Based on data from 2007, the Census Bureau estimates that the typical American moves a dozen times in his or her lifetime. But not Florence Knapp.

Knapp, who passed away in 1988, lived in the same house in Montgomery Township, Pa., for 110 years. And for that feat, she earns the title as the person who has lived the longest time ever in one residence, according to the 2014 edition of the Guinness World Records.

Perhaps the greatest coffee table book ever, Guinness' annual tome is a treasure trove of housing-related trivia, such as the oldest houses, the narrowest and the tallest.

But first, while we're at it, a nod to the world's tallest real estate agents. Laurie and Wayne Hallquist are 6'6" and 6'10", respectively. She's a full-time agent with Prudential California Realty in Stockton, Calif., while he's a part-timer with the company.

Now back to the book, which doesn't always profile the places where we live. This year, it goes whole hog, with sections on palaces, hotels, shopping buildings, offices and urban spaces. Even elevators and escalators are spotlighted.

But more about those houses: The oldest were built in a Neolithic settlement in Turkey and date back to 7,500 B.C. The mud-brick houses are entered through a hole in the ceiling that also serves as smoke ventilation for the fires that heat the places.

The skinniest house on record is in Warsaw. It is 3 feet 2 inches wide at its narrowest point and just about 5 feet at its widest. It contains a floor area of 151 square feet, and instead a stairs, occupants climb a ladder to reach the bedrooms above.

Then there's the smallest temporary house, a 1-square-meter wooden "sleeping" structure designed by a German architect two years ago. It weighs just 88 pounds and has wheels so it can be moved from one location to another.

From the smallest to the largest, or at least the one with the most rooms: That title belongs to a place called Knole in Kent, U.K. It has 365 rooms, or one for each day of the year. It was built around seven courtyards in 1456 by the then-archbishop of Canterbury and extended by the Earl of Dorset 150 years later.

But Knole doesn't hold a candle to Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle and the residence of the British Royal Family. Windsor measures 1,890 feet by 540 feet, for a total of more than 1 million square feet.

Windsor's not the largest palace, though. The largest is the Imperial Palace in Beijing, which covers 178 acres. Built by a Ming emperor in the early 1400s, the site now comprises 980 buildings with 8,886 rooms. It hasn't been used as a residence since the 1920s, when the last emperor of China went into exile.

The world's tallest house is also the world's largest. Built in India near Mumbai just four years ago, it is 568 feet high, about the height of your typical 60-story office tower. There are "only" 27 floors, including a two-story fitness center and six floors of family residences to house the owner, his wife, his mother and his three children.

Oh yeah, it has nine high-speed elevators and three rooftop heliports.

No one knows how much it cost to build the place, but estimates say it was close to $2 billion, which also makes it the world's most expensive house.

Otherwise, the most expensive house, or at least the one with the highest advertised price, is the $165 million that was asked for a former home of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The 75,000-square-foot villa is set on 6.5 acres in Beverly Hills and has 29 bedrooms and 40 bathrooms.

(This is not to be confused with the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, Calif., which was the world's most expensive house until the place near Mumbai was built.)

The tallest resident-only building is in Dubai. Princess Tower is 1,356 feet high, with the highest occupied floor at 1,171 feet. But the title of tallest residential apartments belongs to Burj Khalifa, also in Dubai, which combines a hotel, offices and apartments. There, the highest residential floor -- the 108th -- is at 1,263 feet.

Also worth mentioning is that eight of the world's 10 tallest residential buildings are in Dubai. The other two are in Australia and Shenzhen, China.

The tallest hotel is in Dubai, too. The JW Marriott Marquis stands at 1,165 feet. But the largest hotel is in Las Vegas, where the Venetian and Palazzo towers have 7,017 rooms between them. The oldest hotel dates back to 705 A.D. in Japan, whereas the smallest is in Germany and can accommodate no more than two guests at a time.

Of course, those big houses have to be filled with furniture. So there's the world's largest chair -- more than 98 feet tall -- in Austria; the longest sofa -- 2,920 feet -- in Norway; the largest rocking chair -- 42 feet high -- in Cuba, Mo.; and for the deck, the largest deck chair -- 31 feet wide and 27 feet high -- on display in the U.K.

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.