A recent Washington Post article, “Conn. real estate agent accused of stealing competitor’s for sale signs from in front of homes,” got me wondering: Are yard signs still that important? Or was this overly competitive agent skulking around in vain, in a world that’s become Internet-driven? (Allegedly skulking, that is.)

Here’s what the National Association of Realtors (NAR) tells us about how home buyers locate the place they want to buy:

Information sources used in home search:

•     Internet: 88%
•     Real estate agent: 87%
•     Yard sign: 55%
•     Open house: 45%
•     Newspaper ad: 30%
•     Home book or magazine: 19%

Yes, the Internet tops the list, but over half of home buyers still rely on a yard sign — and why not? Seeing a “For Sale” sign on a neighboring house is sure to get some buzz going. Not to mention the fact that if you see a house ad, and then drive by to take a quick look, the yard sign helps spot the place.

So, if you’re selling a house, make sure to use a yard sign. (Most everyone does, but some sellers have been known to refuse, for privacy reasons or because they’re embarrassed at having to sell when the reasons are financial.) And then make sure that sign doesn’t walk off during the night!

For more marketing tips, see Nolo’s articles on “Preparing and Showing Your Home.”

The annual Survey of Home Buyers and Sellers is just out from NAR (the National Association of Realtors). The biggest news is a drop in the number of unmarried home buyers. While they formed 32% of the market back in 2009, they’ve dropped to a mere 25% of the market today.

What’s up? (Or down?) It’s certainly not that everyone is getting hitched. At the end of 2011, a Pew Research Group study found that marriage rates in the U.S. had hit all-time lows, with scarcely half of U.S. adults married. (No wonder I haven’t been invited to any weddings lately!)

NAR’s vice president of research, Paul Bishop, explains the trend this way: “We’ve known for some time that stringent mortgage credit standards have been holding back home sales, but these findings show single buyers have been hurt the most over the past two years.  Total home sales would be 10 to 15 percent higher without these unnecessary headwinds.”

In other words, without two incomes, your chances of qualifying for a loan are reduced.

That doesn’t mean that single homebuyers should give up. But if you’re thinking of buying your first home, you might want see how closely you fit within NAR’s other statistics for first-timers, including:

• a median age of 31
• a median income 0f $61,800
• average home size of 1,600 square-foot
• average home cost of $154,100.

If you’re a 21-year old hoping to buy a $200,000 home on an income of $31,000, the odds aren’t looking so good — depending, of course, on where you live and what a mortgage broker or banker tell you about your qualifications. For tips on buying as a single female, see Nolo’s article, “Single-Woman Homebuyers: What to Consider.”

Neighborhood trees have been getting a lot of good press lately. First there was writer Tim De Chant, who created an Internet sensation last summer after posting his “Income inequality, as seen from space” blog series. It showed satellite photos of rich and poor neighborhoods in various cities.

The contrast was stark, revealing in shades of green and gray that “rich people . . .  have a lot more trees than poor people.” That’s Tim De Chant talking to Matt O’Brien of the San Jose Mercury News, whose article “Gauge of Bay Area neighborhood wealth? Look to the trees” also quotes Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwel saying, “If you have a tree-lined street, property values go up.”

Next we have the October 2012 issue of Money magazine, in which Josh Garskof writes that a tree “may be contributing 8% to 10% [of] your home’s value, according to Scott Cullen of the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers.” Not only that, trees can save you money, as (Garskof continues) “a big shade tree will knock nearly $70 off annual air conditioning bills, says David Nowak of the U.S. Forest service, and a large evergreen that blocks winter winds will reduce heating costs by around $60 a year.”

Are we convinced yet? Of course, big trees can also be a source of worries and neighbor conflict. Nolo’s website offers a lot of useful guidance on legal matters relating to trees, in its “Trees and Neighbors FAQ” (with questions like, “My neighbor’s tree looks like it’s going to fall on my house any day now. What should I do?“) and the “Neighbor Disputes” section.

If you’re new to the housing market, take my word for it: Today’s interest rates are eye-poppingly low. A 3o-year fixed rate mortgage at 3.44%? A 15-year fixed rate mortgage at 2.83%? (Figures from Bankrate.com.) No, don’t take my word for it: The press is calling these “record lows.” As in, record for all of U.S. history. Even back when Grandpa was buying an ice cream cone for a quarter, his family was probably paying 7% on their mortgage.

If you’re in the market to buy a home, just sit back and enjoy. Or if you’d like to gloat, play with some online calculators and realize how much interest you’ll be saving over the life of the loan as compared with people who bought houses just a few years ago.

Using Bankrate’s “Mortgage Calculator,” for instance, I plugged in numbers for a 30-year fixed rate loan on a $250,000 house at 3.5% interest; and then the same loan at 6.5% interest. (Be sure to press the “Show/Recalculate Amortization Table” for a full rundown of interest payments and totals.) With the first loan at 3.5% you’d pay $154,140 over the life of the loan. (Gulp. Really, when you add it all up, even the lowest-interest mortgage results in a big pile of cash handed over to the lender.)

Now let’s look at the same loan at 6.5%. Total interest = $318,861. That’s a difference of $164,721. With figures like that, homebuyers today can afford a lot more house than they will be able to when interest rates rise again. (And there’s little doubt that they will, someday.)

If you already own a home, now’s a good time to think about refinancing — or perhaps even re-refinancing. But run some numbers on that first, too. You can do so using Nolo’s Refinance Calculator. The upfront costs of getting a new loan sometimes wipe out the savings. The key is to find your “breakeven point,” indicating how long it will take you to work off the initial closing costs by saving money on interest each month. If you expect to stay in your home for less time than it takes to reach your breakeven point, the refinance definitely isn’t worth it.

Estimates of your home’s value that you might find online are, as widely acknowledged, nigh on bogus. They’re created by computers, which, smart as they’ve gotten, lack for feet or eyeballs with which to visit a house. The result that’s available on websites such as Zillow has been described as everything from “hallucinatory information” (by Realtor Jonathan Dalton, in Phoenix, Arizona) to “gives the wrong impression,” (by Realtor Gary Russell, in Waco, Texas).

The problem for home sellers is that, if your house appears in the Zillow system, any potential buyer might look at its so-called “Zestimate” and possibly believe it. Dalton’s impression is that, “buyers look at Zestimates . . . in a borderline irrational manner if only to support their own desire to get a ‘deal’ on a house.”

As a seller, you want to know what dollar figure the buyers are looking at: Will they coming to your house thinking it’s a bargain (or that maybe you’ve priced it low because of hidden problems), or over-priced? In either case, it’s worth taking steps to change the Zestimate — which you can, within limits.

On the Zillow listing page for your home, click the link for “Claim this home.” Then, you will be able amend any of the basic information offered, such as number of bedrooms and baths, type of flooring, included appliances, and so on. This still can’t possibly account for factors like a great location, a tree-lined street, a great layout, or a stunning remodel, but it’s a start.

I just “claimed” my current house, as an experiment. I had expected to be able to report that I raised my Zestimate by alerting the computer to home features that it couldn’t have known I had. But no, I lowered it. A lot. Actually, that’s not too surprising, given that Zillow thought my house had one more bedroom than it really does. (Need I say more about accuracy?)

Zillow also gives you a place to add your own estimate of the home’s value. Interesting idea, getting into an online argument with a computer. I’d be inclined to take a hands-off approach, and leave that portion blank — but that’s a conversation to have with your real estate agent.

Various forms of real estate fraud are on the rise, the news tells us. The biggest one making headlines is “collusion,” which we’re told affected fewer than 5% of real estate transactions before 2009, but doubled by 2010, and then fell only a little, to 6.8%, in 2011. (See “Housing prices: Agents make houses sell for a lot less. On purpose,” by Schuyler Velasco of the Christian Science Monitor.)

Also called “flopping,” this  form of fraud is not likely to affect you as a homebuyer — it simply means that home sellers convince the bank to let them sell the house “short” (for less than what’s owed on the mortgage), sometimes by tearing up the lawn, painting false cracks, and otherwise making it look bad; then they sell it to a friend or family member; then happily roll in profits when that person makes big bucks reselling the place a day or two later. The bank/lender is the primary victim of this crime.

Then there are the various schemes and scams that prey on homeowners having difficulty paying their mortgages; see, for example, the video “ConsumerWatch: Real Estate Fraud On The Rise In Bay Area.”

But when it comes to simply buying a home, the type of fraud you should probably worry about the most concerns the seller’s representations about the house’s condition. In most U.S. states, sellers are required to fill out a disclosure statement, itemizing the house’s features and pointing out any known defects. (Even in those states that don’t legally require it, savvy buyers can negotiate to receive such a summary.) Unfortunately, the disclosure forms don’t require the seller to actually investigate the property, and they often contain opportunities to fudge an answer (such as the option to check a box saying “unknown”), leading some sellers to turn a blind eye to problems.

That’s why any home buyer with an ounce of sense will also make the sale contingent upon the right to hire one or more home inspectors, and to be satisfied with the results of the inspectors’ reports. A trained home inspector will examine the house from roof to basement, test the various working systems, and point out defects concerning everything from wiring to leakage to foundation issues.

Those two protective mechanisms, the disclosure report and home inspection, are usually enough to uncover the biggest problems with a house.

And yet . . . some home sellers manage to perpetrate more serious forms of fraud, even under the nose of the home inspector. Attorney Ken Goldstein of Massachusetts, for example, says: ““One of the most blatant cases I’ve seen was where, a few weeks after the sale, the new owners heard a crash from the basement. The ceiling—one of those drop structures with a metal framework and tiles fitting in the grid—had just collapsed. The tiles were all soaking wet. Suspiciously, an old kitchen pot was sitting within the wreckage. It turns out there was a leaking pipe up there, and the sneaky seller had apparently removed a tile and put in the pot. That worked to hide the problem through the closing date—but then the pot overfilled.”

Oops. When something like that happens, it’s time to read Nolo’s article on “Home Defects: Sue the Seller?“.

When new-home builders start offering models with an independent living space for elder (or younger) family members, you know there’s a trend afoot. (See “Latest home designs: Our house is Grandma’s house, too,” by Jim Buchta of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.) Minnesota’s Lennar Corp. says it’s the first production builder to offer a design featuring a “house-within-a-house,” each with a its own entrance and garage.

Buchta also provides figures from the Pew Research Center, indicating that while only 12% of the U.S. lived in multigenerational households in 1980, that has since gone up to 17% of U.S. households. Yup, a trend!

What does that mean for home buyers and sellers who won’t be signing up to live in a Lennar Corp. development? For buyers, expect competition for houses with layouts that can accommodate a relatively independent family member, and that don’t present major barriers to accessibility — or can be so adapted. (For more information, see Nolo’s article on “Home Modifications for the Elderly.”)

For sellers, it means a marketing opportunity. If your home already features grandma-friendly features, or could easily be adapted to do so, be sure to mention this in your marketing materials. Just be careful about over-promising, in case local zoning or building laws limit the possibilities for remodeling or expanding your house.

Also realize that your most likely buyers may be originally from another country, where many generations share one house is more common. That may give you ideas or cautions for marketing, such as advertising your house in the local ethnic media.

A real estate market that’s heating up in various regions of the U.S. doesn’t only mean higher prices: It also means some buyers need to pick up the pace and deal with competition for the houses they want. That competition can lead to “ouch” scenarios like the one faced by clients of Spokane real estate broker Michael Crowley.

While still negotiating the final contract, says Crowley, the buyers “decided to counter on a minor detail, moving the seller’s requested closing date by three days to accommodate a birthday party. That counter kept the offer open just enough for another buyer to show up with a better offer. The buyers were not happy, but I had clearly warned them of the risks.”

Such eleventh-hour switches in seller loyalty can be confusing to buyers. By now, they’ve already been told that the seller likes their offer and wants to work out a deal. Some buyers even believe (mistakenly) that because they got there first, they’ve established some right to the house, such that other wannabe buyers will just have to wait and see what happens.

The reality comes down to a basic matter of real estate contract law. As New York attorney Richard Leshnower explains: “Until you, as the buyer, have your hands on a contract of sale with both the seller’s and your signatures, don’t get overly excited—you’re not yet in contract.”

The concept of being “in contract” is vitally important. It means not only that the escrow process leading to the closing has been launched, but that the buyer and seller are mutually bound to go forward with the deal. (Exceptions are made when the contract terms and contingencies allow an out, as many do, for example if the home inspection turns up defects that the buyer can’t accept.) Once in contract, backing out without an agreed-upon reason comes with consequences, such as a potential lawsuit, or the buyer forfeiting the earnest money deposit.

The steps toward this safety zone of being “in contract” depend on state or local real estate practices. These vary to a surprising degree. In some states, such as New York, the buyer’s starting offer is a short document, and it’s up to the seller to draft a full sales contract for the buyer to review and suggest changes to, until both buyer and seller are ready to sign.

In other states, such as California, the buyer presents an offer that’s in the form of a full contract. All the seller would have to do is sign and return it to the buyer, and they’d be in contract. More often, however, the seller will make some adjustments and return a very similar document as a “counteroffer,” which the buyer can either sign (thus creating a contract) or respond to with another counteroffer, and so on.

No matter where you’re buying a house, however, the procedures and the possibility of counteroffers tend to leave plenty of wiggle room for a seller who sees a better offer come along at the last minute. Leshnower says, “I know of situations where sellers have accepted a better offer that came along while their contract with the first would-be buyer was being mailed to them for signature.”

The bottom line: If you love a house, and are worried that other buyers are circling, do everything in your power to get into contract. Postpone the birthday party, hand-deliver your signed contract to the seller instead of waiting for the mail to get it there, or do whatever it takes. Having an experienced real estate agent at your side, who has established good working relationships with other local agents, can also help here. Michael Crowley says, “There are a few homes in our market that will sell overnight, and I can often call the selling Realtor to see whether other offers are expected and to get some assurances that I’ll be notified if one comes in.” But in the end, notes Leshnower, “A lot depends on the seller’s good faith.”

Anyone else notice something off-kilter about Curbed’s recent analysis, in its article about an architecturally “ho-hum” house on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, that the $15,800,000 price tag is justified by its “location, location, location?”

Yes, the view toward the ocean is beautiful. Yes, it’s got a private set of stairs to the beach.

But the article made no mention of the fact that, as The New York Times stated in March of this year, “severe coastal flooding could occur regularly in the United States by the middle of the century and [] California would be among the states most affected.” (See “Both Coasts Watch Closely as San Francisco Faces Erosion.”) Nor does it mention the California report (cited in the same article) that predicts sea level rises of seven inches by 2030 (that’s 18 years away, folks) and 14 inches by 2050. How convenient, those private stairs may someday lead straight into the water!

Wouldn’t you think the prospect of watching extreme weather through a lovely set of plate glass windows would reduce the value of the location just a tad? Even the climate change deniers will have trouble denying the public’s reduced interest in property that looks to be at risk. Someday, I would expect, climate change will be part of the discussion of any piece of waterfront property. In the meantime, let’s all just focus on the ho-hum architecture.

It’s not as though she needed to create her own yard sign. Any of several online companies offer premade, lawn-ready “For Sale By Owner” signs along with other services. (See, for example, www.owners.com, http://fsbo.com/Sellers.aspx, and www.forsalebyowner.com)

But recently divorced Portland homeowner (and business owner of Totallyradcards.com) Elle Zober apparently wanted to add a personal touch. She and her son created a sign that reads, “Husband Left Us for a 22 Year Old . . . House for Sale by a scorned, slightly bitter, newly single owner.”

And it hit the media big time, with reports in Q13 Fox News Daily, Opposing Views, and Business Insider. Zober’s blog states, “Cannot say enough how shocked I am by allllll the media attention.”

According to Opposing Views, the sign is achieving its goal and then some: “Zober is getting offers for the house and invitations for dates.”

As to why it’s working, I’d speculate that the humor and the unusual approach help. But whether it would work for every other “scorned, slightly bitter” seller is another matter. Zober seems to have her head on straight despite all she’s been through. If the many reporters knocking on her door were to find someone gunning for revenge against said ex-husband, they might have raced back to the curb. But instead, Zober is able to deliver media-worthy quotes like, “It is not about revenge. What’s done is done. He did what he did. We just want to sell our home.”