There are at least three things in life you cannot choose: your parents, your neighbors and the company that administers your mortgage.

That company collects your house payments, and also pays your homeowner’s insurance and property taxes. Known as “servicers,” these outfits work on behalf of your lender -- or the investor who purchased your loan from your lender -- to make sure you make your payments and that those other bills are paid.

Sometimes a lender services its loans itself. Sometimes it sells the servicing aspect of your mortgage, but keeps the loan on its books. Sometimes the lender sells the loan and the rights to service it. And sometimes one servicer will sell the right to administer your loan to another servicer.

Whichever way it goes, you have no choice. You’re stuck.

According to Mike Seminari of the Stratmor Group, an industry advisory firm, of the 52% of all borrowers who had contacted their servicers, only 6% said they were likely to recommend the company. That’s not exactly a strong vote of confidence.

Of course, it could be that these unhappy customers simply didn’t receive the help they were looking for. Or maybe their discontent is related to a billing mistake -- 6% of all loans held by lenders have billing errors, according to Seminari -- or another error, perceived or legitimate.

Whatever the reason, servicers have now figured out that it costs them a lot less money to reach out to their customers rather than wait for calls to come in.

“’Don’t poke a sleeping bear’ is no longer the philosophy,” said Dave Vida of SLS Enterprise Sales at a recent conference. Servicers now realize that “outreach is vital. We need to find out what’s going on” with borrowers before they feel the need to call in.

In that regard, you should expect to receive a clear, concise welcome letter from your servicer -- one “written by a human being,” said Jason Kwasny of The Money Source Inc., not a computer. Call it a “warm transfer.”

The letter should explain everything you need to know about how your loan will be administered, and include all pertinent phone numbers, should you ever experience a problem. And the letter “should be followed up by a welcome phone call” that walks the borrower through the process, added Kwasny.

“If you spend time up-front, you eliminate problems later,” said Kwasny. “Give them a white-glove experience.”

Meanwhile, in another conference session, experts in cybercrime described how the financial services business -- and the mortgage sector, in particular -- has become a favored target of hackers looking to tie up their systems and demand big money to unlock them.

The health care field is hackers’ No. 1 target, reported Gretchan Francis of Proctor Financial, but financial services is a close second. Even off-the-shelf software is being peddled online to novice hackers looking to make a quick buck, she said.

“The bad guys really are out there,” added Rich Hill of the Mortgage Bankers Association, which sponsored the conference. “They’re all over the place, trying to find new ways to get in.”

Over the last 12 months, Evan Bredahl, a cybersecurity engineer with the Richey May advisory firm, has worked on 20 ransomware cases in the mortgage space, many of them involving servicers. He can’t talk about the details because of nondisclosure agreements, but he did say that half the problems emanated from malware contained in emails.

Truth be told, though, the malware could have been delivered weeks, months or even years ago, with the hacker just biding their time, waiting to flip the switch, Francis said.

Lenders and servicers are taking whatever precautions they think necessary to protect themselves and their data. Cybercrime is both “preventable” and “defendable,” said the MBA’s Hill.

But sometimes, a hacker manages to get in no matter what. When that happens, their targets’ businesses can be stopped in their tracks.

On average, companies that report being hacked say their systems are down for 16 days, Hill reported. But the true duration could be longer, because not all attacks are reported -- largely because of the public relations nightmare that kind of news could generate.

If companies can restore their systems in a few days, or if only part of their business is taken down, they often ignore the ransom demands. But if the entire company is shut down, the ransom paid by servicers can be huge. In one case cited by Francis, a company paid $8.5 million to get back in business.

And why not? If you can’t operate, it’s often cheaper to pay the ransom and be done with it. “If you can’t access your accounts, you can’t service your loans,” said Bredahl, who is a “certified ethical hacker” -- a tech expert who looks for security vulnerabilities. “Being out of business just one week could be more damaging than paying a hacker millions.”

Ironically, though, once the ransom money is paid, most hackers make sure their marks manage to get back up and running without any hitches. Some even give their targets a 30-day guarantee that they will become operational and remain that way.

“Their customer service is so unreal, it’s shocking,” said Hill. “It’s their business; it’s how they make money,” he explained. “Otherwise, no one would pay the ransom.”

Much is written about housing starts, which add to the nation’s housing stock. But rarely do we hear about the houses that leave the rolls, never to be occupied again.

Between 2011 and 2013 (the last time the federal government took count), nearly 1.6 million housing units were lost for various reasons. But that number was offset by the addition of 1.84 million new units, for a net gain of more than 250,000.

That’s far from the nearly 1 million new households that formed during that period, but that’s a story for another day. Right now, let’s concentrate on the housing units that went away.

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, demolitions and fire took out 30% of the units that were lost. The rest were moved, reconfigured into larger or smaller units, used for nonresidential purposes or otherwise became uninhabitable.

Let’s concentrate on those lost through demolition. The National Association of Home Builders reports that in 2017, 58,600 houses were removed from their lots to make way for newer, almost always larger, houses. Many of them were obsolete places that nobody wanted, and the land under most was probably more valuable than the houses themselves. But instead of being demolished, at least some could have been deconstructed: taken apart systematically so their parts could be reused.

“Many of these older homes have components that still have valuable life,” says Michelle Diller. She manages the NAHB’s sustainability and green building program, and is leading the charge for what she calls “un-building.”

Brick can last 100 years or longer, according to the NAHB, as can wood flooring, stone, concrete and cast iron pipes. Copper gutters and downspouts last 50 years or longer; ditto for kitchen cabinets.

What if builders stripped out the good stuff -- cabinetry, doors, windows, bathroom fixtures, hardwood floors -- before bulldozing old dwellings? Then those materials could be used in remodeling jobs, incorporated into new construction, or sold.

Not only would builders save (or make) money, they could avoid the cost of transporting and disposing of the materials. Or maybe they’d earn points that help them certify new construction as energy-efficient.

Toward that end, a few jurisdictions require that certain houses be deconstructed rather than turned asunder. Some places offer expedited permitting for the houses that take their place, and others won’t accept demolition materials at their landfills.

The Environmental Protection Agency convened a forum two years ago on the life-cycle approach to sustainably managing building materials, and has produced a tool to help builders and cities determine whether deconstruction is feasible. But to date, only a few cities and a handful of builders have taken up the gauntlet.

In 2016, two years before the EPA conference, Portland, Oregon, became the first jurisdiction in the country to adopt an ordinance requiring anyone seeking to demolish a house built prior to 1916 to fully deconstruct the structure instead. To date, according to the city, a third of the 240 demo permits issued fell under the ordinance, resulting in more than 2 million pounds of materials salvaged for reuse.

Starting this year, Portland has upped the threshold to houses built before 1940. Milwaukee passed a similar ordinance in 2018 for houses built prior to 1929, but stayed the rule’s effective date until March 1 of this year. And Palo Alto, California, where 44% of what goes into its landfills comes from construction and demolition projects, will outlaw demolitions altogether beginning July 1.

Meanwhile, builder Troy Johns of Urban NW Homes, who works mostly in downtown Portland, figures he’s done nearly a dozen deconstructions. Much of what he’s saved -- “the pretty stuff,” he says, like moldings, bathtubs and millwork -- has been repurposed into dozens of new houses.

A lot of the old-growth studs are either sold or given to Johns’ “lumber guy,” who turns the wood into tables, chairs and shutters Johns buys back to use in his replacement houses. Any doors with character are also saved, cleaned up and reused.

The effort is not financially feasible in and of itself. But a tax rebate offered by the city, plus the points earned toward Johns’ all-important green building certification, make it worthwhile, he says. That, and the fact the repurposed materials enhance the saleability of his new houses.

“People are conscious of what we’re doing,” he says, “Few others are doing it. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it is very satisfying. It sets us apart.”

Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Texas, Don Ferrier of Ferrier Custom Homes says preservation is one of his core values, and has been since his Scottish stonemason great-granddaddy began building houses in the early 1900s. Ferrier did his first deconstruction in the late ‘90s, saving the studs and hardwood floor from a remodeling project and reusing them elsewhere in the house.

“Every time we do a remodel, we talk about this with the owners,” says Ferrier, who’s done 30 or so deconstructions. He says that “80% of them come to us because they are interested in sustainability.”

He repurposes “anything that makes sense -- windows, doors, solid surface countertops, light fixtures” -- and donates things he can’t use to Habitat for Humanity. “We try not to throw anything in the dumpster.”

Typically, it’s a more expensive process, Ferrier admits. Taking up flooring, stripping it and refinishing it isn’t cheap. But 70% of his clients opt in.

The lowest loan rates in 11 years have brought wannabe homebuyers off the bench and onto the playing field in droves. But low-cost mortgages don’t always help the market.

Housing economist Mark Fleming of First American, a major player in the title insurance field, says persistently low rates can put a damper on the supply of houses for sale.

“While historically low rates increase buying power and make it more affordable for potential buyers to purchase a home,” Fleming says, “they also discourage many existing homeowners from selling.”

In other words, low rates can help make housing both more affordable and more scarce. And when fewer houses are for sale, prices rise -- sometimes to the point that the benefit of the low rates is all but obliterated.

Here’s how Fleming explains it: In a falling-interest-rate environment, there’s lots of incentive to move up, because sellers can afford more house at the same, or even lower, cost. However, when rates are relatively flat, as they have been for the last four years or so, that incentive is taken away. To buy a newer, larger place, sellers either have to either bring cash to the table or be willing to take on a larger house payment -- or perhaps both. And that doesn’t even consider fees such as sales commissions.

So while low rates give rookies more buying power, they don’t do much for move-up buyers. “The only way existing homeowners can increase their house-buying power is through household income growth,” Fleming says, which is why more and more owners “have decided to stay put.”

The result is that the length of time people remain in their homes has jumped dramatically. Prior to the housing recession a dozen years ago, tenure was less than six years on average. In December, incumbency had nearly doubled to almost 12 years. That’s up 8% from just one year earlier.

That means fewer houses are on the market. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the inventory of houses for sale nationally has hit a near-record low of three months. (Generally, six months’ worth of inventory -- that is, how long it would take to sell off the current supply at the current rate -- is considered normal.) And in Seattle, only a few weeks’ worth of houses are currently for sale, said Glenn Kelman of realty brokerage chain Redfin on a recent earnings call with investors.

Kelman, based in Seattle, is convinced that the city’s inventory shortage is so extreme that “the most intensive bidding wars” in two years are on the way.

While Zillow reported recently that the number of houses selling above list price is at a three-month low -- only 1 in 5 are now drawing multiple bids -- Kelman said supply deficits are no longer confined to a few major cities.

Shortages are widespread, he said, adding that he was told recently that 30 buyers made offers on a property -- a mobile home, actually -- in a “far-flung” area of Oregon.

But there’s a second problem that exacerbates the lack of inventory: People who would otherwise put their places up for sale are holding back because they don’t have anywhere to go. If they can’t find another place that fits their needs at a price they can afford, they simply stay home.

Meanwhile, as buyers battle over what little is for sale, prices continue to mount -- absorbing some or all of the savings resulting from lower loan costs. Prices accelerated last fall, with December recording the largest single-month gain in more than six years, according to housing finance analytics firm Black Knight.

Black Knight says for all of last year, prices rose 4.7%, or nearly $13,000 on average. And prices in the lower end of the market rose at an even greater clip of 6.6%. The NAHB points out that for every $1,000 increase in a home’s price, nearly 159,000 households nationwide are effectively precluded from buying that place.

Of course, the number of those priced out varies from place to place. But multiplying Black Knight’s $13,000 price increase by the number of NAHB’s priced-out households means over 2 million families no longer have the income necessary to qualify for financing on the average house.

The same priced-out scenario holds true for mortgage rates: A quarter percentage point increase would drive some 1.3 million households out of the market for the median-priced newly constructed house, the NAHB says.

How all this plays out in the long run is anybody’s guess. Right now, the one wild card that could help open up the market is the new home sector, which should give buyers more choices. The more new places that are built, the less pressure there is on resales.

Starts last year dipped a tad from 2018. But the NAHB is predicting that shovels will break ground for 1.3 million units this year, including 920,000 single-family houses. And in 2021, it expects 925,000 more detached houses to be built.

Builders are not just putting up mega-mansions, either. They’re going smaller. Not only has the size of new homes fallen for four consecutive years -- to an average of 2,520 square feet, the smallest since 2011 -- the number of homes with three-plus bedrooms, three-plus bathrooms and three-car garages are down, though not exactly in free-fall.

The average new home is now only 20 square feet larger than in 2007.