Q: I live in a moderate-size apartment complex and pay $1,075 for a one-bedroom apartment with a bay view — well below the market value. However, this building has lots of bugs, including spiders, ants, large water bugs, cockroaches, termites and silverfish. I had pest control spray once last summer, but the termites were back in full force after a week. I’ve had people tell me, “It’s California and you’re going to have bugs no matter what.” I think this building needs to be tented or condemned. Do I have any rights, and do I just move on and let the next person deal with this?

 Last month, Arline Klatte found herself karate-chopping a block of wood upon which she had inscribed her goals for the coming year. “They teach you mind over matter,” she tells me with a shrug. “It was pretty motivating.” She pauses. “But I don’t know.”

Trained as a journalist (she once worked as an editor for SFGate), the rookie agent with Coldwell Banker isn’t the sort to buy into just any hard-sell scheme that comes along. Having broken into the ultra-luxury market after only two years in the business, she has experienced the kind of success most agents never achieve even after decades in the trenches. Nevertheless, she found herself tempted when a team from real estate marketing juggernaut Hobbs/Herder descended on her office and began flogging a three-day seminar at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Does anybody remember the old days when home buyers actually made sizable down payments — often 20 percent or more — when they bought their first house?New national research reveals just how dated and quaint that concept has become, thanks to rocketing home prices that have eclipsed buyers’ incomes and savings.

From mid-2005 to mid-2006, according to a sampling of a representative group of 7,548 purchasers, nearly half of all first-time buyers financed the entire transaction, obtaining mortgages in the full amount of the home price.