When I talk to real estate agents, they say that an offer 10 to 15 percent lower than the asking price is no longer “insulting.” My story on Saturday may also make some buyers braver about negotiating.

When I was selling my house, which was on the market about two-and-a-half months before it went into contract, I considered a bid that was close to 15 percent lower. I think I was a little surprised, but I was willing to work with the buyer to make a deal, until they wanted me to pay for closing costs, too. Maybe I was being silly, but I wasn’t that interested. So the house sat on the market for another month before someone was willing to pay my asking price — and ask me to pay their closing costs.

At that point, with a couple of offers that were less generous it was easy to say, “Yes!” And so I technically sold my house for the asking price, but it really was about 4 percent less. I didn’t feel insulted at all. I was more than happy to sell my house and not have any more mortgage payments!

If you are trying to buy a house you should read my story.

If you’re tired of an agent pushing you at his own listings, you may have thought, “Is there a better way?” or even, “Is there a better agent?

Personally, I like great customer service so I will shop around until I get it. This isn’t good news for hungry agents, but it is good news for consumers. Today the buyer has most of the power in the housing market, so they should enjoy it.

For more information about exclusive buyer agents, check out the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents or the Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council.

I think one of the biggest complaints I hear from those critical of real estate reporters is that most of us have no idea what we’re talking about because we have probably never bought or sold a home. It’s not an ignorant comment because journalists usually are underpaid and living in studio apartments littered with whiskey bottles and pizza boxes.

I used to be one of those journalists until 2003, when I bought a home in Southern California near Palm Springs (which sold last month.) So now I’m looking for a home in the Bay Area, and man, is that scary.

First of all, according to DataQuick Information Systems, the median home in Contra Costa County is $540,000. So, I looked around other counties to see what they can offer: Alameda County’s median home price is $590,000 (yikes!) and Solano County’s is $442,000 (OK, maybe we’re getting somewhere.)

Let’s do the math. Even a $400,000 loan on a $500,000 home (if you can get a decent loan) is going to be around 6.25 percent, so that’s $2500 a month. Now you get to add $625 a month for property taxes and probably another $125 for insurance. That’s $3250 a month now on a 30-year, fixed rate. Oh….sorry, you forgot to pay the broker, too. So your loan is really $404,000 plus some possible junk fees labeled “processing” or “boat” or “new BMW.” So your loan is now really about $415,000 and you’re still paying $3250 a month.

Boost up the price to $600,000, which is what most people in the East Bay are going to have to pay, and the numbers go up further.Your monthly payment would be around $4000. Who can afford that and not eat peanut butter and jelly every day? (That’s a comment courtesy of the PPIC’s Hans Johnson.)

You would have to make around $70,000 a year just to pay your mortgage. Perhaps if you also have a teenager they could work at McDonald’s. At least then they might be able to bring home a Happy Meal or two. (Or maybe start charging them rent with a sliding scale for those under 12.)

Aside from those with a lot of equity and those making $200,000 a year, you can’t really afford the Bay Area. Yet here we all are, eating peanut butter and jelly. I’m sure I’ll develop a taste for it.

As you saw in my story on Tuesday, many people in the East Bay and the state are in trouble. Either it’s being in the first stage of foreclosure, a notice of default sent by a lender, or it’s the auction on the courthouse steps in Martinez.

Today, we had a story from Bloomberg News, where government-chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to work with lenders to move those in trouble into fixed-rate loans (up to 40-year fixed!) Here’s the gist:

Freddie Mac plans this summer to offer subprime borrowers more “stable” financing, including fixed-rate loans of as long as 40 years and adjustable-rate mortgages with longer fixed-rate periods, Chief Executive Officer Richard Syron said in his written House Financial Services Committee testimony.

Lenders provided mortgages to borrowers unqualified for loans “at any price,” Syron said. “Many subprime borrowers may find themselves unable to refinance out of mortgage products that have become extremely burdensome.”

Later in the article, Syron strongly discourages Congress from a “bailout.” But just what was he proposing again?

If you saw my story today you either a) were overjoyed that your house value has stopped sinking like a stone, b) were annoyed that values aren’t rising more or c) were bothered by yet another contradictory report on the housing industry.

Unfortunately March statistics are based only on home sales that closed in that month, meaning that most of those homes started the sale process in late January or February (if you believe homes close in about four to six weeks.) So DataQuick numbers still trail real time about six weeks and we really can’t analyze data until a month or two after it’s happened.

So, next month we will get to see what really happened in March.

If you all saw my story today, you would know that Congress may enact some legislation to prevent another subprime implosion. Or maybe the plan will be to give the afflicted homeowners a few hundred thousand dollars. It sounds a lot like what Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, is saying:

Amid new signs that the housing slump is worsening, key Senate Democrats said Wednesday that hundreds of millions of dollars of new federal aid may be needed to assist homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

The call for federal involvement from New York Democrat Charles Schumer, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, came on the same day the National Association of Realtors forecast that the median price for existing homes will decline for the first time since 1968 as a sales slump worsens.

“We will be proposing significant amounts of dollars,” Schumer told reporters after being asked if a large federal bailout may be needed.

In other news, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today that mortgage applications dropped for the fourth straight week, but still rose 10.8 percent from this time last year.

I always like to throw in a contradictory piece of real estate news because it reminds me how difficult it is to predict the future.

. . . a 2-bedroom, 1-bath on a mere 1,550-square-foot lot in Richmond. It’s being sold “as is” for $178,000, reduced from $199,000 in February by Tri-County Properties. You can read more information here. (Password may be required.)

I did a story on cheap houses for the Contra Costa Times last year and may revisit the story again. Most were in pretty bad shape, while others didn’t fit the mold of what people wanted. It seems everyone now wants a 3,000-square-foot home, which would seem like an enormous waste of space to our grandparents.

From the Urban Land Institute:

The size of the new American home has grown steadily since the end of World War II, but census data show that skyrocketing real estate prices over the last few years have been accompanied by a slowdown in size increases. Today, the median size of a new single-family residence is around 2,200 square feet—almost three times the size of the original Levittown homes built during the late 1940s. This inexorable rise is coming to an end; people will still buy 4,000- and 5,000-square-foot McMansions, and there will still be those who build true mansions measuring 10,000 square feet and more, but the median size of the new American home is going to begin to decrease for the first time in over 20 years.

It’s just the reasons why it’s worth that much are hard to define. So I tried to figure it out in my story today with the help of some of the people in the trenches, real estate agents and brokers.

The big winner was Orinda, whose median home price rose double digits from $992,000 in February 2006 to $1,124,000 in February 2007. The biggest loss was felt in Brentwood, where prices fell from $699,500 to $523,250 year-over-year. For more values, check out the full list here.

Orinda has a small amount of housing with little or no growth, so homes are at a premium. In Brentwood, which seemed like the epicenter of exploding East County home construction for the last few years, new homes are pretty common. The two communities are definitely on opposite sides of the spectrum.

In other news today, Wall Street appears to be buoyed by the news that more home purchase contracts were signed in February than predicted, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors.

Although a rise of 0.7 percent is a little small, it seemed enough to boost the stock market and homebuilder stocks (that and a drop in oil prices.)