Deadlines are looming for anyone seeking a review of their foreclosure proceeding, for borrowers whose lenders require them to carry flood insurance and for homeowners considering a short sale:

-- Under the terms of an enforcement action between Uncle Sam and large mortgage servicers, you still have time to ask someone to ensure that you were treated fairly if you were involved in a foreclosure.

Back in February, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board extended the deadline for the "independent foreclosure review" from April 30 to July 31. Now the deadline has been extended again, to Sept. 30.

The extensions provide more time to publicize the enforcement action, which requires participating servicers to retain independent consultants to identify borrowers who may have been harmed during foreclosure proceedings in 2009 or 2010. So far, the response has been disappointing.

As of this writing, just 196,000 borrowers had actually asked for a review. The servicers have selected 142,400 more cases for review on their own, for a total of 338,400. That number is expected to grow, says Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for the Office of the Comptroller. But as of now, that's just 7.5 percent of the estimated 4.5 million borrowers covered by the enforcement action.

The requirements for a review are simple: Borrowers are eligible if their loans were serviced by one of the participating lenders listed below, if the house was their principal residence, and if the loan was active in the foreclosure process between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2010.

You don't need to have lost your house to be eligible. You also may be covered if you paid your way out of the foreclosure process by bringing your loan current, participated in a loan modification, sold the house for less than what you owed or simply handed the keys back to your lender.

Participating servicers include America's Servicing Co., Aurora Loan Services, BAC Home Loans Servicing, Bank of America, Beneficial, Chase, Citibank, CitiFinancial, CitiMortgage, Countrywide, EMC, EverBank/EverHome Mortgage Co., Financial Freedom, GMAC Mortgage, HFC, HSBC, IndyMac Mortgage Services, MetLife Bank, National City Mortgage, PNC Mortgage, Sovereign Bank, SunTrust Mortgage, U.S. Bank, Wachovia Mortgage, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo and Wilshire Credit Corp.

There is no cost for a review, and you should have been contacted by now if you are eligible. If not, then start the ball rolling right away by getting in touch with your servicer. Keep accurate records of any attempt to do so and of what is said in any conversations.

-- If you want an example of the gridlock that has gripped the legislative process, consider the National Flood Insurance Program.

Eighteen times since 2008, this vital program has been extended at the last minute by lawmakers who can't seem to agree on how to reform it. In 2010 alone, it was allowed to expire four times because Congress couldn't get its act together. By the Property Casualty Insurers Association's count, coverage could not be purchased for a total of 53 days.

Now the program is set to expire again, this time on July 31.

Without flood insurance, borrowers cannot obtain federally insured mortgages or loans that qualify for purchase by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled mortgage giants. Together, Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration have their stamp on perhaps 90 percent of the mortgage market.

More than 5.5 million owners rely on the National Flood Insurance Program to insure their homes. It's not just a coastal problem, either. Nearly 10 percent of the houses in the Midwest are in floodplains.

The National Association of Realtors estimates that 1,300 sales are either canceled or delayed each day that coverage is not available. During the 2010 lapses, the association says, about 40,000 deals were stalled.

Last year the House passed, by a resounding 406-22 vote, a bill that would reform and reauthorize the flood-insurance program for five years. But a similar bill loaded with superfluous amendments has languished in the Senate. Now, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has promised to schedule floor debate on similar legislation this month.

Will it happen? We'll have to wait, probably until the last minute, to find out.

-- The window is closing on one of the most important tax-relief provisions enacted by Congress during the housing crisis to help financially strapped homeowners.

Under a 2007 law that expires Dec. 31, taxpayers are allowed to exclude from income the amount of debt on their principal residence that is forgiven or canceled by their lenders. After that, if you participate in a short sale in which the lender allows you to sell for less than what you owe, you will be required to report the difference as income on your federal tax returns.

The other alternative is a foreclosure. Under the tax code, there is no levy on canceled debt. But the black mark a foreclosure leaves on your credit record is more devastating than a short sale, which itself is more than just a ding.

Partly because of the looming deadline, and partly because lenders realize less of a loss on short sales than on foreclosures, the number of short sales is growing. According to mortgage data collector RealtyTrac, 26 percent of the houses sold in the first quarter were short sales.

As of now, there seems to be no urgency on the part of lawmakers to extend the tax safety net. But stay tuned.

Location is often described as the most important thing in real estate. It's said to be the second and third most important things, too. But in the rental housing market, finding a high-quality tenant trumps location every time.

"The essence of an investment in real estate is a good tenant," says James McClelland of the Mack Cos., perhaps the largest owner-manager of single-family rental properties in the Midwest. "A good tenant in a bad location is better than a bad tenant in a good location."

The trouble is, most novice landlords -- and even some experienced ones -- don't do the legwork necessary to land a top-notch tenant who will pay his rent on time and take care of the place, hopefully as if it were his own. And that's when landlords get burned.

Nearly 60 percent of the landlords and property managers polled recently by LeaseRunner, an online leasing company, identified "finding the right tenant" as the most challenging aspect of rental real estate.

Perhaps the only thing more difficult than putting in a good tenant is getting out a bad tenant. But if you hold out for a sound one, you won't have to go through the costly, time-consuming eviction process.

McClelland, whose company manages about 570 single-family rentals, including 200 owned by others, maintains there are plenty of good tenants looking to rent a nice house. "You may have to go through a bunch of (prospects) to find one," he says, "but it's worth it."

So, whether you are an "accidental" landlord who has no choice but to rent your house or an investor looking to cash in on what is expected to be a booming single-family rental sector, here's how Mack Cos. goes about it:

For starters, personally meet your prospects at your property to show them around, answer their questions and ask a few of your own.

There's no hard rule about appearances. A guy with a bunch of tattoos who shows up on a Harley could just as easily be Mr. Right -- as long as the bike isn't too loud -- as a seemingly clean-cut guy who arrives in a Prius. But if he or she doesn't seem to give a hoot about personal hygiene, chances are they won't take any better care of your house than they do of themselves.

Don't discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Still, if you get a bad vibe about the person, or if something doesn't seem right, go on to the next one.

You also have to ask the right questions. Most novice landlords ask about such things as hometowns and high schools, McClelland says. "They just want to see if they like the person, without any understanding of their financial capabilities."

It's better to purchase a standard rental application form at the local stationery or office supply store and have your prospect fill it out completely. Most important, you'll want to know how long they have lived at their current address, how much rent they pay, where they work and how much they earn. Also ask why the person is leaving. It could be that he is being evicted, but it also could be that he has no choice. Maybe the owner is selling the place or wants to rent to a relative.

Now verify everything. Start by interviewing the current landlord on the phone. How much is the rent? How long has the potential tenant lived there? Did he take care of the place? Any problems?

Yes, you want to make sure everything matches up. But during the course of your conversation, you want to listen for something on the order of, "I'm sorry So-and-So is leaving," or, "He was really a good tenant; I hate to lose him."

Also call the prospect's employer to verify his employment. Mack Cos. looks for people with three years' tenure at their current workplace. "You want to make sure they are stable, not job-jumping," McClelland says.

Next, pull a credit report on the prospect and run criminal background and "skip-trace" checks. If you don't have an account with a credit reporting agency or tenant screening service, ask your real estate agent to perform these services on your behalf.

You can charge the prospect a fee for this. In fact, doing so often weeds out the bad apples who don't want to pay because they know what the results will be. But you can't use the credit report as a profit center.

Here, you are looking at how prospects pay their bills. If they are late or don't pay at all, chances are they are going to treat the rent payment the same way. "A landlord needs his rent on time because he has to make his mortgage payment on time," McClelland says.

McClelland's staff also visits prospects at their current residences to get an idea of how they maintain their homes. "How they take care of their current property is indicative of how they will take care of yours," he explains.

If the would-be tenant does not meet your standards, you can deny the lease or ask for a co-signer, a larger security deposit or even a higher rent. But if you take any of these "adverse" actions based on a credit report or a report from a tenant-screening service, you are required by law to give the prospect the name, address and phone number of the agency that supplied the report.

Following these steps will help protect your investment, but the work doesn't stop there. Now you have to manage the property.

There's more to it than just collecting rent, of course. A great way to make sure your rental house is being taken care of is to go to the place in person every month to pick up the check. That way, you can look around to see for yourself that the house is in the same condition it was when the tenant moved in.

McClelland concedes that this takes time. "But you know what takes more time?" he says. "Making costly repairs to the property because you haven't checked on the tenant in months, then finding out the property was poorly maintained."

Lost in the euphoria over record low rates for 30- and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages is perhaps an even better alternative: adjustable mortgages.

Adjustable-rate mortgages get a bad rap, lumped as they often are in the "toxic" category with such infamous products as interest-only loans, negative amortization and no income, no asset mortgages.

But today's most popular ARMs -- called "hybrid" ARMs because they carry fixed rates for the first five or seven years, after which their rates begin adjusting annually -- are excellent deals for the proverbial "right" borrower.

That would be someone who knows he is going to move on -- either buy another house or refinance the current one -- before the fixed-rate portion of the ARM runs out. But as we'll see in a moment, the time frame until you are in the red with a hybrid ARM is actually somewhat longer.

According to mortgage intermediary Freddie Mac, the average for 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages in early June was a record low 3.75 percent. The following week, the average fell even more, to 3.67 percent. The rate for a typical 15-year loan was an astounding 2.9 percent. The 5/1 ARM was a tad cheaper at 2.8 percent.

But forget those rates. While they grabbed all the headlines, they aren't terribly realistic, because they are an average of what the "ideal" borrower would have to pay. And as everyone knows, ideal borrowers are few and far between.

So here's an analysis based on rates that lenders were actually quoting in early June on LendingTree, the online service where lenders bid for your business. It's based on an average of the offers quoted by lenders on $225,000 mortgages to borrowers with a 20 percent down payment and a FICO score of 720:

On a 30-year fixed loan, the typical LendingTree rate was 3.91 percent, resulting in a monthly principal and interest payment of $1,063. The 5/1 ARM was pegged at 2.75 percent, with a payment of $919.

As a result, the ARM borrower would pay $144 less each month for the first five years of the loan, for a total savings of $8,640.

So far, so good. But what happens when the adjustment period kicks in?

In the worst possible case, you wouldn't start losing money with the ARM in this example for more than seven years -- 91.4 months, to be exact. The reason: Adjustables come with protective annual and life-of-the-loan interest rate caps that typically limit adjustments to no more than 2 percentage points annually and no more than 6 points over the duration of the loan.

Consequently, in our example, under the worst of circumstances, the adjustable rate in year six would jump to 4.75 percent, while the fixed-rate would remain at 3.91 percent.

That means the payment from month 61 through month 72 would be $72 higher for the ARM -- $1,135 vs. $1,063. Over the 12-month period, you pay out $864 more for the ARM. But you'd still be ahead $7,776 because of the $8,640 you didn't have to pay in years one through five.

In year seven, the ARM rate might jump again, to as high as 6.75 percent, in which case your payment would rise to $1,368. In such a worst-case scenario, that's $305 more a month than the payment on the fixed loan.

But again, while you pay more, you're still ahead. Indeed, by the end of the loan's seventh year, your total payments with the ARM are $4,974 less than they would have been with the fixed loan.

Even if rates jump two more points in year eight, hitting 8.75 percent and the 6-point maximum, you wouldn't be a loser with this loan until the 91st month. At that point your payment will be $1,614, or $551 a month more than the payment on the fixed loan, and you've lost everything you saved.

Is this loan for you? If you are certain you are going to move within the first five years, absolutely. This kind of savings just can't be ignored, and there is no risk whatsoever. If you can afford the annual hits, you still have more than seven years to move or refinance before you lose money by not taking the fixed-rate loan.

So the ARM should rate at least a second look. Even with fixed rates at record low levels, says LendingTree's Doug Lebda, ARMs can be a "valuable risk-adjusted alternative."

A few more points to consider:

-- Only you know how long you are going to stay put. But according to the Census Bureau, Americans move or refinance every six or seven years on average. Are you the typical itinerant homeowner, or is this house where you plan to raise your kids and live until Middle Youth sets in?

-- Rates go down as well as up. That means there's always the possibility that once your rate tops out at the 6-point cap, it could drop again. The rate could recede even before it hits the maximum. Or it may never, ever go down.

Betting on interest rate movements is always a crapshoot. But with rates today as low as they are, the safe gamble is that they will rise from here. How high and for how long is anyone's guess. So if you have a low tolerance for this sort of thing, your timeline with a five-year ARM is exactly that, five years.

-- You'll receive a smaller tax break on the ARM because you'll pay less interest, at least initially. But mortgage interest is a costly out-of-pocket expense.

Moreover, the tax deduction is not a dollar-for-dollar writeoff. Rather, it is based on your tax bracket. So, if you are in the 18 percent bracket, you'll be able to claim only 18 cents for every dollar you spend in mortgage interest.