Last week I went to another overpriced open house and there on the couch was a representative from Countrywide who basically told me I had to come up with 10 percent down to a buy a house now. (I know, quelle surprise to me!)

I kind of felt the seller was a bit presumptuous having a loan consultant there (who just had a financial bailout or two.) I guess she was trying to justify asking $100,000 more than her house was worth.

But it turns out it’s part of Countrywide’s new plan to expand business:

In an effort to help home buyers better understand today’s home financing options, Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., will enlist more than 7,000 home loan consultants to visit residential open houses across the country over the next six weeks to provide an array of mortgage financing options for customers.

Dubbed “America’s Open House,” Countrywide’s sales team will join forces with local real estate agents at weekend open houses to educate home buyers about the basics of the real estate market and give them the tools they need to shop for a home.

Countrywide’s home loan consultants will offer mortgage options for specific open-house properties. With a pre-approval in hand, home buyers will know how much house they can afford and, perhaps more importantly, can shop with increased confidence.

Because we all know it was the lagging confidence that was keeping us from buying, and certainly not the price.

If you saw this story, you may dismiss it as another Associated Press business story. Or you may realize that until recently, Lennar held almost a whole building at Bishop Ranch in San Ramon filled with employees. That number has been dwindling. Expect more by Christmas.

Tough times in the national housing market led Lennar Corp. to lose a company-record $513.9 million in the third quarter, with drops in sales prices and home deliveries compounded by heavy charges to write down land values. Its shares fell more than 4 percent in afternoon trading.

One of the nation’s largest home builders said Tuesday that it had to cut its workforce by 35 percent this year and that it expects to pare more employees soon.

“These continue to be very difficult times for the home building industry,” Lennar Chief Executive Stuart Miller said in a conference call.

West Coast Green can be a little overwhelming.

You head to San Francisco, are herded around barricades into the Bill Graham Auditorium where you are again herded into conference rooms or into the 8:30 a.m. plenary and there are tons of people. If you go after 10 a.m., the exhibit hall opens up, and you will look at everything with a “green” placed in front of it: toilets, floors, ceilings, insulation, landscaping, lumber, paint and power.

Then outside, on Civic Center Plaza, is michelle kaufmann designs’ mkLotus, her new 725-square-foot modular home. Kaufmann, an Oakland-based architect, said she built it because several clients had asked for a small home to act as a second home or “granny unit” (I call them guesthouses.)

Although I wasn’t big on the exterior faux modernist look and had doubts about the roof garden (she said it had a membrane that protected the roof from water damage) the interior was better. (I came from the Palm Springs area and if I never saw another modernist house I wouldn’t mind.) Although it was still a neo-modernist interior, the decor and flow of the room was great.

The gardening/landscaping started on Monday night and was finished by Wednesday. It truly looked great, so that team had to have worked hard. Even if you don’t go to the conference, stop by the plaza for a look at the house.

Most people, including designers, seemed amazed it was 725 square feet. I didn’t. I lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment that size. But I think placing it in Civic Center Plaza did up prefab’s, and Michelle Kaufmann’s, profile.

The Federal Reserve’s rate cut doesn’t mean much to homeowners. However, if you have a HELOC (home-equity line of credit) it does. According to the Wall Street Journal article referenced above:

The rate cut is good news for borrowers with home-equity lines of credit, and savings could show up as soon as the next monthly statement. Borrowers looking for a new fixed-rate home-equity loan could also see lower rates. There are likely to be regional differences, with lenders most likely to cut rates on these loans in areas where the housing market is healthy and the local economy is robust, says Doug Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association. Before the Fed’s latest move, rates on home-equity lines averaged 8.72%, while home-equity loans averaged 8.29%, according to HSH Associates

For the rest of the homeowning population, better luck next time.

In case any of your were wondering about an epilogue on my “Priced to Sell” story, there’s not much to say. Many of the homes left the market, are back on the market, but some never came back. Others dropped their price.

In Pleasant Hill, 22 Cleopatra Way went down to $492,000 on Sept. 12. This five-bedroom, two-bath is a bit close to Interstate 680 and some of the photos of the interior are confusing. It may stay on the market a bit longer. … Yet, under $500,000 is an attractive quality in central Contra Costa County.

Many of the others, notable exceptions are 2601 Calhoun St. and 3573 Ponderosa Trail, are still on the market for the price offered in late August. As several real estate agents tell me, some sellers are pricing behind the curve and are destined for disappointment.

So who are all these agents who are taking on these properties with unrealistic prices? Are they deluding themselves, too, that they will get a bigger commission? Or are they too green to say no when they really need to?

Feel free to tell me.

In The Independent former chair of The Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan admitted he knew his cuts to interest rates were encouraging a subprime boom.

According to excerpts released by CBS, Mr Greenspan will concede that he “didn’t really get it” with regard to sub-prime lending and the risks it presented until too late. He argues, however, that there was little the bank could have done, and that the policy of lowered rates was still correct.

“While I was aware of a lot of these practices going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late,” he tells Leslie Stahl. “I really didn’t get it until very late in 2005 and 2006.”

Even then, however, options were not available to him to nip it in the bud. “It was nothing to look into particularly, because we knew there were a number of such practices going on, but it’s very difficult for banking regulators to deal with that,” he asserts.

The lackluster retail sales figures released yesterday seemed to send everyone in a tizzy yesterday, with calls for Bernanke to lower interest rates and stimulate the economy.

Jitters over a slowing US economy intensified yesterday with the release of weaker-than-expected retail sales figures for August, further raising expectations that the Federal Reserve board will cut interest rates next week for the first time in four years.

You may recall this home I wrote about in August.

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.

Apparently, the owners have come down from their previous price of $849,000 to $799,000, meaning they have lost approximately $40,000 on this flipping wonder.

Congratulations, you are the Broken Dream Home of the Month! Again!

Broken Dream Home’s 1st Law of Real Estate: Real Estate is not a short-term investment.

If you saw my story today and George Avalos’ on Thursday, then you may have an inkling where I’m going with this.

So far, they are looking at 2009 for the bloodletting to stop. That means if you aren’t willing to price your house to compete with lower-cost foreclosures, then take it off the market … if you can.

My favorite part of the East Bay Regional Forecast Conference in Oakland?

Cashtration: When you buy a home or spend so much money on your mortgage that it renders you financially impotent.

My story today about the Polk house for sale, highlighted a segment of real estate few people talk about. Yet it’s one many people deal with on a regular basis.

Most deaths that occur in the house are natural deaths of people who may have lived there for decades before finally dying there. With more and more people using hospice services and preferring to die at home rather than a hospital, it will probably be more commonplace.

One Alameda listing even stated recently “a natural death occurred in this house.” I think being upfront helps everyone. Could you imagine not finding out until a few months after you bought your house that it was the site of a grisly murder? While it may not affect everyone, I think it would bother me.

That said, I visited the Polk house and I didn’t feel creepy or weird. I even sat in the poolhouse talking with the agent and still no bad vibes, but then again, I’m not buying it.

Architectural Digest, Dwell, Cottage Living, Country Living, and anything with Martha Stewart, told us it was possible and adjustable-rate mortgages made it so. It persuaded people living in perfectly affordable houses to “move up,” as real estate agents say to the next tier of house. It made empty-nesters sell off their home, cash in their equity and buy 3,500-square-foot homes with wine cellars and four-car garages for only two people.

House porn, like regular porn, leaves people momentarily satiated but ultimately frustrated. Regularly looking at airbrushed and surgically-enhanced people can skew reality as much as looking digitally-enhanced and carefully cultivated photos of homes.

Why can’t my house/spouse look like that? Because that house and that person don’t really exist.

It created desire, cultivated lust for more and killed contentment in reality. Whatever home people had, there was always something more, something better, something more expensive to be had.

Money can buy happiness, but not everyone has that kind of money.

Eventually the lending dried up, and the centerfold houses are now sitting empty, their values lowered monthly. Some even were part of a family’s dream for two or three years before being placed up for auction or became part of foreclosure listings. (It would never be an object of lust again, because banks/lenders/trustees see real estate as a business.)

The fantasy ended with damaged credit, no place to live and a memory of what almost was.

At least they can still close the blinds and watch “While You Were Out.”