The one thing lenders seem to have the most trouble with at closing is estimating the borrower’s property taxes. They invariably get it wrong, and borrowers pay the price.

Not immediately, of course. Borrowers go along merrily in their first year of ownership, paying into their escrow accounts each month exactly what their lenders said they should. And then, BAM! They are told their tax accounts are short of funds, sometimes woefully so.

Sometimes they are required to send a check immediately to make up the difference. If their lenders are more magnanimous, borrowers will be allowed to make up the shortage over the next 12 months. But that amount is added to new, often markedly higher tax payments to avoid having a deficit in the future. And borrowers have no choice but to ante up. After all, not keeping up with your property taxes is grounds for foreclosure.

Why do tax estimates often miss the mark? Because there is no standard method. Lenders and closing agents make use of various resources, including websites, local real estate agents, and tax authorities.

Determining the proper amount is particularly difficult for out-of-state and internet lenders who are not always familiar with the local tax codes, says Brian Koss, executive vice president of Mortgage Network.

Now, there’s an automated solution. Property Tax Estimator, from California-based data company CoreLogic, can estimate taxes in two minutes, speeding up a process that often takes humans 10 or 20 times that long. And the program gets it right 99.5 percent of the time, says Kirk Randlett, a vice president at CoreLogic.

The power behind the software comes from CoreLogic’s extensive database on 148 million-plus real estate parcels countrywide, plus information from the company’s tax services business and a built-in calculator that predicts future values.

The program can also estimate the property taxes on new construction and in jurisdictions that have ceilings on annual tax increases on existing houses. Here, the accuracy rate for the tool runs from 60 to 90 percent, depending on the complexity of the state’s tax code, according to Randlett.

California is probably the state best known for limiting the levy on current owners with its Prop 13 rule. But Florida, with its Save Our Homes legislation, also has restrictions on assessment changes, as do Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Texas and Oklahoma. In those states, owners are protected against significant run-ups in their property taxes. But when the home changes hands, the assessment can increase significantly. And humans frequently calculate the change incorrectly.

And then there are the numerous places that have more than one taxing authority. Take Homer, New York, for example: The town levies a property tax, as does the incorporated village and the school district.

Estimating the tax is also important for lenders, since nowadays, if they regularly miss the mark in the early stages of the lending process, they can be flagged and fined by federal regulators. Furthermore, an accurate estimate later in the process helps underwriters determine whether a would-be borrower can afford all the costs associated with the mortgage.

“The tax estimating process is critical to several stages of the mortgage cycle: disclosures, underwriting and servicing,” says Randlett, who calls property taxes “a hidden cost.”

Unfortunately, the Property Tax Estimator is a B2B product that’s not available to homebuyers directly. But it has just recently been integrated into Ellie Mae’s mortgage management program, and several major national lenders also are now using the software.

The bottom line is this: Ask your lender how the property tax was calculated. If it was done using the CoreLogic program, there’s a good chance it was on the money. If not, you should prepare for a jump in your monthly escrow -- maybe a big one -- in 12 months or so.

Women have broken through the “glass ceiling” in the homeowners association field. But in at least nine major cities, according to a new report, they are all but shut out from buying homes themselves.

A study by real estate data firm PropertyShark and its sister company, RENTCafe, found that the housing gender gap persists in nine major cities, including Chicago, Seattle and Denver. In those markets, single men can afford to buy or rent a starter home -- but, due to the gender wage gap, single women cannot. (A starter home, for the purposes of this study, was defined as either a studio or one-bedroom residence -- whether apartment, condo or house.)

Even worse, 14 markets were found to be so expensive that neither single men nor women could afford the average mortgage payment on a typical first residence. Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston topped that list.

In the most expensive markets, the monthly payments on a starter house would command “upwards of 80 percent” of a woman’s median income, the study said. In places where men can take the first step onto the housing ladder but women can’t even get a toehold, the payments would exceed 30 percent of the median women’s income.

The median income for single women was considerably less than men’s in all 50 cities covered in the research.

There’s no such divide in the homeowners association field, according to the Community Associations Institute (CAI). The group provides resources to homeowners and professionals in more than 338,000 community, condominium and co-operative associations in the United States.

Women not only hold the majority of positions on the CAI’s leadership roster; many also lead organizations in the community association field that work with multi-million-dollar budgets. And according to the latest research, their salaries are on par with their male counterparts.

“From entry level to executive, there are no barriers in our industry for women to achieve great things,” says Cat Carmichael, chair of CAI’s 2017 Business Partners Council.

The home-building business is still dominated by small shops that build only a few houses a year. But last year, big builders -- both national and regional -- grabbed their largest share of the market since 2010.

In 2016, the 10 largest publicly traded builders captured a combined 27.4 percent share of the 559,000 single-family home closings. D.R. Horton alone nailed more than 40,300 deals, giving it a 7.2 percent share of the market. By comparison, the 10th largest company, Toll Bros., closed 6,100 houses for a 1.1 percent share.

Public companies enjoy several advantages over their smaller counterparts. They have better access to less-expensive credit, the lifeblood of the business, through the capital markets. And they can buy building products in bulk for their numerous projects.

But small builders have their own skills. For one thing, they are a lot more nimble and can move quickly if their markets change. They also tend to be much more flexible in their ability to customize their houses to meet local demands and preferences.

Here are the top 10 home builders for 2016: their number of closings and their shares of the market.

-- D.R. Horton: 40,309, 7.2 percent

-- Lennar: 26,563, 4.8 percent

-- Pulte Home: 19,95, 3.6 percent

-- NVR: 14,928, 2.7 percent

-- CalAtlantic: 14,229, 2.5 percent

-- KB Homes: 9,829, 1.8 percent

-- Taylor Morrison: 7,369, 1.3 percent

-- Meritage: 7,355, 1.3 percent

-- Hovnanian: 6,712, 1.2 percent

-- Toll Bros.: 6,098, 1.1 percent

According to Trulia, the inventory of houses for sale nationally hit a record low in the first quarter of 2017, falling 5.1 percent over the last 12 months. That makes it eight consecutive quarters that inventory has stumbled, putting upward pressure on asking prices.

Looking at the housing stock nationally and in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, Trulia found that the decline was most pronounced in the starter home category, which fell 8.7 percent from the first quarter of 2016 to Q1 2017.

Over the same period, the number of trade-up places listed for sale dropped 7.9 percent. At the same time, the inventory of premium houses slipped 1.7 percent.

“The persistent and disproportional drop in starter and trade-up home inventory is pushing affordability further out of reach,” the Trulia report said. “Starter and trade-up homebuyers need to spend 2.9 percent and 1.6 percent more of their income, respectively, than they did at this time last year.”

Las Vegas hotelier Steve Wynn has discovered the next great amenity. And with it, he plans to bring to the desert the one thing the Nevada gambling mecca lacks: Caribbean-like beaches.

Wynn plans to turn the 38-acre golf course behind his two hotels on the Las Vegas strip into a huge Crystal Lagoon where visitors can not only swim and sun on white sand beaches, but also water-ski, paddleboard and paraglide.

“This is the most fun project I’ve had in my 45 years (in the industry),” Wynn says. “I love this.”

Crystal Lagoons are popping up elsewhere, too. Several are under construction in Florida, as is one in Dallas and another in Houston. In total, the company has some 300 lagoons either built or in development in more than 50 countries, including 15 in the U.S.

“This is a complete game-changer in terms of amenities,” Greg Singleton, president of the Metro Development Group, said at an Urban Land Institute conference last fall in Dallas. “It’s almost like being on a beach in the Bahamas, with crystal-clear water in front of you, except there are no jellyfish, man o' wars or sharks.”

Crystal Lagoons bills itself as a technology company that offers developers a system for building and maintaining bodies of water of unlimited size, in clear condition, at a low cost. And it can help turn landlocked, otherwise non-viable properties into successful projects, says the company’s U.S. president, Uri Man.

“This is an amenity that has the power to change the real estate paradigm,” Man says. “It can transform any location into an idyllic beach paradise and provides real estate developers unmatched value compared to traditional amenities.”

Crystal Lagoons was started in Chile by developer Fernando Fischmann, whose project was on a part of the coastline where the water was bitterly cold and had large waves and dangerous undercurrents. Swimming was prohibited.

To overcome these problems, he dreamed of creating a massive pool that would offer visitors the opportunity to swim and enjoy water sports in a safe and clean environment. After several fits and starts, Fischmann, a trained biochemist, came up with the right formula, and the company was born. Today, it holds some 1,500 patents in 60 countries.

While the lagoons can be of any size and depth -- “there are no limitations,” says Man -- they are typically three to 10 acres in size and eight to 10 feet deep. They have shallow ends that are child-friendly and deeper spots for all kinds of water sports.

Egypt currently boasts the largest lagoon, at 30 acres, but a 90-acre lagoon is under construction in Dubai. In the U.S., a 14-acre lagoon being built in Jacksonville, Florida, will anchor a new single-family community of 1,000 homes and a 100,000 square-foot waterfront retail and restaurant village.

For proprietary reasons, the company won’t talk much about how the lagoons are built. But they are excavated similarly to man-made lakes, and have liners similar to above-ground swimming pools. The liner is made of a material than can withstand the sun’s UV rays and doesn’t deteriorate. “It can last over 100 years,” according to Man.

Whereas conventional pools use high levels of chlorine and other disinfectants, Crystal Lagoons distribute tiny amounts, and only as needed, via a system of sensors and "pulses." They also use super-efficient ultrasonic filtration systems.

The lagoons use 30 times less water than a golf course of the same size, and can be filled with any type of water, including saltwater. One Cabo San Lucas lagoon contains 27 million gallons of sea water diverted from the Pacific. By the time it reaches the lagoon, it is clean and clear.

The first U.S. lagoon is being built by the Metro Development Group at a property in Wesley Chapel, Florida. Before breaking ground in February, the company already had more than 2,000 names on its waiting list, all with only a billboard on Interstate 75. Singleton attributes the numbers to interest in the property’s nearly 8-acre lagoon, which will feature a private beach, swim-up bar, grotto and kayak launch. Metro has also signed deals to build lagoons in three other Florida locations.

Kent Donahue of Bayside Land Partners in Dallas is also sold on the amenity.

"It’s what we are basing our entire theme around,” he said. “We feel it’s going to really be a showcase.”

Developers like Singleton and Donahue are high on Crystal Lagoons because they can sell lots at a faster clip and at higher prices to builders, who, in turn, can sell their houses more quickly and at higher prices. And they can do it on sites that otherwise have no water features other than a conventional pool or two.

“We are able to drive higher lot prices because builders know their absorption rates are going to be quicker and their prices are going to be higher,” said John Kinney, owner/manager of Twin Creek Development Associates in Houston. At the Florida property, builder D.R. Horton has raised its prices four times on houses that would cost $30,000 less elsewhere, according to Crystal Lagoons’ Man.

Man says demand for the technology has been strong because it offers unprecedented value at a very low construction and maintenance cost. And in the process, it offers homebuyers a healthy, active lifestyle in a fun, safe environment.