Parents can take a number of steps to help their offspring purchase their first homes. They can donate money for a down payment, co-sign on a mortgage or pay off their student loans.

But Mom and Dad also can get in the way. For one thing, they can offer advice that was sound when they bought their own house years ago, but no longer holds water in today’s market. And they can insert themselves into the entire process, instead of letting Junior or Missy make their own decisions.

But worst of all, says Massachusetts real estate pro Dana Bull, well-intentioned parents can “steamroll” all their children’s ideas.

It’s not that adult children don’t want their parents’ input and advice -- they do, says Bull, who hangs her shingle with Sagan Harborside, a Sotheby’s International Realty franchise. But all too often, she says, parents “end up overstepping their bounds.”

Bull was 22 and working in the architectural field when she bought her first place, a condominium apartment in a circa-1784 house, with her then-boyfriend (now husband). Her parent’s didn’t approve: They had always purchased new homes, and worried that their daughter was making a big mistake buying such an old place.

“They were apprehensive,” Bull recalls. “They were concerned that the old structure could have plumbing and electrical issues, and that I was making such a major decision at such a young age. They also were anxious about the fact that my boyfriend and I were buying together: ‘What if things between us went south?’”

The couple went on to buy a number of properties together, and at age 25, she transitioned full-time into real estate. Now 30, she works with a lot of younger buyers, and says she often “feels like a therapist” when their parents become too involved.

She sees it mostly when Mom and Dad tag along during house-hunting outings, and again during the home inspection.

“The kids may love the house, but if the parents don’t approve, the kids freeze. All they really want is their parents’ approval,” Bull says. “The parents have good intentions, but their kids are adults who know what they want and they are fully capable of making their own decisions.”

As Bull sees it, “the best thing parents can do is to provide a framework so their children can make sound decisions.”

Parents need to realize that certain things are beyond their level of expertise, Bull advises. “They are far better off suggesting that the kids find experts in their respective fields. That means urging them to build a good team of real estate professionals, starting with their choice of agents and including solid, trustworthy lenders, home inspectors and possibly even lawyers.

“Having the right people who can advocate on your behalf about the things you and your parents don’t know much about is key,” the Massachusetts agent says. “Young buyers love the idea of Dad coming along on the home inspection, and they value his opinion. But the real expert is the professional.”

Stepping back isn’t easy for some parents, who often fear their adult children will make the same mistakes they did. But that’s the way “kids” of any age learn -- just the way Mom and Dad did.

Still, if you want to be in the picture -- and are asked to be -- then be involved from the get-go, Bull suggests. “Asking ‘Why didn’t you think about this or that?’ isn’t helpful, especially in the middle of the process. If you want to be part of the journey, do so from the beginning.”

There are any number of ways parents can help their children. But co-signing on a loan isn’t the best choice: If your name is on the mortgage, you are just as liable for the payments as your children. Consequently, if they should falter, you’ll have to make the payments, or your credit will be impacted.

If you can afford it, a monetary gift to help with or cover the entire down payment is a better option. But don’t make it a loan, even secretively. The lender will want a complete paper trail of where the money came from, and the borrower will have to state in writing that the money need not be paid back.

Far and away the best thing you can do for your children is to be sure they pay off their high-interest debt as quickly as possible before they even think about buying a house.

“If parents are going to help their children financially, they should start with high-interest debt that might be accrued during and after college,” says Thomas O’Shaughnessy, head of research at Clever Real Estate, a nationwide referral service that connects consumers to agents.

Clever’s research shows that 48% of undergraduates with student debt plan to delay homeownership by seven years. Moreover, they are eight times more likely to add a personal loan to their debt load, and seven times more likely to be using high-interest credit cards at the same time.

Worse, perhaps, 56% of college students don’t know the interest rates on their student loans. And most college students underestimate, by five years, how long it will take to pay off that debt.

So, while parents can help their children with some or all of their down payment or by joining them on a mortgage, O’Shaughnessy advises, they are far better off being certain the kids are in a financially stable place to afford their monthly mortgage payments.

Kevin Casey was “blown away” this summer when nearly 400 people came out to have a peek at two of his firm’s accessory dwelling unit projects.

Now that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed new legislation that will make ADUs -- aka granny flats, in-law suites, casitas or any number of other monikers -- more accessible for Golden Staters, Casey is absolutely ecstatic.

“The state is finally seeing the value of ADUs and we couldn’t be happier,” said Casey, the owner of design-build firm New Avenue Homes, in an email. New Avenue has built more than 100 ADUs, mostly in Northern California, at prices ranging from $130,000 to $750,000. “We’ve always been sure of one thing: Accessory dwellings will revolutionize housing.”

For the uninitiated, ADUs are basically small houses or apartments that are built on the same lot as a larger single-family house. They can take the form of individual buildings or converted attics, basements or garages. But in all cases, they are self-contained, independent living spaces.

While they’ve only become prominent over the last few years, they have been with us, in some form or another, for much longer.

Casey pointed out that Arthur Fonzarelli -- better known as Fonzie -- of “Happy Days” lived above the Cunninghams’ garage. And in “Full House,” Tanner family friend Joey resided in a room in the family’s garage, while brother-in-law Jesse and his bride lived upstairs in an attic studio apartment.

Today, proponents of accessory units believe they will help ease housing shortages by expanding the options for people of all ages. They are aimed at young renters who don’t need a lot of space; moms, dads or other relatives who want to be closer to their loved ones; or caregivers who need to be nearby. And they offer an opportunity for their owners to generate a little side income.

Many communities throughout the country have been relaxing their restrictions against ADUs, and some states have been encouraging their local jurisdictions to allow them. According to AARP, the cities of Atlanta, Austin, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Seattle now allow accessory units. Oregon requires cities and counties of a certain size to allow them in single-family neighborhoods, New Hampshire says they must be allowed in nearly every single-family neighborhood, and Boston-area communities are slicing red tape so units can be built.

But California is leading the way. In 2017, the state required all cities and counties to allow ADUs as long as the property owner secured a building permit. In September, San Jose named design firm Abodu as its first pre-approved “backyard” homebuilder under its ADU master plan. “We won’t solve our housing crisis $650,000 at a time,” said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, referring to high-end single-family houses.

Now, Gov. Newsom has signed several bills that will make it even easier for property owners to build accessory units. One eliminates occupancy requirements; another makes it easier to add not one, but two ADUs as long as they contain at least 800 square feet of floor space; and a third creates a tiered permit structure based on the size of the unit and its location.

Legislation like this will help boost ADU production in the state, which already has the most in the country. For example, between 2015 and 2018, applications for 8,279 ADU permits were received by the Los Angeles Planning Department alone. The number of permit requests jumped from 282 in 2015 to 3,922 in 2018.

Other California cities have been slower on the uptake, but the number of ADU permit applications is still rising: from none in Long Beach in 2015 to 42 in 2017; from 33 to 247 in Oakland, and from 41 to 595 in San Francisco.

The 2017 law was “a big deal,” Casey told me on the phone. “We’ve been talking about this for decades, but that was the turning point. It’s almost like the whole state got the memo. California has made so much progress.”

With progress, though, comes the opportunity for shysters to enter the market. Consequently, anyone thinking of adding a second dwelling on their property should proceed carefully, warns Casey. “A couple of hundred startups are all planning to jump on the bandwagon,” he says. “If people aren’t careful, hucksters and amateurs will disappear with their deposits.”

For starters, do your research. Look for an experienced company that knows your city’s rules, as well as the state’s, knows design, and won’t hit you with surprise fees or delays.

Some firms, New Avenue and Abodu among them, handle the entire permitting process, guarantee a fixed price and can deliver a factory-built unit to a client’s backyard within two weeks. A complete 495-square-foot Abodu model starts at $199,000. Another outfit, Modative of Culver City, California, designs, permits and builds its units.

For a good understanding of ADUs, AARP has two great publications: “The ABCs of ADUs” and “Accessory Dwelling Units: A Step-by-Step Guide.” They are free to members at AARP.org/ADU. Also, the July-August 2018 issue of Realtor, the official publication of the National Association of Realtors, has a good piece on ADU basics.

Your government at work: good and bad. First, the bad.

Homeowners took a trillion-dollar hit as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to ProPublica.

The math is difficult to follow, but the independent investigative newsroom reported recently that President Trump’s tax reform package bestowing nearly $700 billion in benefits to corporations also harmed millions of homeowners, who are paying the price of Trump’s largesse.

Because the 2017 law capped the deduction for state and local property taxes at $10,000, everyone who owns a house has seen its value decline.

Consider someone earning $200,000 a year who purchased a million-dollar house. Assuming a mortgage rate of 5%, the inability to write off real estate taxes means the place is now worth $138,720 less, according to ProPublica. At 4%, the loss jumps by nearly $35,000, to $173,400.

Of course, big losses like that don’t apply across the board. If you take the standard deduction, for example, you can’t deduct property taxes. And taxes can be higher or lower depending on where you live and on the value of your house.

But the principle is the same, and “applies to everyone who owns a home or is interested in owning one,” reported ProPublica’s Allan Sloan.

And there’s this kicker: “According to the Tax Policy Center, the Treasury will get $620 billion of additional revenue over a 10-year period because people can’t deduct their full state and local taxes. That, in turn, covers most of the 10-year, $680 billion cost of the income tax break that corporations are getting.”

The bottom line: Homeowners, now and in the future, “are paying more federal income tax in order to help corporations pay less federal income tax,” writes Sloan.

Now for some better government news: The Department of Veterans Affairs has paid out more than $400 million in refunds to borrowers who overpaid their home-loan-funding fees.

The returns stem from an inspector general’s finding that military personnel who used their VA benefits to buy houses were charged extra fees at closing. The fees involved some clerical errors, but for the most part, borrowers were simply charged too much. The IG found at least 53,000 cases where borrowers were overcharged one way or another.

The VA reviewed 130,000 loans going back 20 years. “Our administration prioritized fixing the problems, and paid veterans what they were owed,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.

The total payout was “significantly above” the nearly $290 million investigators estimated earlier this year. Refunds ranged from a few thousand dollars to more than $20,000.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is in the process of mailing some 8,000 refund checks, totaling nearly $2.7 million, to timeshare owners who paid upfront fees to Pro Timeshare Resales to help sell their unwanted vacation-home weeks.

The average payback is $332. Unfortunately, Pro Timeshare charged customers $2,500 or more, in advance, on the false promise that it had a buyer or renter ready to buy or rent their properties for a specified price. In other instances, the company falsely promised to sell the timeshares quickly, sometimes within a specified time period.

At the same time, the FTC and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection has sued a “flipping system” purveyor for making false claims that its program on buying houses on the cheap and reselling them at big profits involves little risk, time or effort. Like most such affirmations, it just isn’t so.

The company in question, Zurixx, promised people who attended their free seminars that they could generate substantial income by flipping houses. It often used celebrities from popular home renovation television shows to lure its marks to free seminars, where the outfit showed supposed “success stories” of customers who claimed they made thousands using the system.

But, according to the FTC and DCP, the free event is just a scheme to get people to buy Zurixx’s three-day “risk-free” beginners’ workshop, which costs $1,997. Presenters also tried to upsell advanced programs that totaled $41,297.

To pay for the programs, the complaint also alleges, the company told attendees to obtain new credit cards, or to increase the credit limits on existing cards, supposedly to help finance real estate deals.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. This is just the latest example of similar rip-offs by get-rich-quick scam artists.

Last year, for example, a federal court dismissed a suit by students of Armando Montelongo, the one-time host of the A&E series “Flip This House,” alleging that he and three of his companies engaged in a “pattern of racketeering activity.” The court ruled that the accusers failed to meet the standards required by the RICO Act.

But the plaintiffs aren’t going away. Now numbering more than 420, they have re-filed their suit, this time in Texas, where Montelongo is headquartered. Montelongo has countersued.

While those cases play out, the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah has issued a temporary restraining order against Zurixx and affiliated companies.

Warns the FTC: “If someone promises that you can earn a lot of money with little risk, time or effort, that’s a sign of a scam.”