Experts say that a 2008-style housing crash is unlikely to happen now, if only because lending standards are much tighter than they were prior to the Great Recession. Still, foreclosures are starting to tick upward.

ATTOM, a property data firm, says that in May, there were fewer than 31,000 houses nationwide with foreclosure filings -- that is, houses with default notices, houses scheduled for the auction block or ones already repossessed by lenders. That's up a scant 1% from April -- but it's 185% more than in May last year.

And while the share of borrowers at any stage of delinquency was at an all-time low in the first quarter, CoreLogic reports that more than a third of delinquent mortgages are six or more months past due.

Fortunately, if you are among those borrowers who cannot make their payments, there are plenty of options available: from obtaining permission from your lender to miss a few payments until you get back on your feet to selling your place before the gavel slams down.

But you have to move quickly. Waiting too long could cost you, especially since housing values may soon start to recede in some spots. Even if you think your financial problem will only last a few months, don't hesitate.

Your first step is to call the loan servicer: the company that collects your payments, pays your taxes and insurance, and otherwise administers your mortgage. Depending on your situation, the servicer can offer you several choices. Each case is different, but usually you'll be given one of four options:

-- Temporarily suspend or reduce your monthly mortgage payments for a specified period of time until you believe you'll be able to start paying again.

-- Pay any past-due amount by adding a percentage of it to your regular payment over a specified period until your mortgage becomes current.

-- Defer past-due amounts to the end of your loan term and keep your monthly principal and interest payment the same.

-- Change your original loan terms, perhaps the payment amount, the loan term or even the interest rates.

Each of these alternatives has its benefits, but all allow you to remain in your home and avoid foreclosure. However, you still have to qualify. If the servicer determines there's just no way you can dig out, no help will be forthcoming.

Another choice would be to refinance. But with loan rates blasting through the 6% level recently, that alternative is basically off the table. According to data firm Black Knight, refinancing currently makes sense for fewer than 500,000 homeowners nationwide -- the lowest number in more than two decades.

All is not lost, though, because at this point, you can still sell your house -- perhaps even at a profit, depending on when you bought the place. Two key points here:

-- House prices aren't falling yet, but they also aren't increasing at the breakneck speed of the recent past. Some anxious sellers are cutting their asking prices, but for the most part, they're eating into their appreciation -- not dropping below what they originally paid for their places.

Of course, if you just recently bought your house, there probably hasn't been a lot of appreciation, and you have less paper profit to dig into. Which takes us to the next point:

-- Foreclosure is not an event; it's a process. Depending on where you live, it could take a few months for the sheriff to knock on your door -- or even years. That alone gives you a little more breathing room.

You can sell during the foreclosure process, right up to the point when the judge's gavel slams down, but it's far better to do so before the process starts. Whatever you do, don't leak the fact that you are having trouble making your payments. Be honest with your agent, to be sure, but otherwise, keep the situation under your hat. If a would-be buyer gets wind, they're likely to assume you're desperate and lowball their offer.

If you manage to sell at a profit, you simply pay your lender what you owe, pocket the rest and move on. But if you sell at a loss and cannot pay your lender in full with the proceeds, you'll have to persuade the lender to approve what's known officially as a pre-foreclosure sale.

Gaining the servicer's blessing for a short sale can sometimes take weeks, if not months. You have to prove you have a long-term hardship; that you have been unable to sell at a price that would cover what you owe; that you are in, or about to go into, foreclosure; and that you can no longer afford to live there. You also will have to fill out what may seem like mountains of paperwork.

If your lender agrees to your short sale, you land a buyer and the sale closes, the proceeds will go to the servicer and you will be issued a deficiency waiver that relieves you of your responsibility for any remaining balance.

Your credit score will suffer. But otherwise, you will be free to move on.

Calculating people are always looking for ways to separate the rest of us from our money. Such, it appears, is the case with Home Title Lock, an outfit that promises to "protect" you from home title theft.

Home title theft is when a criminal gains the title to your home and either sells it or takes out a mortgage on it. The bad guys do this by simply forging your name on a deed and recording it with county officials. The county recorder is obligated to place the title in the records, but not to verify its legality. Unless the deed is obviously fake, it is recorded as a matter of course.

To "protect" homeowners from this scam, Home Title Lock says it will monitor a subscriber's title, 24-7, and notify them right away if anyone tampers with it. The cost: $19.95 a month.

There's no telling how often home title theft occurs. But the company, whose spokesmen include defrocked attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, maintains it happens with regularity. Indeed, the company claims that the FBI classifies home title theft as "one of the fastest growing" crimes in America.

ABC News has thoroughly trashed that claim, along with the unsubstantiated claims of two supposed victims of the crime. In a major story published in mid-June, the network said the FBI has no evidence of ever making such an assertion. Another Title Lock spokesman, former FBI agent Art Pfizenmayer, provided a document to ABC to try to justify the claim. But the document he provided was nearly two decades old and "wasn't about home title theft at all," but rather mortgage fraud, ABC found.

As the network points out, the two are entirely different: "Mortgage fraud involves lying to lenders to obtain loans, while title theft involves filing fraudulent documents with county authorities to claim ownership of a property."

ABC also checked with numerous sources to see just how prevalent title theft really is. While some jurisdictions said it is not common, others said it was epidemic.

But Steve Gottheim, general counsel for the American Land Title Association (ALTA), told ABC that his members are "not seeing (title theft) nationwide."

Others say the same.

"If it comes up once a year, I'd be surprised," Nathan Bossers of Boston National Title told me.

"From what I've been able to find, this is rare," Colleen Taylor of the Old Republic National Title Insurance Co. wrote in a trade magazine in March.

ABC asked Home Title Lock how many cases of title theft it has found, as well as any situations in which the service has helped someone reclaim a stolen title and how much was spent covering a customer's legal fees. No such information was forthcoming, the network says.

And here's the rub: Even if Home Title Lock notices something's amiss with your title, you are pretty much left to deal with it on your own.

It would be "extremely valuable" if a company paid the legal fees necessary to clear the title of a forged document, real estate litigator William Maffucci told Smart Business Philadelphia. "But that's a huge 'if.' I'm not aware of any providers of 'title theft' protection" that do that. If they did, Maffucci said, the service "would almost certainly cost much more."

Diane Tomb, CEO of ALTA, agreed. "Paid monitoring services send alerts to customers when any type of document is filed," she told me. "These companies are not title insurers and typically don't pay to help protect a consumer's property rights."

Instead of subscribing to Title Home Lock or a similar service, savvy owners can check with their recorder's office as often as they like. In some places, you can sign up to receive free notifications if any type of document is filed against your property's address.

Even if a forged deed is filed on your property, Maffucci says, the document conveys nothing because it is not legal.

Agrees Tomb, "A false deed does not actually cause the current owner to lose his property rights."

Nevertheless, title theft can have a "devastating impact" on the homeowner, Maffucci said. Homeowners must hire an attorney and file suit to clear the title, which could be a lengthy, expensive process.

First, though, think back to when you purchased your house. If you needed a mortgage, you almost certainly purchased title insurance to protect your lender against any defects in your home's lineage that could cloud your ownership. You were likely also given the opportunity to purchase a separate title policy that protected you.

Because regular title insurance protects against defects that occurred up to the day you took ownership, it won't help with title fraud. But so-called enhanced policies usually cover post-policy forgeries and other possibilities.

Quotes for enhanced policies range from 10% to 40% more than the premium for a regular title policy. Make sure the policy covers title theft before you sign up.

If you didn't purchase such coverage at closing, you can buy it now, Bossers tells me. If you want to cover the cost of your house when you purchased it, coverage will cost roughly the same as it would have then. If you want to cover the current value, though, you'll pay more.

Meanwhile, regular title insurance will protect a buyer who unknowingly purchases a house from someone who used a fake deed to pretend to be the owner. But buyers also might want to consider enhanced coverage. After all, it you were a victim buying in, you also could be a victim selling out.

You've paid an ungodly amount for your house. You've also paid more than you can believe in closing costs. But if you are like the typical homebuyer, your spending isn't over.

Based on its analysis of Census Bureau pre-pandemic data, the National Association of Home Builders says a buyer of an existing single-family house generally lays out $13,718 for new appliances, furnishings and remodeling during the first year of ownership. But surprisingly, someone who purchases a newly built place spends even more: $18,155, on average.

Buyers of new homes spend the most on property alterations and repairs. Most of that money -- $9,288 -- is used for outdoor features such as patios, pools, walkways, fences and landscaping. The rest is split almost evenly between appliances and furnishings.

In the appliances category, these buyers spend the most on televisions, followed by washers and dryers, lawn equipment, refrigerators and freezers. As for furnishings, they spend most on sofas and mattress sets.

Most of the typical existing-home buyer's outlay -- $7,391 -- also goes to property alterations and repairs. This group tends to spend more on remodeling, painting, wallpapering, flooring, roofing, windows and HVAC work.

For what it's worth, homeowners who stay put also spend big -- $8,908 a year -- again, mostly for property alterations and repairs.

Another sign of the apocalypse: A condominium association at a luxury property in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., requires residents to deposit a fecal sample from their pets with the front office. That way, if someone fails to clean up after their animal, the "poop police" can trace the droppings back to the offender and its owner by matching the animal's DNA.

With their ability to raise money, large, publicly owned homebuilders are all but taking over the markets they serve by snapping up huge numbers of building sites.

The lack of finished lots ready for crews is one reason builders have been unable to keep pace with demand for new houses. But the big national companies have more than enough sites on their books to keep going for years.

Housing economist Tom Lawler says the three largest builders have boosted their lot holdings during the pandemic. As of the end of March, D.R. Horton has 574,000 lots under its control, up from 329,300 in March 2020.

Two years ago, Lennar either owned or had options on 307,806 sites. Now, it controls 481,102. And the Pulte Group has upped its lots over the same period from 159,841 to 234,542.

Rick Palacios, research director at John Burns Real Estate Consulting, reports that public builders have collectively increased their lot holdings by roughly 33% of late.

Many of their sites are still under contract but not yet owned, meaning that as the market slows, builders could back out of their deals. That would put lots back on the market for others. Only time will tell, but the giants of the building business are so well-heeled that they could simply hang on.

Your car's warranty isn't the only thing expiring: Your home warranty might be, too. And the scammers of the world are happy to let you know about it.

One of Coldwell Banker agent June Piper-Brandon's clients got a letter recently about renewing her warranty, but it wasn't from the right company. During her research, Piper-Brandon found a notice on a local bank's website, warning bank customers about mailings from this same company. The mailings indicated that their home warranties were ending soon, whether they actually were or not.

The outfit in question is a legit company, the bank said, but "it appears their business practices are less than reputable."

In an effort to beat back competitors during the pandemic, many buyers waived independent home inspections. If you're one of them, that doesn't mean you can't still have the place gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

Consider hiring an inspector after you close, but before you move in -- or even after you take occupancy. That way, at least you'll be alerted to any major defects that you didn't spot earlier, or that the seller didn't disclose. In the latter instance, if the damage is significant and the law where you live requires that sellers must reveal known defects, you could have a legal case against the seller.

Beyond that, an inspection is a good way to get to know the condition of the house in general. You'll learn whether the water heater is on its last legs, how long you can expect the roof to last and perhaps even the useful life of the appliances. Also, the exam could reveal potential safety issues such as faulty wiring, a blocked fireplace or other issues that you'll need to address sooner than later.

America's housing stock is aging gradually, if not gracefully. In 2005, the median age of our houses was 31 years, according to Census Bureau data. In 2019, the median had jumped to 39 years.

The main reason is that construction has continued to lag demand since the recession of 2008. There's been a shortfall of some 1 million to 1.5 million houses needed to keep the market running.

While the demographics point to continued strong demand for newly built residences, the aging trend likely means a strong remodeling market because older houses usually need updating. As their houses age, owners need to replace appliances, maybe add a new room or change out their roofs, among all manner of other improvements.