I am an unintended consequence.

I have loads of money. I own four properties free and clear. I have no debt. My credit file is impeccable. I have a credit score of 760.

And I was just turned down for a mortgage.

Not just any mortgage, but a cash-out refinance of less than six figures on a foreclosure I bought for cash, rehabbed and turned back on the market as a rental. Furthermore, I was only asking for a loan-to-value ratio of 70 percent, meaning I was leaving 30 percent of the home's value as equity. And I was rejected!

All of my rental properties are fully leased, each supported by current rental agreements. The lender had copies of my tax returns for 2011 and 2012, each year validated by copies from the IRS. The lender also had copies of each and every one of my bank statements.

And the lender still said "No!"

I pay all my bills on time. As soon as a bill arrives in the mail, a check goes out -- in full! The very next day! Every bill, no matter how big or small, out the next day. Sometimes I even take the envelope to the post office the same day. But the lender doesn't think I am a good risk!

The reason: I had recently switched from being a W-2 employee who also had 1099 wages to a full-time 1099 worker. That is, I left the world of the fully employed to that of a full-time freelance journalist.

And since I could not show that I earned enough 1099 income over the last two years to pay for the loan -- the history just wasn't there -- the lender's underwriters said I wasn't a good enough risk.

Here's what my denial form letter said: "Due to change of employment from some W-2 to all self-employment, Fannie Mae cannot approve due to the short time of all self-employment."

Now, my loan officer is as aghast as I am. But he's not the one who gets to make the decision. He's basically a salesman. It's the underwriters who have the final word. Not even my agent's branch manager held any sway. The underwriters said "no," and that's that.

Oh yeah: I was told, come back in 2014 when you can show at least 12-18 months' worth of freelance or contractor income, and we'll give your loan application another look.

Thanks a lot, Dodd-Frank. Thanks much, CFPB.

Dodd-Frank is the common name associated with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the law Congress passed in 2010 to make sure the kind of lending that brought on the housing recession never happened again. You know, the liar loans, aka no-doc ("no documentation") loans, in which all the borrower had to do was fog a mirror. And CFPB is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the federal agency created by the law to carry out its dictum.

But surely lawmakers didn't mean people like me when they changed the rules. Now everything is income-based, and borrowers have to prove -- and I mean prove -- they have the ability to repay. Apparently I can't, at least in the eyes of the underwriters.

It doesn't matter what the underlying value of the property is. It doesn't matter what kind of assets you have in the bank. It doesn't matter whether you have a profit and loss statement. It doesn't matter what your credit score is. It doesn't matter whether you can validate everything.

All those factors are still important, of course. But if you can't show you have enough coming in to support what's going out, those things don't mean diddly.

Don Frommeyer, an Indiana mortgage broker and president of the Association of Mortgage Professionals, calls the new ability-to-pay rules the "new gold standard for lending." He says lenders now must follow a set of guidelines to establish your income, assets and obligations before deeming you eligible.

And things are becoming particularly tough on self-employed borrowers like me, because income is calculated to consider the borrower's write-offs: the tax deductions all of us self-employed dudes take to reduce our taxable income.

So here I sit. What I thought was a slam-dunk mortgage has turned into a pink slip. You got me, legislators. You nailed me, regulators.

You have protected the mortgage system -- and the greater economy -- from the likes of me. People who have worked hard all their lives and done things the right away. We save, we pay our bills on time -- but we can't get a home loan.

I hope you are satisfied!

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.