The cheapest house in the East Bay is this $32,000 1,100-square-foot houseboat at Lighthouse Landing Marina in Brentwood. It’s three bedrooms, one bath and if you like the water, then why not? I’m sure there’s a docking fee and a whole list of other rules, but that’s the price you pay for a life of a river pirate. And that price? Could be worth the risk? (Anyone know anything about houseboats? Feel free to comment.)

In Oakland, this $199,900, 703-square-foot home offers two bedrooms and one bath and “needs improvements and repairs.” If you need any proof, look at all its available photos. The first few are unexceptional featuring an adequate coat or two of white paint, but the last few with the peeling pain and disrepair tell a different story. I have to applaud the real estate agent for including unflattering photos, no one going to visit that house will be surprised at what they see.

Today’s cheapest house in Solano County is a burned-out, shell of a home with an asking price of $150,000. “Fire has gutted home and back garages,” the listing says and I think you should take that literally. Rarely do real estate agents use that much honesty, so you know it has to be true. I salute you, Century 21 Schutjer Realty, for telling it like it is.

Since the cheapest house in Contra Costa County is a houseboat, I decided to throw in another land-locked one. Not everyone likes water, but I hope they like the sound of trains!

This three-bedroom, one-bath, 1,003-square-foot home in Pittsburg, aside from a view of the railroad tracks is sold “as-is.” It’s also a bank foreclosure, but maybe you can overlook all of that if you like it’s price, it’s been reduced four times — from a high of $230,000 in June to $190,000 only this week.

I know maybe all of us in our 1,200-square-foot homes are enjoying this a bit too much.

According to Kenneth Harney, homes larger than 3,000-square-feet may lose a mortgage-interest tax deduction.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, expects to introduce comprehensive climate change reform legislation once Congress returns next month.

Besides imposing hefty new federal taxes on gasoline, the forthcoming bill will, in Dingell’s words, seek to “remove the mortgage interest deduction on McMansions — homes over 3,000 square feet.” Dingell said he recognizes that proposals like these will be highly controversial, but he believes they are essential to achieving the environmental goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent to 80 percent by the year 2050.

Wow, could there be a SUV tax next?!?

Flip your way to millions at Mansion Impossible!

This game is too addictive for words, but does kind of illustrate the life of a flipper. The object of the game is to buy low and sell high, making a pile of profit to buy the multimillion-dollar mansion. Because it’s always important to show off to the neighbors, right?

Either way, it’s free — unlike the other kind of flipping. My advice? Go for the mid- and higher-range homes for the big bucks.

Good luck!

Yes, this view of two peaks and a 4,600-square-foot home (with a 1,080-square-foot guesthouse) on 4.8 acres can be yours for $1,495,000!

(Personally, I think it looks a little like a forest station office painted Tuscan Red. I want to go in and get my wilderness permit. Perhaps it’s the driveway that looks like a parking lot that could accommodate 20 fire trucks?)

Today’s broken dream house is from Clayton, a nifty five-acre spread in the hills between East County and Concord/Walnut Creek. But unlike almost every other house sold in California in 2002, this one didn’t seem to appreciate in value.

It sold on Sept. 6, 2002 for $1,525,000, according to Zillow. That’s a loss of $30,000 to the owners, which probably wouldn’t cover that silver truck in the driveway.

Part of the problem in writing stories dealing with the multicultural and multilingual people of the East Bay, is that some readers seem inordinately fixed on the immigration status of people in them.

The Spanish-speaking Murillos bought a house in Antioch to be close to family. Judy, 31, is a cashier at Wal-Mart, her husband, Juan, is a roofer. Neither of them are very different from many people eking out a living in the East Bay and attempting to buy or hold onto their house.

One caller told me, “Well, I’m just asking if they’re illegal because *they* don’t let us buy any land in Mexico.”

The Murillos aren’t controlling anything anyone does.

This diminishes what the story is about. AB 512 was created to make loan documents easier to understand and that may not happen. Loan documents are difficult to understand when you speak the language, more so when you are not fluent in English.

A loan summary listing terms, percentage rate and fees would at least have been an improvement on current contract law, but that has since been stripped from the bill now making it a useless piece of legislation to make our state politicians look like they are doing something. Too bad the legislation could actually weaken contract law.

Furthermore, a loan summary on every mortgage — in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog or Vietnamese would benefit everyone in the state by clarifying terms and making it easier for everyone to understand.

Lastly, when I asked the Murillos and their lawyer, Heidi Li, about what they hoped the outcome would be from their lawsuit. It wasn’t millions of dollars or punitive damages.

They said they wanted to work out a deal with their loan servicer to keep their house and have a fixed-rate mortgage.

Today’s Broken Dream Home is from Benicia — a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,785-square-foot house listed for $559,000. Sounds sensible? Perhaps it is.

However, the house was bought July 5, 2005 for $577,000, at what was arguably the height of the housing market, which means a 2007 loss of $18,000. (Man that 4.89 percent certificate of deposit’s looking pretty good right now, right, guys?)

And adding insult to injury? The photos on this property are pixilated and awful — so much so I’m not even going to post them. No wonder it’s spent 191 days on the market!

It’s been said that when residential real estate isn’t doing well, investors turn to commercial. And commercial looks like it might be doing a lot better in the coming months. That’s if you own, rather than rent. If you are renting, save up for your next lease — it’s going to be a doozy!

Bill Nork, senior vice president for Cornish & Carey Commercial in Emeryville, agreed.

“Everybody thinks that tenants are just going to roll over and pay these rents,” Nork said. “But when rents go up, tenants get really mobile.”

That’s when San Francisco’s tenants might be looking in the East Bay — like the California State Automobile Association’s announcing last month that it would relocate from its San Francisco headquarters to a 255,000-square-foot, yet-to-be-built office in Station Landing near the Pleasant Hill BART station.

Aside from the bad grammar and spelling — what our dear reader is saying is, “Quit making me think!” when s/he would be better off not watching television or reading news, as UCLA Anderson Forecast director Ed Leamer suggested for most homeowners who aren’t selling.

Why worry about something that doesn’t concern you? I don’t. I’m renting and although I would like to own a house for practical reasons, I can’t see paying peak-market 2006 prices when values have come down to those found in 2004.

If you are an owner, you have a few years (probably four) to wait before the market changes to favor the seller. I guess you could pore over DataQuick’s home values each month, but as I have said before, the value of your house is based solely on what someone will pay for it.

If you want $650,000 for your house — bully for you! But it doesn’t mean buyers will consider that a fair price. They, too, are trying to save as much money because a $4,550 monthly mortgage (on $650,000) is frightening.

I know sellers don’t care about how much debt buyers are in, they want their price and that profit their neighbor got in June 2006. It’s August 2007, and that’s the date buyers are looking at. These are smarter-than-average buyers, who inhale Web sites and information on real estate and have no intention of being fleeced like buyers before them. They KNOW you paid $439,000 for your house in May 2004 and want a $211,000 profit.

Those are the market conditions. So, shut up already, OK?

This house on 450 Taylor Ave. in Alameda seemed really familiar to me until I realized it was a house I looked at in 2005 that had an asking price of $675,000 (only then it was painted blue-gray, I guess the beige paint made it $200,000 more.) According to Zillow.com it was sold just before Xmas 2005 for $675,000. Eight months later in August 2006, the home was bought for $839,000. Now in 2007, its current owners, who have owned it for a year are trying to sell, at first for $879,000 — then $849,000.

The first buyer made out very well, a $169,000 profit (that’s more than $20,000 a month!) but the last owner who bought in 2006 at the height of the market will not be seeing that kind of profit. Sadly, the owner expected to get at least $40,000 for a year’s equity but has now reassessed their needs to $10,000.

Wait a minute, hasn’t there been story after story of homes dropping in value 5, 10 and even 15 percent? Well, not in Alameda!

Anyway, 450 Taylor Ave. is this month’s Broken Dream Home. Congratulations!

And he does it very well and tongue-in-cheek. Loved the “The rich people have to get richer for the poor people to even stay where they are!” And, of course, it co-stars our friend Jim Cramer.

The Daily Show had this to say about subprime lending last week, taking on the accusations that minorities were targeted for subprime loans. My favorite line was Larry Wilmore’s, “We knew the loans were unfair, that’s why we stopped paying them!”