Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs) may be a good choice for some seniors who fear they might outlive their retirement funds and will need cash to enjoy their remaining years. But they aren’t the only options elder owners might want to consider.

HECMs, aka reverse mortgages, are made to owners 62 years and older who have built up significant wealth in their homes. You borrow against a percentage of that equity, and draw the funds either in one lump sum or in monthly payments. Better yet, nothing has to be paid back until you pass away, or you permanently move out of the house.

Sounds appealing, and it is. But reverse mortgages are not cheap, and you still have to pay your property taxes and homeowner’s insurance. Otherwise, the lender can and often does initiate foreclosure proceedings.

But you can accomplish pretty much the same thing by choosing a less costly version of a reverse mortgage, sponsored by state and local governments, called a deferred payment loan (DPL). Generally, there are no origination fees, and insurance premiums and closing costs, if any, are very low.

Typically, seniors can use these loans only to make specific types of repairs or home improvements, such as roofing and heating. But many programs will cover accessibility modifications such as ramps, rails and grab bars, and energy-efficiency projects like storm windows, insulation and weatherstripping.

The interest rates on DPLs are low as well, if interest is charged at all. When it is, it’s often on a fixed basis, meaning the rate never changes. And many programs charge only simple interest as opposed to compound. Some plans even forgive part of, or the entire, loan if the owner remains in place for a specified period.

King County, Washington, offers loans of up to $25,000 at zero interest. No payments are required, and the loan need not be paid back until the house is sold, transferred to a new owner, is no longer your primary residence or you take out a home equity loan. Bloomington, Minnesota, offers loans of up to $35,000. Interest accrues at an annual rate of 2 percent for 10 years, but no payments are necessary until the place is sold, refinanced or conveyed to someone else.

DPLs aren’t available everywhere, and eligibility rules vary. Most are limited to owners with low or moderate incomes. Many jurisdictions place a limit on the home’s value and confine the opportunity to certain geographic areas. Some also have a minimum age or disability requirement.

These loans go by different names, so they may be tough to find. Check with your city or county housing department, your local office on aging, or the nearest community action or development agency. Also try your state housing finance agency.

Another public-sector version of the reverse mortgage is a property tax deferral (PTD) loan. Generally, it provides annual advances that must be used to pay all or some of your property taxes. But no repayment is required for as long as you live in the house.

In some places, but not all, PTD loans are offered on a uniform, statewide basis. Eligibility rules also differ from place to place, and most have a minimum age requirement of 65 and are limited to owners with low or moderate incomes.

In Cook County, Illinois, the income limit is $50,000, and you must have lived in the house for at least three years. In Wisconsin, the income limit is $20,000, but the residency requirement is just six months.

To find out if your state offers PTDs, contact the agency to which you pay your property taxes.

Seniors may also be eligible for monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits if their liquid resources -- cash and savings -- are less than $3,000 per couple or $2,000 for an individual.

Your home and car do not count as resources under SSI, but your monthly unearned income cannot exceed $924 for a couple or $623 for an individual. Income limits are higher if you are employed or live in a state that supplements SSI.

If you meet the rules, you may automatically qualify for other public benefits that could allow you to postpone the need for a reverse mortgage. That way, if you do take out a HECM later, you may be able to receive a larger advance because you will be older and your property may have increased in value.

The National Council on Aging sponsors a website, benefitscheckup.org, that will locate public benefit programs that could pay for your prescription drugs, health care, utilities and other essentials. The site also explains how to apply for more than 1,150 programs available in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

NEXT WEEK: Housing options.

For most American homeowners, it’s “the more the merrier.” At least when it comes to the number of bathrooms.

Indeed, it’s a good bet that your next home will have at least two bathrooms, and perhaps more. Of all the new houses built in 2016, only a scant 3 percent had 1-1/2 baths or fewer, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau. Even the number of new places with 2-1/2 baths or fewer fell in 2016.

At the same time, the number of new houses with three or more baths has been on the upswing for more than a generation, nearly doubling from 1988 to 2016. Americans love their loos.

People buying existing houses -- or who prefer to remodel rather than move -- also focus on their bathrooms, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The group reports 3.3 million bathrooms were remodeled in 2015, and 151,000 new bathrooms were added.

The boom in bathroom remodeling translates to a lot of money. In 2016, according to the National Kitchen and Bath Association, homeowners spent $38.5 billion on bathroom remodels of all shapes and sizes. That’s an 8.5 percent increase from the previous year. And when the books are closed on 2018, NKBA is projecting that owners will have dropped $46.3 billion on bathrooms this year.

That won’t be money down the drain, either, because bathrooms sell houses -- especially updated bathrooms.

Remodeling a bathroom isn’t a sign of vanity. In fact, vanities were only third on the list of key bathroom features on which improvers spent money. In 2016, they spent more on showers ($7.1 billion) and on flooring ($6 billion) than on under-sink cabinetry ($5.4 billion). On the flip side, they spent just $1 billion on ventilation. In between? Bathtubs, counters, toilets, sinks, lighting, faucets and medicine cabinets.

Homeowners aren’t thinking small when it comes to their bathrooms. Just about all the $38.5 billion spent on johns in 2016 were major remodels, says the NKBA. Just $4 billion was spent on minor jobs.

Things are similarly hot in the kitchen market, as spending on kitchen products went up by more than 10 percent in 2016. And the total for the combined kitchen and bathroom categories came to $147 billion, split evenly between the two.

Nearly three of every 10 dollars spent in the kitchen went to new rooms, while the rest went to remodeling. Cabinets alone accounted for nearly a quarter of all kitchen remodel expenditures, with a similar amount going toward appliance upgrades, according to the trade group.

NBKA notes that spending on kitchens and bathrooms made up a quarter of all residential construction costs in 2016, driven largely by a reignited real estate sector.

“The increase in residential construction in 2016, when housing starts rose by 5.6 percent to about 1.2 million units, resulted in greater demand for products used in the construction of those units,” according to the trade association.

Total construction spending for 2016 came to $600 million, about equally split between new home construction and remodeling.

Meanwhile, the Census figures on numbers of bathrooms point to a little-known fact that could be of interest to potential homeowners: In addition to counting people, the Census Bureau also counts houses -- or estimates their numbers, at any rate. And if you’re house shopping, there are a few stats in there that could have a bearing on your search.

Interested in knowing how much per month you’ll have to pay for your mortgage? According to the Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey, the biggest payment category, into which nearly 10 million mortgages fall, is $1,500 to $1,999 per month. The next most popular bucket, with 6.5 million, is $1,250 to $1,499 per month.

The rarest mortgages have payments of $200 a month or less. Just 15,000 of the more than 47 million U.S. mortgages can claim that payment.

How much of your income can you expect to go toward your home loan? This may surprise you: The biggest category is a very reasonable 15-20 percent. Next biggest is 10-15 percent. So, if you are worried you will have to pay half your income or more on a mortgage, don’t. Little more than 10 percent of us do.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.

The next time you get behind a slow-moving tractor-trailer hauling what looks like a house, or parts of one, don’t scoff. The end result may be a better-built, less-expensive place than the one you live in.

Sure, most people prefer to live in a so-called stick-built home: one that’s put together on the job site, board by board, nail by nail. But it may surprise you to learn that many houses are built, at least to some degree, offsite in a controlled environment -- out of the weather and with far less waste.

The broad heading for this aspect of home building, which Tom Hardiman at the Modular Home Builders Association calls “three-dimensional volumetric construction,” is prefabrication (“prefab” for short).

There are many types of prefab. One is panelization, a term that covers several different techniques. Devin Perry, director of the Building Systems Council at the National Association of Home Builders, says it’s “a catch-all” label that includes pre-engineered floor and ceiling trusses and entire walls. The walls can come framed out, ready to be lifted into place, or they can be almost complete with siding, drywall, wiring, plumbing, windows and insulation.

Many major builders who put up the same three or four models over and over again use some form of panelization. But most smaller builders, the guys who put up only a few houses a year, still prefer to build the old-fashioned way, maintaining that it’s cheaper to do so.

However, Hardiman says the high demand for houses, rising costs and the lack of labor to build them are causing more and more builders to rethink that assessment. “They realize they can’t keep building like they used to,” he says. “They have to be more efficient.”

And building in a climate-controlled factory is nothing if not efficient. Here’s a shorthand version of the process:

The materials are sent to a factory, where they are stored under cover, preventing warping from snow, rain and the hot sun. As the lumber is needed, it’s placed on a series of rollers where it is cut -- sometimes by a skilled worker, other times by a programmed robot -- to the correct size. Still indoors, the pieces are put together, placed on a flatbed truck and hauled to the job site.

It happens quicker than the lumber could be cut and assembled on property -- and remember, time is money. There’s very little waste, if any, and no lost work days because of harsh weather conditions.

There are many other types of prefab construction, including modular homes, manufactured homes, log and timber homes, and structured insulation panels. Modular and manufactured are two of the more common.

Modular construction is a method in which the house is built in large three-dimensional boxes or modules in the factory and shipped to the job site, where they are lifted into place by a crane. Once assembled and permanently attached to a foundation, they are virtually indistinguishable from conventionally built houses. And they are built to local building codes, so they meet the same requirements as site-built houses.

Surprisingly, considering their positives, modular houses have made very few inroads in the housing sector. They reached their peak in 1998, when they accounted for 4 percent of total housing starts, says Perry of the NAHB. But since 2009, they have taken only a 2 percent share. “There has been a slight decline over the last 20 years,” Perry says, “but interest in them has been increasing lately.”

Once known as mobile homes or trailers, manufactured houses were rebranded some time ago to escape their poor image. Nevertheless, they lost their luster around the turn of the century and are just now starting to make a comeback.

In 2000, manufacturers were in their heyday, producing 350,000 to 370,000 units a year. But by 2014, production had slipped to just 64,000 units. However, the NAHB counted 94,000 manufactured homes last year, and expects production to hit 100,000 this year and 111,000 in 2019.

Unlike other factory-built homes, manufactured homes are built to a federal building code promulgated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The HUD codes preempt local codes, which are often more stringent.

The units are completely constructed in a factory on a chassis and axles much like the frame your car rides on. They are then delivered via trailer -- hence the “trailer park” term -- to the site. Sometimes units are placed on a permanent foundation; sometimes they are simply parked on the lot.

While it is true that many manufactured homes never move again, some do. As long as the home is still solid enough to withstand the rigors of the journey, the wheels can be put back on and the home towed to another site. The chassis will always be there as part of the structure.