As too many homeowners have learned after a major loss, obtaining a full and fair settlement from their insurance companies isn’t a given.

Too many insurers tend to lowball their damage estimates, hoping the insured will accept their offers and go away. The job of their adjusters is to pay out as little as possible; after all, these are money-making businesses, and the less they pay, the more profitable they are.

Consequently, you must take every precaution to protect yourself and make sure you receive what you deserve. “Be vigilant,” says J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and a former federal insurance administrator who ran the National Flood Insurance Program. “You paid your premiums and you are entitled to coverage.”

Hunter admits not all insurance companies handle claims poorly, so “go into the claims process with an open mind. (But) be ready to stand up for yourself and your family, or you run the risk of being shortchanged.”

Every time there’s a national disaster, such as hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the CFA sends out a bulletin outlining the steps consumers should take to ensure they obtain fair payment for their losses. You can go to the CFA website (consumerfed.org) to obtain the latest one, dated September 2017.

Here’s a synopsis of the latest tips:

-- File your claim promptly. Insurers tend to handle them on a first-come, first-served basis.

-- Obtain and save your claim number. The quickest way for claims departments to find your file is with this all-important number.

-- When an adjuster arrives to survey your damages, find out if he’s an employee of your insurer. If he’s not, he’s an independent adjuster hired as a contractor by your insurer. So find out if he’s authorized to make claim decisions and payments on behalf of your insurer. Also ask for the name of the in-house company adjuster to whom he is sending your information.

-- Many insurance companies have repair programs in which they offer to send out one of their approved contractors to estimate your damage and repair it. Nothing wrong there, but you are under no obligation to use them. You are free to obtain your own estimates, perhaps from contractors you have used in the past and are satisfied with.

-- Keep good records, including the date, time, name and a brief description of every exchange you have with your insurer. If an adjuster misses an appointment, make a note. If possible, take your own photos of your damage. And keep receipts when you pay out-of-pocket for emergency repairs -- and alternate living arrangements, if the house is uninhabitable.

-- If your claim is denied, demand that the company identify the language in your policy that serves as the basis for its decision for offering you so little, CFA’s Hunter advises. “This approach has several benefits,” he says. The insurer may be right and you may not know it, so by pinpointing the appropriate language, you can make your own determination.

-- The company may have slipped new limitations into your policy without adequately notifying you. For example, many insurers have added percentage deductibles, which shift a greater share of the loss onto you, but some have not have given customers the option to select the level of coverage. If that’s your situation, it’s time to consult an attorney.

-- Be aware of other new limits that may have been added recently. One such limit is a ceiling on replacement-cost payments that says insurers no longer cover the additional costs involved in bringing a damaged house up to current building codes.

-- Once an insurer gives you the reasons for its actions, it cannot produce new reasons later. “You have them locked in, which is an important protection,” says Hunter.

-- If you review your policy and find that, under a reasonable reading, you think you’re entitled to the full amount of your claim, “you will likely win if you go to court,” says Hunter. “Courts consistently rule that if an insurance policy is ambiguous, the reasonable expectation of the insured party will prevail since the consumer played no part in writing the language.”

If you believe the insurer’s offer is too low, complain to more senior staff. Hunter suggests going to the executive in charge of consumer affairs, who is paid to keep policy-holders happy. Refer to the records you’ve kept since the claims process began.

“The more serious the insurance company sees that you are in documenting how you were treated, the more likely they will make a more reasonable offer,” says Hunter.

Also, complain to your state insurance department. Every state will seek a response to your beef from your carrier. And some states will actually intervene on your behalf.

According to Hunter, “if your treatment by your insurer was particularly bad, courts in many states will allow additional compensation if the company acted in bad faith.”

Other choices: Contact a lawyer or a public adjuster (PA), an adjuster who works on behalf of consumers, as opposed to insurers. Many PAs once worked for insurers, and know the world of policies and coverage inside and out.

One of the main reasons for the lack of homes for sale is that people don’t want to give up their low-interest-rate mortgages. Another reason for the low inventory: Folks are leery about being able to find a suitable place to replace the one they have now.

Buyers can’t do anything about loan rates, which at this writing were at their highest point in seven years -- but still reasonably priced at less than 5 percent. But there are ways to make would-be sellers more comfortable about finding another house.

They’re called seller contingencies, a catch-all phrase that covers any number of ways to allow owners a sensible amount of time to move on. If the seller is unsuccessful, the contract becomes null and void and the buyer has to continue their own search.

One contingency that has become more popular of late allows the seller to remain in the house for 30, 60 or even 90 days while shopping for a new place. Renee Cox, broker-owner of Acorn Real Estate Professionals in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a market she says is “going gangbusters,” has successfully used this clause several times.

Typically, Cox says, sellers are allowed 30 to 60 days to shop. But if this is the house you really want, she adds, you can always give the seller more time.

The drawback to such a tactic is that the buyers don’t really know if they have a deal or not. It’s the reverse of a sale that is contingent on the buyers selling their house in order for the deal to proceed. In that case, the seller doesn’t have a strong contract, either.

Also, buyers may not want to tie themselves and their money up for long periods of time. With so few houses for sale, they may miss out on other top-of-the-line places that come on the market while they’re waiting -- and waiting, and waiting.

Other issues pop up, too. Lenders may not be willing to work with buyers whose contracts are so iffy. For example, they may not want to lock in the interest rate for longer periods, especially in a rising-rate environment such as this. Or maybe they’ll demand a somewhat higher interest rate.

“What’s good for the seller is usually bad for the buyer,” says David Gibson, an agent with Long and Foster Real Estate in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Still, if this is the place you absolutely, positively have to have, it’s worth a try. You just have to be patient. And you might even be able to negotiate a somewhat lower price by being extra patient.

Bruce Ailion of RE/MAX Town and Country in Atlanta, another hot market, says this contingency is a lot like a short sale in which the buyer is betting the deal will be cleared by the seller’s lender. And it can be used in all kinds of situations.

In one deal Ailion worked on recently, the buyer was going to tear down the house and build a more modern one. “The buyer didn’t have to get into the house right away,” he says, “so he gave the seller 90 days.”

Another way to give sellers time to find new digs is to rent the house back to them at a reasonable fee, perhaps just enough to cover your mortgage on the place. Gibson finds this option far more attractive, explaining that at least “the buyer knows he bought the house that he wants.”

David Burke, who hangs his shingle with Evers and Co. in Washington, D.C., likes this option, too. In a seller’s market like this, he says, buyers “really have to be creative.” To persuade reluctant sellers to move on -- “to sweeten the deal” -- Burke suggests allowing them to stay free of charge for two or three months while they search for another house, or offering to pay their mortgage for a couple of months while they house-hunt. And if it takes an extra 30 days, then offer to pay their loan for the extra time.

With this kind of contingency, he says, “I’ve never had a deal go south.”

Of course, in this market, the absolute best way for a seller to be certain they find suitable housing elsewhere is to buy first, then sell the current place. With so few houses up for grabs -- a seven-month supply is normal, but the current supply is under four -- sellers shouldn’t have much trouble getting top dollar.

Absent that, though, it may take some prodding to get a potential seller off the sidelines. One seller contingency or another may do the trick.

Regular readers of this column may remember a story from a little over a year ago about Crystal Lagoons, a Santiago, Chile-based company which builds huge water features on what are otherwise landlocked properties.

The company recently opened its first project in the States, an 8-acre lagoon at the Epperson development in Florida’s Pasco County. A second lagoon, this one of 14 acres, is ready to go in St. Augustine, Florida, and a third is under construction in the Houston area.

But that’s not all. Crystal Lagoons, which has its U.S. headquarters in Miami, has some 60 projects either under contract or in the negotiation stage here in the U.S. One of those is a deal with Wynn Hotels to turn a 38-acre golf course behind its two properties on the Las Vegas strip into a lagoon where guests can not only swim and sun on white, sandy beaches, but also water-ski, paddleboard and paraglide.

What makes Crystal Lagoons so special is that they are far less expensive to build than a golf course, and use far less water. Plus, they offer residents far more activity options than even an Olympic-size swimming pool.

So far, the company has been dealing mostly with private developers of master-planned communities: places where only residents have access to the lagoons. But it is thinking much broader than that, said Executive Vice President Kevin Morgan in an interview from his Dallas office.

“Real estate certainly is a growth sector for us, and we’re just scratching the surface there,” Morgan said. “But there’s also a high level of interest from outside private real estate development to make Crystal Lagoons more accessible to the public at large.”

Here’s where the company is heading in the future:

-- Open access. Crystal Lagoons is working with developers whose projects aren’t large enough to support the cost of building and maintaining even a small lagoon. In these cases, the lagoons would be open to the public for a fee.

-- Conversions. In an effort to bring traffic back to shopping malls, the company would take an anchor space abandoned by a large retailer such as Sears or J.C. Penney and re-purpose it as a combination lagoon and fitness center or food operation. Morgan calls the result “a synergistic co-amenity,” and says there is a lot of interest from mall owners.

-- Municipalities. Local governments would use public land to build public-access lagoons on ground that may have little use otherwise. Morgan thinks that the feature would generate enough income to recoup the initial cost “very quickly.” The lagoon would operate as a jurisdiction-owned business, but it also would help give value to the land around it and support further development.

-- Colleges. As universities compete for students and student-athletes, a lagoon would become part of a school’s amenity package, for both recreation and water sports. Morgan reports that his company is “beginning to see a lot of traction” in this area.

-- Repurpose. Golf courses are expensive to build and maintain, and many are not seeing enough use to remain profitable. Crystal Lagoons is in discussion with several operators to scale back 18-hole courses to nine holes and build 8- to 10-acre lagoons on the former front or back nine.

What is it about Crystal Lagoons that is generating this much interest?

For one thing, the typical 5- to 10-acre lagoon is relatively inexpensive to build and maintain. They cost roughly $650,000 an acre to build, versus $1 million a hole for a typical golf course -- and up to $1.7 million per hole for a high-end course. Morgan wouldn’t reveal what it costs to monitor water quality from the NASA-like control room in Miami, saying only that it is minimal.

For another, the lagoon-bottom liners can withstand the sun’s ultraviolet rays without deteriorating. And they can last for up to 100 years, according to the company.

Any kind of water can be used to fill a lagoon, even saltwater and brackish water. In Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, a 27 million-gallon lagoon was filled with seawater diverted from the Pacific Ocean. By the time it reached the lagoon, it was clean and clear.

The lagoons use less water, too -- 10 times less then a golf course, and half the water of a park of the same size. Using a patented pulsating mechanism and electronic sensors embedded in the liner, the water is kept pristine at all times. Controlled pulses use only a small quantity of chemicals, as compared to the high level of chlorine and other disinfectants used for conventional swimming pools.

But perhaps most important of all, at least to builders and developers, the lagoons lead to faster sales at higher prices.

According to an independent, third-party study at the 2,000-house Epperson property near Tampa, sales are running at twice the pace experienced by its competitors. Also, prices of the houses are up 20-22 percent, compared to just 4-5 percent for the same models at another Tampa-area location.

Is it any wonder, then, why real estate consultant John Burns reports that Crystal Lagoons has become the top amenity among the 50 best-selling master planned communities?