ONLINE PROGRAM LETS YOU COMPARE HOUSING PRICES.

Byline: GREGORY J. WILCOX

It's a mind game homeowners often like to play, trying to figure out how much it would cost to buy a similar property someplace else. Like where the air is clean, the roads open and the weather other than nearly perfect.

There's a way to find out.

Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp., the big national residential brokerage, has a Home Price Comparison Index that it says offers an apples-to-apples comparison of similar-style homes - basically 2,200 square feet big - sold in middle-management neighborhoods. Their database covers 348 markets across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada.

Some math is involved. So is access to a computer and index numbers that can be found at www.coldwellbanker.com.

Here's the formula.

--Look up the index number of the city you are interested in.

--Multiply the market value of your current home by the index number of that city.

--Divide that number by the index number of the market where your current home is located.

Fortunately, the company's site also has an automatic calculator.

One example offered is a home that costs $470,000 in Long Beach would cost $241,000 in Santa Clarita.

That's sort of surprising, since the median price of a home in Santa Clarita is $510,000. A comparable home in Long Beach is in the $600,000s.

Doreen Chastain, president of the Santa Clarita Valley division of the Southland Regional Association of Realtors, thinks that the index could be a good tool but she finds Coldwell Banker's numbers too low.

``That's nonsense,'' she said. ``You're not going to get anything like that for that money in Santa Clarita.''

The Long Beach number is low, too, she said.

Coldwell Banker spokesman David Siorty said that conversion calculation will still work, though.

For example, no cities in the San Fernando Valley are among the 37 California cities with an index number. No problem. Just plug in the market value of what homes are selling for in your neighborhood and do the math.

``It's really a snapshot study. It gives you an understanding of what the (comparable) worth of your home might be,'' he said.

And some of the numbers are just plain interesting.

The most expensive community in the database? La Jolla, for the second year in a row, where a 2,200-square-foot house costs $1.71 million.

Want to save $1.58 million on that house?

Move to Minot, N.D., the most affordable market in the study at $130,000, according to Coldwell Banker's numbers.

Up there on the Great Plain, the roads are open and the air clean.

And the weather sure is less than perfect.

--The Mortgage Bankers Association is offering a free Web-based course on the home-buying process.

Registration for Consumer Homebuyer Education: Homebuyer Basics, is available through the association's Web site, www.homeloanlearningcenter.com.

It offers tips on such things as establishing credit and developing a budget.

The course is designed to make new buyers more confident about the process, the association said.

Gregory J. Wilcox, [phone]

greg.wilcox(at)dailynews.com