• Sidelined home buyers. Family or lifestyle additions, or changes made in buyers' households in the last three years are forcing those waiting out the market transition to finally get off the fence and say, "It's time for our family to buy the new home that suits our new needs."
• Home uplifts. Not a big renovation, but some new finishes that can visually hold over stay-put home sellers. Not a gut, rehab-to-the-studs new kitchen, but new flooring, countertops, and/or appliances.
  
• Collaborative home pricing. The old days of home sellers configuring a home's price are out. What's new is that the seller, along with their agent, looks at closed comparables, sets a price, then the buyer and their agent can agree or disagree -- but in the end, a mortgage lender and their appraiser will set the price, as they are assuming the most risk in the transaction.
• Balanced reporting by real estate and personal finance journalists. Consumers learned in 2008 that the "doom and gloom" residential real estate market headlines don't apply to all markets. What's been lost in the foreclosure hype is that there are still stories of homes selling in short market times (as little as 3 days), homes selling at full price, and some selling with multiple contracts on the table. Existing home sales will be 5.02 million for 2008, versus 5.652 million for 2007 -- a decrease of just over eleven percent, considerably less that the recent correction in the U.S. stock market -- and this realistic view shows that over five million people purchased a home despite the dire headlines of 2008.
• Creative home seller financing. Exhausted home sellers are turning to self-financing to move properties. Installment sale contracts and lease-to-own are the most popular and effective ways for sellers to begin to receive income from a property that has languished on the market in 2008.
  

Buyers should see the HUD-1 before closing, in draft form. But things can and do change before getting to the closing table, and many buyers find new or increased fees tacked on at the last minute. Those anxious to close may not bicker with the higher fees, or even notice them as they deal with everything else. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has noticed the trend. After much debate, HUD has created some new mortgage rules to deal with it, hoping to save homebuyers an average of nearly $700 at the closing table.

The most important change is that now, lenders and brokers are required to provide buyers with a standard Good Faith Estimate (GFE) within three days of receiving a mortgage application. (The GFE was commonly used in the past, but no standard format existed.) On the GFE, brokers must now disclose how they're paid, through the "origination charge."

This is the cost to the borrower for getting the loan, expressed as a percentage of the overall loan amount. The charge may be paid in "discount points" (points the borrower pays upfront in exchange for a lower interest rate) or as part of the interest rate itself.

In addition, lenders and brokers can't increase some costs between the GFE and the HUD-1, and other costs can only go up by up to 10%. For example:

• Origination charge: cannot increase.
• Transfer taxes: cannot increase.
• Appraisal fees: can only increase up to 10%.
• Government recording fees: can only increase up to 10%.
• Title insurance: can only increase up to 10% if borrower uses the title insurer selected by the lender.

The HUD-1 is also revamped to make it easier for borrowers to compare to the GFE. Lenders and brokers aren't required to start using these forms until January 1, 2010 -- but they're allowed to use them immediately. If you don't receive a GFE when you apply for a loan, ask for one -- or better yet, ask the lender to use the new forms together and to agree to be bound by the fee increases on those forms.

• If you have the time to shop for things to spruce up the ol' homestead, you can find just about anything on Craigslist, EBay, etc.
• Lumber yards often have returned merchandise that is seriously marked down -- sometimes these are top-of-the-line items like custom windows or doors. You just have to be imaginative to think of how to use them.
• Paint stores always have lots of returned paint that's just fine but wasn't the exact color someone else wanted. It's nearly free, and even if it's not what you had in mind for the dining room, it will be fine for the basement, garage, or wherever the exact color is not important. If it's a light color, you may even be able to get it re-tinted closer to what you want.
• In the current economy, lots of contractors will be going out of business and may sell off their stock of materials and tools at cents on the dollar.
• Most larger towns have salvage yards and recycling centers that handle building materials, appliances, and fixtures.
• If you have friends or neighbors whose homes also need sprucing up, put together a cooperative effort -- have a painting bee, share a debris box to get rid of junk, and so on.

Apparently, the Beacon Woods Civic Association didn't find Prudente's claim of financial hardship -- his adjustable rate mortgage payment had increased by $600 per month, and his car was repossessed -- to excuse him from keeping the yard up. After Prudente failed to respond to their continued demands to resod, or later to court documents, he was found in contempt of court and ordered jailed. The contempt order meant Prudente could be kept in jail until he complied with the mandate to resod the lawn, something he could not afford to do.

Prudente's case shows that if you buy a home in a common interest development, you must be prepared to live by the rules -- and you can't count on the understanding of the association when you want to deviate from them. For that reason, it's best to make sure you fully understand what you're getting into before you buy and know a little about the association's history for granting any exceptions.

Fortunately, Prudente's story ended happily: neighbors and strangers helped him resod as the association required, and he was out of jail a couple days later.

Fortunately, in the United States, you can avoid any such extremes even if you buy a property with someone and later decide to part ways. If you decide to buy jointly -- even if it's not with a spouse or significant other -- you can each own different percentages of the property if you hold title as tenants in common. You don't own any particular portion of the property, though, so if you want to have the right to separately use a particular portion (the upstairs unit, for example), you'll have to create a separate ownership agreement to address that.

And if you want to sell your interest, you can. But you can't saw the property in half.

Alayna Schroeder

Foreclosure has always been a lengthy process, and banks are now more willing than ever to work out a compromise solution, so that the idea that foreclosed homeowners just pick up and leave the moment they get the bank's foreclosure notice couldn't be more off base. For information about how foreclosure affects voting rights in each state, see http://legalconsumer.com/bankruptcy/foreclosure_voter_rights.php?. You'll find links to election rights organizations and state-specific registration information.

Luckily, if you're buying a house, it isn't necessary to understand the complicated relationship of these behemouth organizations to the real estate market and Wall Street. But even if you're completely disinterested in the details, you do need to know one thing: the takeover does affect interest rates, which reached a 7-month low this week. (If you're curious, the reason this is so is explained here.)

If you're a first-time buyer, this has a huge impact: it makes your house cheaper. Okay, not literally. But while the seller's price tag doesn't change, what comes out of your pocket does. For example, if you paid a rate of 6.25% for a $300,000, 30-year fixed rated mortgage, your monthly principal and interest payment would be almost $1,850 (and you'd pay a whopping $364,974.58 in interest over that 30 years). But if your rate is 5.75% on the same mortgage, your monthly payment is only around $1,750. And you'll only end up paying $330,258.68 in interest -- no small sum, but still much less.

So while the price a seller advertises is an important factor in determining home affordability, low interest rates are nothing to scoff at, either. You have Fannie and Freddie to thank for that.

Alayna Schroeder

But be careful if your plan is to hold on to your home and rent it out -- not an uncommon strategy for many homeowners today who need to move but aren't ready to sell at the low prices dominating many real estate markets. When it comes to taxes, rental property isn't treated the same as a principal residence. You are taxed on the full gain when you sell, usually at 15% (the current federal capital gains rate for most taxpayers).

To get around this, rental property owners used to be able to convert rental properties to personal residences. If they lived there for two out of the five years before sale, they'd qualify for the principal residence exclusion. The law has changed, however. Now, the time the property is not your principal residence is considered "non-qualified use". You are only permitted to exclude gain for qualified use -- the time the property is your principal residence. So if you own a property for 10 years and only live in it for the last two before selling, you can exclude 20% of your gain and will have to pay taxes on the remaining 80%. (Non-qualified use before 2009 doesn't count, however.)

You don't need to worry about this if you don't ever plan to rent your house out. If you think you might, however, be aware of the tax implications of doing so.

Alayna Schroeder

Why the disparity between reality and perception? One reason is probably a stubborn disbelief that it's possible for the real estate market to fall, especially given the frenzied pace with which values were increasing just a few short years ago. Conventional wisdom says that home values rise over time -- which is historically true -- but "wisdom" just a few years ago told us time or investment wasn't needed, and home values always rise. (If you disagree, try counting the number of television shows and books on flipping properties.)

Probably an even greater misperception -- given the number of people who think the value of their home will rise even while the local market falls -- is that homeowners think their properties are better and different than the rest. They can't imagine anyone wouldn't love what they've done with the kitchen, or ooh and ahh over the new deck.

But the sad reality, as any homebuyer knows, is that houses are commodities. Buyers aren't looking for someone else's dream home, they're looking for something that meets their needs at a reasonable price, and they're not willing to pay the premium many sellers expect for their own customization or improvements. (Often, whether such "improvements" even improve is questionable -- pet showers, anyone?) After all, if they don't like the seller's choice of custom cabinetry or bathroom tile, they can easily find another property without these features -- and not be expected to pay for them.

Alayna Schroeder

That's no typical tax credit -- it's more like an interest-free loan. For details, see Sandra Block's excellent description in USA TODAY.

Ilona Bray