just in case.