As new homes become larger and larger, the added space is going into bigger master bedrooms and grander kitchens. But the biggest beneficiary of the extra square footage is the secondary sleeping area.

According to research from the National Association of Home Builders, the largest room in the average 2,580-square-foot house is the master bedroom, which accounts for 12 percent of the space, or 309 square feet. And the kitchen isn't far behind at 11.6 percent, or 300 square feet.

In larger houses of, say, 3,780 square feet, the family room -- sometimes known as the great room -- is the biggest component at 426 square feet, or 11.3 percent of the total. The kitchen comes in at 420 square feet (11.1 percent) and the master at 411 square feet (10.9 percent)

But secondary bedrooms -- the second and third bedrooms in the average house, and fourth or even fifth in larger places -- seem to grow the most. At 677 square feet in larger houses, they take up 17.9 percent of the livable space versus 432 square feet (16.8 percent) in the typical house.

Put another way, the secondary sleeping area grows by 245 square feet when the house moves from the average to large category. Part of that, of course, is because there are more bedrooms. But it also shows how builders are paying more attention to this area of their houses.

Good fences may make good neighbors. But bad neighbors can destroy property values.

"I've seen many situations where external factors such as living near a bad neighbor can lower values by more than 5 to 10 percent," says Richard Borges of Seymour, Ind., president of the Appraisal Institute.

Almost any problem can constitute a bad neighbor: loud or annoying pets, unkempt yards, unpleasant odors or poorly maintained exteriors. Who wants to live adjacent to someone whose dog is constantly braying at the moon, or whose paint is peeling and shutters are hanging by a thread?

Appraisers refer to this as external obsolescence: depreciation to a home's value caused by external issues that the owner can't fix. Would-be buyers would be smart to cruise the neighborhood with an eye toward eyesores before they make a final decision. Once you move in, you could be stuck.

If you see something that gives you pause -- say, a dog that is tied to a tree morning and night -- take the time to knock on the doors of other nearby owners and ask if there have been any problems.

If you are a seller, on the other hand, round up your other neighbors and speak to the offending owner as a group. Peer pressure often works wonders.

Before that, though, it would help to arm yourself with a little ammunition by looking up the original and updated subdivision restrictions to see if the bad neighbor is violating any rules or restrictions. Depending on the offense, Borges suggests calling the local health department.

If you get nowhere, hire an attorney to do battle with the offending owner. Maybe all your neighbors will chip in. But even if you have to go it alone, the cost is likely to be less than the potential loss in your home's value.

And if all else fails, consider putting up a fence to block the view from your house into your neighbor's. But make sure the fence meets the local building code. Otherwise, the bad neighbor might be taking you to court.

The New Year is a time to look forward with optimism. But looking back, more than half of all homebuyers have at least one regret, according to a survey by Trulia, the real estate search engine.

The survey asked some 2,000 owners what, if anything, they rue about their current homes or the process in choosing it. Drum roll, please. The top regret: wishing they had chosen a larger home.

Some 34 percent of those with regrets -- and 17 percent of all owners -- say they should have gone bigger. Another big mistake: Some 22 percent of those with regrets wish they had had more information about their homes before they decided. And 18 percent said they would have rather put more money down.

Some other common misgivings: 14 percent wished they had more information about their neighborhood; the same percentage wished they had used a different agent; and the same percentage again thought they should have shopped for a better mortgage. And 12 percent said they wished they had better understood the true cost of ownership before taking the plunge.

Stick these regrets in your bonnet as you shop for a house in 2014, and you may not make the same mistakes.

It sounds like a lot. Together, the country's top 100 largest landowners hold some 33 million acres, according to a new report from Fay Ranches. But that's less than 2 percent of America's landmass.

The big landholders increased their stakes by 700,000 acres in 2012. But together, that's still less than each of the top five owners hold in their own individual portfolios, according to Fay, a brokerage firm specializing in Western ranches for sale.

The top spot belongs to John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media, who owns 2.2 million acres. In 2012, Malone stepped outside the U.S. when he paid $9.5 million for 427 acres in Ireland, including a 38,000-square-foot castle.

Media mogul Ted Turner is the country's second-largest landholder, with 2 million acres. Last year, Turner, the largest individual landowner in New Mexico, added to his holdings with the acquisition of the Sierra Grand Lodge & Spa in Truth or Consequences, not far from two other Turner-owned ranches, the Ladder and the Armedias.

The Emmerson family is the third-largest landholder with 1.86 million acres, mostly in Northern California. They're followed by Brad Kelly, owner of Calumet Farms, with 1.85 million acres, and the Irving family, with 1.25 million acres.

One familiar name on the list is that of Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who bought the Washington Post earlier this year for $250 million. By virtue of his 2004 acquisition of the 290,000-acre Corn Ranch in western Texas -- where his aerospace firm, Blue Origin, tests lunar vehicles -- he's the nation's 25th-largest landowner.

Here's one more reason would-be borrowers would be wise to look over their loan applications before signing their names to the dotted line: Some loan officers are not as thorough as they should be.

In its review of thousands of loans, Quality Mortgage Services, a mortgage analytical firm that audits loan files on behalf of funding lenders, found errors in nearly one out of every five folders last year. That's somewhat better than the 22 percent error rate found in 2011, but even one miscue could slow down the loan process or cause your application to be denied.

The most frequent mistakes: incomplete borrower information, a list of liabilities that doesn't line up to the credit report, and missing signatures.

QMS also found a 16 percent error rate in the Good Faith Estimates lenders are required to provide potential borrowers within three days of taking their applications. Errors here -- such as missing fees -- tend to follow through to closing.

Again, that's an improvement over 2011's error rate. But loan agents are getting worse when it comes to mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. Here, audits by the Brentwood, Tenn., firm revealed missing disclosures as required by the FHA or disclosures that were improperly prepared.

Local governments require an average of eight separate inspections before builders can turn over a completed house to their customers. That can slow the construction process down. But the real fly in the ointment is not inspections, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Rather, it's the plan review process that slows things down.

The NAHB believes the standard review of plans for a basic single-family house should take no longer than a week. Yet three out of every four builders in a recent survey said the process takes at least that long. And 35 percent said the process takes two or more weeks.

At the same time, 45 percent of the builders polled said the number of inspections required by the local authorities has increased over the past two years. Some said their typical home requires at least 15 different inspections.

Yet in relatively few cases did the number of examinations result in chronic delays. Only 8 percent said it takes their local building departments more than 48 hours to respond to a request for inspection.

To the extent there are delays, builders cite staff cutbacks as the primary reason. But whatever the case, says NAHB economist Paul Emrath, delays at the local building departments have emerged as just one more obstacle to delivering houses quickly, along with rising mortgage rates, labor shortages and the rising cost of building materials.

Major corporations raise capital by selling shares in themselves. So do companies with little or no substance behind them. Even startups sometimes "go public" before they really start up. So why can't America's homeowners?

They can. In yet another new twist on the age-old concept of shared appreciation, they soon may be able to raise money for a down payment, or build up enough equity to jettison a higher-rate mortgage for a less expensive one, by "selling" shares in their homes.

Under the plan on the table from PRIMARQ, a San Francisco-based marketplace facilitator that acts much like a stock exchange, owners or buyers would decide what share of the gain in the value of a house -- or of the loss, if values tumble -- they would like to sell to investors.

If, say, you want to buy a $300,000 house, the requisite 20 percent down payment would be $60,000. If you were short half of that sum, you could sell "shares" in the place to raise the necessary funds. Or, if you are underwater and need $30,000 in equity so you can refinance into a loan you can afford, you could sell shares to investors willing to gamble that you can sustain yourself going forward.

Using the PRIMARQ platform, you would list your shares for sale at $10,000 each. And investors would bid on those shares -- each $10,000 unit of currency called a "Q" -- based on any number of variables, including location and anticipated rate of appreciation.

A good property in a sound location in a desirable part of the country would tend to draw more or higher bids than those in other places. And once PRIMARQ takes a 5 percent share for its troubles, you get the rest.

You can live in the property as long as you like; there is no minimum requirement. But once you sell, you fork over the investors' share of the profits -- maybe 40 percent of the gain for a 20 percent share -- and off you go. If there is a loss, you and your investor split that in the same way.

During the time you own the house, meanwhile, PRIMARQ intends to make a market for the shares you sold off, either to one individual or perhaps several, again at $10,000 a crack. The shares can and will be traded among investors, so the ones who were with you in the first place may not be there at the end.

An investor might want to cash out midway through your ownership. Maybe he's found a better place than housing to stash his cash, or perhaps his circumstances have changed. But no matter, you are not impacted in any way. Whether investors resell their shares or hold them, you can go on living in the place as long as you like.

PRIMARQ calls its program a market-based "fresh approach" to bringing private capital into residential real estate, which is perhaps the country's largest asset class. Founder and CEO Steve Cinelli calls it a "paradigm shift" in housing finance.

Whether that is true remains to be seen, for the company has yet to do its first deal. And it's not like there aren't plenty of low-down-payment loan products available on the open market.

Company spokespeople say the initial transaction with a yet-to-be identified "lending partnership" is imminent. But until that deal is announced, there are many unanswered questions.

For one thing, will mainstream lenders warm to the idea that borrowers have less of their own money invested in the property? When hard times hit, banks worry, it could be easier for borrowers to walk away.

Another concern: Will people use the concept to purchase more house then they can afford? And then, there's this: Giving away appreciation is an expensive way to obtain funds for a down payment.

On the flip side, though, you can save a lot of money if you allow investors in on your deal. Say, for example, you can come up with just a 15 percent down payment on the $300,000 house you truly covet. That's $45,000. Typically, with anything less than 20 percent down, you'd have to pay for private mortgage insurance (PMI). So your payment for principal, interest and PMI on a 30-year, $255,000 loan at 4.25 percent (including closing costs) would be $1,686.

Now suppose you use PRIMARQ to raise half of a 20 percent down payment, or $30,000. You'd save roughly $15,000 in cash out of your own pocket because you'll be putting up $30,000, not $45,000. Not only that, but your loan amount would be $240,000 and PMI would no longer be required. So your monthly payment would drop to $1,505. That's a difference of $180 a month.

For that $15,000 you needed from investors to make the deal happen, you might have to give away a 35 percent stake in any gain you realize during the time you own the house.

If you want to sell in five years and the place has grown in value at a 4 percent clip per year, the house would be worth roughly $365,000. You'd owe the lender $217,662. Less that and an estimated $21,900 in selling expenses and you'd be left with $125,500 or so to split with your investor.

Here's where it gets tricky, though, because first the investor would get back his $30,000 initial investment and you'd get back your $30,000 down payment. That leaves $65,000 to be shared, 35-65, or $22,900 to the investor and $42,100 to you.

Now add them together and that's $42,100 plus $30,000 to you, or $72,100. And it's $30,000 plus $22,900 to the investor, for a total of $52,900.

If there's a loss, meanwhile, you have the same percentage split. So if you sell your $300,000 house for $270,000, the lender still gets his $217,662 and you'd still have $21,900 in selling costs. That leaves proceeds of $30,438, or $19,800 or so to you and $10,638 to the investor.

As always, the devil is in the details. These are rough approximations based on an example supplied by PRIMARQ. But the big question is, should you -- can you -- bite the bullet now by making a larger down payment and living with a larger mortgage payment? If you can, you retain all of the gain on the eventual sale, not just a part of it.