It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can cause a seller and buyer big headaches.

We’re talking about damage done to a property after a contract is signed but prior to closing.

Perhaps the moving company broke the stair spindles when they were carrying the seller’s large dresser down. Or maybe there was a small kitchen fire -- or worse, damage from a major storm. Or perchance a final walkthrough prior to closing revealed damage that wasn’t noticeable when the house was full of the seller’s belongings.

Most standard state and local contracts address this issue. Unfortunately, says National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) General Counsel Katie Johnson, all contracts are different in how they handle the situation. The next steps depend on the language of your specific deal.

In Florida, according to Meredith Caruso of state trade association Florida Realtors, standard contracts contain a risk-of-loss clause which states that if the cost of restoration does not exceed 1.5 percent of the purchase price, the seller must restore the property and closing should proceed as per the contract.

If the cost of repairs exceeds 1.5 percent of the price, then the buyer has the choice of taking the property as-is along with a 1.5 percent reduction in price, or having their deposit returned. If they take the latter option, all parties are released from the contract.

In Colorado, on the other hand, the standard contract says the seller is liable for the repair or replacement of the damage with items of similar size, age and quality. Either that, or the seller can offer the buyer an equivalent credit. If the work is not finished on or before closing, the buyer has the right to terminate the deal or take a credit, not exceeding the purchase price, for the cost.

These are known as force majeure clauses, provisions in the contract that allow a party to suspend or terminate their obligations when certain circumstances beyond their control arise, making performance inadvisable, illegal or impossible.

Sometimes a list of possible events is included with these clauses: war, riots, fire, flood, hurricane, typhoon, earthquake, lightning, explosion, strikes, lockouts, slowdowns and government acts that prohibit or impede any party from performing their respective obligations under the contract.

Both buyers and sellers would be wise to look for a force majeure clause in the contract they are signing, NAR’s Johnson advises. It may or may not be labeled as such -- in the Florida contract, it’s called “risk of loss”; in Colorado, “damages, inclusions and services”; in Texas, “casualty loss” -- but it’s important to find it.

If it’s not there, the attorney suggests, you should negotiate up-front how these situations should be handled and include the agreed-upon details in the contract. In the absence of such an agreement, you’ll be left to the mercy of narrow common-law contract doctrines, which often leave one party or the other highly dissatisfied.

Your state’s Uniform Vendor and Purchaser Risk Act may also come into play, according to Johnson. These laws spell out who bears the risk for damages: the buyer, the seller or both, and at what percentage.

Of course, you can always renegotiate after the fact. Remember, everything in real estate is negotiable, right up until the moment you sign your name on all those documents at closing.

A force majeure clause should address a list of events the buyer and seller want covered, what happens when an event occurs, which party can suspend performance, and what happens if a listed event continues outside a specific time frame.

If the air conditioning fails, the seller should be responsible since they still own the property, says Patricia Beck of RE/MAX Properties in Colorado Springs. But if the house is damaged by flood or fire, the parties might want to make the buyer obligated to close if the damage is less than, say, 10 percent of the purchase price. If they want to bail despite such a clause, they could lose their earnest money deposit.

If the damage is greater and repairs cannot be made promptly, the buyer should be able to terminate the deal, Beck adds. But if they decide to proceed, the seller should be required to transfer any insurance proceeds to the buyer at closing.

Unfortunately, not every event can be foreseen. Take this possibility described by Dale Ross of the Dale Ross Realty Group in Katy, Texas:

If the house floods for any reason -- broken pipe, failed water heater or rising water -- and the insurance claim is substantial, the house might fall into a high-risk insurance situation. That means the buyer might have to pay up to four times the normal amount for homeowner’s insurance “for about two years or until the insurance policy returns to a normal price,” Ross says.

This fact alone could cause a buyer to want to back out. So could a reappraisal by the buyer’s mortgage company, if not because of a possible delay in closing, then because the new value ascribed to the house is so much lower than the original appraisal that the lender will no longer be willing to finance the place.

No financing, no deal.

A good number of buyers have been robbing their piggy banks lately, hoping that paying cash will help them beat out the competition for any decent houses still left on the market.

According to ATTOM Data Solutions, a national property database, the percentage of cash sales reached its all-time high of 42 percent in the first quarter of 2010. That’s compared to 28.2 percent in this year’s second quarter. In 2017’s third quarter, ATTOM says that cash buyers accounted for 27.2 percent of all single-family home and condo sales -- up from 26.7 percent in Q3 2016. It was the second consecutive quarter with a year-over-year increase following 15 consecutive quarters of year-over-year decreases.

Black Knight Financial Services sets the high-water mark even higher: 45.4 percent in Q1 2011, compared to 28 percent in Q3 2017.

Lots of people have been raiding their bank accounts, stock portfolios and even their IRAs at a pretty good clip. With a little-known program from Fannie Mae, however, cash buyers can reclaim a good hunk of their money. It’s called the Delayed Financing Exception. It’s “a widely undiscovered, yet very useful, program because it provides buyers with a broader range of financial choices,” says Chris Carter, a loan officer and real estate agent with Geneva Financial in Naples, Florida.

Normally, cash buyers have to wait a minimum of six months to refinance their purchase and retrieve some of their money. But with the Delayed Finance Exception, you can refinance right after closing -- no six-month wait required.

Carter says the exception “works best when done within three months.” That’s because the Internal Revenue Service has a 90-day limitation for you to claim the loan as “property acquisition” financing. Without it, you won’t qualify for the deduction for mortgage interest.

As of this writing, the mortgage interest write-off is still deductible when itemizing. But it could be trivialized under tax reform proposals now being considered in Washington.

There are plenty of reasons why you might want to pull your cash back out of the house. One is that a house is a relatively illiquid investment. Sure, you can buy and sell real estate, but doing so often takes months. Stocks and bonds, on the other hand, can be bought and sold in a matter of seconds.

Also, any money you have tied up in the house is not available to make other investments.

Another reason is leverage. A basic principle of investing in real estate is to use borrowed money to own property, putting less of your own cash at risk. The technique increases the rate of return on your money.

And then there’s diversification, another basic investment primer, which allows investors to spread their money among different investments, again reducing risk.

Delayed financing can be used for personal residences, vacation homes and investment properties. The loan amount must comply with loan-to-value ratios of other cash-out refi programs, typically 70-80 percent of value. And it can include closing costs and prepaid fees, as long as the loan-to-value limit is maintained.

The interest rate must be compatible with that of other cash-out refi loans with similar ratios and transaction specifics.

But there are rules:

-- The six-month time frame begins on the closing date of the original cash transaction and ends on the funding date of the delayed funding refi. “This means that the full application, underwriting and final approval must take place” during that time frame, according to Carter.

-- The original deal must have been an “arm’s length” transaction: Buyer and seller cannot be related, either personally or in a business sense, and must have acted in their own individual interests.

-- The closing statement from the cash deal must show that no financing whatsoever was used.

-- Funds for the cash purchase must be fully documented, sourced and “paper-trailed.” If any part of the purchase price comes from a deal on another property, that loan must be paid off first from the proceeds of the delayed funding.

-- There can be no outstanding liens. Any lien must be paid off before closing.

As you can see, this isn’t simple. That’s why Carter suggests working only with loan officers who understand delayed financing, have done several deals and can get you to the finish line well ahead of time.

Building sites for single-family houses hit a record high last year, even as lots were the smallest ever, according to data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction.

The median lot size sold in 2016 dipped to 8,562 square feet, or just under a fifth of an acre. That’s a small decline from 2015, when the median fell to under 8,600 square feet for the first time.

While lot sizes are shrinking overall, regional differences are major. For example, the median size of a fully developed building site in New England, which is known for strict, low-density zoning rules, is nearly twice as large as the national median -- exceeding a third of an acre. The Pacific division, where densities are high and developed land is scarce, has the smallest lots, with half of the lots under 0.15 acres.

The lot size analysis, which was made by economists at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), does not include custom homes built on the owner’s land.

Price-wise, half the lots nationwide were priced at or above $45,000, a value first reached in 2015. Before that, the previous record was the $43,000 posted in 2006, in the midst of the housing boom -- two years before the market came apart at the seams.

Rising costs are most pronounced in the West South Central and North Central divisions, where lot prices hit a new high. Half the building sites in these regions sold for more than $47,000 last year. In the boom years of the previous decade, the median lot price for these two divisions was under $30,000.

Given that lot sizes continue to shrink and housing production is still significantly below historically normal levels, building sites are still being sold at record-high prices.

Despite the record-high lot prices, they accounted for less than 17 percent of sale prices of new single-family homes started in 2016, which is the lowest share since at least 1999. The declining share suggests that other construction costs, including labor and materials, are outpacing rising lot values.

Meanwhile, despite smaller lots, builders are managing to make their backyards larger, according to research from online real estate brokerage Trulia. The typical house completed so far this year included 7,048 square feet of outdoor space, marking the third year in a row yard sizes have grown. The trend breaks a 25-year run toward smaller outdoor spaces.

Yard sizes are increasing because the footprints of the houses themselves are shrinking, as builders try to cut costs by making their houses smaller. At the same time, buyers are demanding better-designed outdoor spaces.

Water is not everyone’s cup of tea. But if it’s a water view you crave, be ready to pay for it. Handily.

According to Miami agent Ross Milroy, who specializes in properties priced at $2 million and above, some condominiums that feature a direct water view sell for as much as twice the price of a comparable unit that looks over the city.

Not surprisingly, the biggest price discrepancy can be found on South Beach, where condos with a direct view of the ocean or bay bring $1,950 per square foot, while the same unit that overlooks the city sells for $970 per square foot -- a difference of 101 percent.

Water view premiums can be found throughout Miami at buildings adjacent to the ocean, Biscayne Bay and even the Miami River. At Ten Museum Park, a 50-story condo in downtown Miami, comparable condos are listed for sale at $1.1 million for water view and $759,000 for city view -- a 49 percent difference.

Of course, people’s desire to live near the water is nothing new. “Buyers want to see the ocean, hear the water, feel the ocean breeze, and have a seamless experience of bringing the outdoors in,” says Milroy.

Folks trying to raise their credit scores often resort to tactics that make sense intuitively, but sometimes backfire. For instance: Many think that closing unused cards will help their scores. But it could do the opposite.

The reason is tied to an important metric in credit scoring systems called the debt-to-limit ratio, or “revolving utilization.” This metric compares your existing credit card balances to the combined credit card limits on all of your open cards.

So, if you have $2,000 in balances on your cards compared with $10,000 in the combined limits on your cards, your debt-to-limit ratio is 20 percent because you’re using 20 percent of your aggregate credit limit. Twenty percent is a pretty low ratio -- a good thing for your credit score.

Closing one or two unused credit cards would remove some percentage of the “limit” portion of the debt-to-limit ratio measurement. Let’s say the card you closed had a $5,000 credit limit. That would leave a $2,000 balance owed and only $5,000 for your total spending limit, which instantly doubles your debt-to-limit ratio to 40 percent.

Even closing cards that represent a smaller percentage of your total debt limit would drive that ratio higher.

Now apply this knowledge to the holiday shopping season and the bills that follow. Seasonal gift-buying typically brings an increase in outstanding card balances -- pushing up the “debt” side of the ratio. Closing one or more unused cards in the wake of that would lower the “limit” side of the ratio at the same time: a one-two punch that could decrease credit scores considerably.