The wider the net you cast when searching for financing, the better. It only makes sense to look beyond your local bank or mortgage company, and one place you may not have thought about is your friendly neighborhood credit union.

Credit unions are no longer the tiny cooperatives they were a generation ago. Back then, an auto loan was about the best you could hope for from one of these petite financial institutions. After all, they had fairly tight membership rules and, therefore, very limited assets from which to lend.

Now they are much larger -- the military credit unions like Navy Federal and Pentagon Federal are multibillion-dollar institutions -- and much easier to join. And not only do they offer mortgages, but they also are beginning to tap the capital markets for extra money to lend.

Today's credit unions have grown to resemble the savings and loans of yesteryear (without the crisis). And just as the old "thrifts" specialized in home loans, many credit unions do so now. Their bread-and-butter is still car loans, but mortgages also are a big part of their portfolios.

For instance, Pentagon Federal Credit Union, based in Alexandria, Virginia, reported originating $1.7 billion in first and second mortgages during the first five months of 2015. Annualized, that would come to more than $4 billion of mortgages this year alone.

Fellow military-centric credit union Navy Federal is even bigger. Open to all Department of Defense personnel, the Vienna, Virginia-based institution specializes in mortgages as well. The biggest credit union in the world, Navy Fed says it made more than $1 billion in mortgages just in March.

Credit unions made more than 8 percent of all mortgages last year, according to data from Callahan and Associates in Washington, D.C. That's a huge jump in share from the days of your father's credit union.

And they held almost $300 billion in first mortgages as of March 31, according to their federal regulator, the National Credit Union Administration. They also held $72 billion in other real estate loans, mainly second mortgages or home equity loans.

All of these are big numbers. Better yet, membership requirements have been significantly loosened.

Take the Dearborn Federal Credit Union in Michigan, which began life as a co-op for employees and family members of Ford Motor Co. It was started by seven Ford engineers back in 1950. Each of the engineers supposedly forked over five bucks to capitalize the business.

Now, DFCU has 200,000 members and more than $3.5 billion in assets. And you no longer have to work for Ford to belong. The credit union says: "People who reside, work, worship or are enrolled in post-high-school educational facilities in the 68 counties of the lower peninsula of Michigan are eligible to join."

Even that field of membership is flexible. According to the website, "Everyone is welcome, so if you don't qualify under one of these options, please call to learn about other ways you may join."

With its historical connection to Ford, you'd think auto lending would be DFCU's specialty, and you'd be right. But it is a big mortgage lender, too. It had $1.1 billion in mortgage collection rights at the end of 2014 and reported that its mortgage applications doubled last year.

Got 10 bucks? South Metro Federal Credit Union in Prior Lake, Minnestota, associated with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux community, is open to any tribal member and anyone related to a member. But if you don't belong to that group, don't worry: A $10 donation will get you admitted.

One sign that credit unions are getting serious about mortgage lending is they are starting to participate in secondary mortgage transactions in order to secure more money to lend. For the uninitiated: A primary transaction is when a financial institution makes you a mortgage. In a secondary transaction, your lender sells your note to another financial institution for cash, often selling the right to collect your payments, as well.

A typical secondary-market transaction would be your lender selling your loan to one of the government mortgage agencies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae. That way, the lender doesn't have to wait 30 years to get its money back. And as soon as your lender gets the money for your loan, it can relend those funds to other borrowers.

One way to measure credit union activity in the secondary market is to look at who attends the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual secondary mortgage market conference. This year, a record 20 credit union executives attended.

And they showed a variety of approaches. Take the Alaska USA Federal Credit Union of Anchorage, which invests in mortgage-backed securities issued by Ginnie Mae. This year, it is projecting $1.1 billion in mortgages and holds the collection rights to $5 billion in home loans.

Self-Help Credit Union of Durham, North Carolina has used secondary marketing to fund mortgages for low- to moderate-income and minority borrowers in partnership with Fannie Mae and the Ford Foundation. Over the last 10 years, it has made $4 billion worth of home loans.

To paraphrase that famous pundit, former Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen: A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real mortgage money.

(Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.)

There's no question that Miami has become a true international city, maybe even more so than San Francisco and New York. After all, it offers it all -- culture, sports, fine dining, plenty of sunshine and the one thing those other cities don't have: moderate housing prices.

But the folks at ERA Real Estate, the global realty franchise, have identified five lesser-known spots around the country that are now being targeted by buyers from other countries.

"We are seeing an influx of international buyers in these off-the-radar markets," ERA's Frank Malpica said at last month's National Association of Real Estate Editors annual conference in Miami.

ERA's "hidden gems" include Amelia Island, Florida, which it calls a "coastal treasure" 30 miles from Jacksonville, and Nashville, Tennessee, a "big city in a small-town body" that's famous for its music but also boasts nearly 30 institutions of higher learning.

Also on the list are Kingsland, Georgia, on the Atlantic coast three miles from the Florida line; Lake Norman, North Carolina, a 34-mile-long man-made lake

15 miles from downtown Charlotte, and Kennewick, Washington, which is located in the heart of the state's wine country along the Columbia River and has 300 days of sunshine every year.

But back to Miami, where the local real estate board has working agreements with Realtor groups in 126 other countries.

According to Teresa King Kinney, CEO of the Miami Association of Realtors, most international buyers use their Miami residences as vacation homes. Others actually migrate to the United States, and still others use their places to establish U.S. residency so they can send their children to college in this country.

Then there are those who invest here now with the idea that they will exit their home countries sometime in the future, said Ronald Fieldstone, a partner in the Miami law office of Arnstein & Lehr who specializes in immigrant visas.

According to Kinney and Edgardo Defortuna of the Fortune International Group, a high-end real estate firm based in Miami, buyers from China are the most recent international buyers to find Miami.

In the past, Defortuna told the NAREE conference that Chinese buyers have tended to invest in Los Angeles, New York and even Chicago because those cities have large Chinese populations. But now they have discovered that Miami also is a world-class city.

Defortuna told the story of a recent Chinese buyer who was having trouble communicating with a sales agent, so the agent gave the man a list of the 24 units still available in the property. The man marked out four units and gave the list back to the agent.

The thrilled agent thought the man wanted those four units, but it turns out he wanted the 20 he didn't mark out. He wasn't interested in the other four because their unit numbers didn't square well with Chinese superstition.

Although the Chinese are buying here in greater numbers, according to Kinney of the Miami realty association, they still are only eighth in the pecking order of international buyers, with just a 2 percent market

share.

The Realtor association executive also reported that Miami's foreign buyers paid an average of $444,000 per purchase last year, compared to $245,000 statewide.

Foreigners don't believe in mortgages, either. More

than 80 percent in Miami are all-cash buyers versus just 31 percent nationally, she said.

But while million-dollar-and-up estates and condo apartments grab the headlines, they hide the fact that Miami and environs are still relatively inexpensive. The median sales price in the country's eighth-most populous and fourth-largest urban area is still just $282,000 for a single-family residence and $207,000 for a condominium apartment.

Nationally, meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reported recently that for the first time, the Chinese have supplanted Canadians as the top international buyers in U.S. real estate.

Overall, five countries accounted for 51 percent of all foreign purchases in the one-year period between April 2014 and March 2015, with China and Canada in the lead, followed by Mexico, India and the United Kingdom, NAR said. But the Chinese spent more than twice as much as the Canadians ­- $28.6 billion versus $11.2 billion.

NAR estimated total international sales in America for the period at $104 billion, compared to $92.2 billion for the same period the year before. This 13 percent gain was realized even though the number of transactions was down by 10 percent.

"The amount of money spent ... means international purchasers in the U.S. have become an upscale group of buyers," NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

While international buyers purchase property throughout the country, four states accounted for half of all international sales: Florida (21 percent), California (16 percent), Texas (8 percent) and Arizona (5 percent).

Homebuyers may be missing out on a wide range of programs that can help them afford their purchases -- programs their agents either don't know about or don't want to bother with.

They go under the heading of "down payment assistance," which makes it seem as though they are strictly for low- and moderate-income buyers, or those buying their first homes. But that's hardly the case.

Most of the more than 2,300 government, municipal and nonprofit programs that are available nationwide have some kind of income and/or sales price limitations, according to Rob Chrane of Down Payment Resource, an online database that makes it easy for buyers to find and understand what's available.

But in certain high-cost markets, the income ceiling can exceed 180 percent of the median income for the area. And 36 percent don't include a first-time buyer requirement.

Even with income limits, benefits can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. In Miami-Dade County, Florida, for example, the 39 assistance programs currently available range in benefits from $3,000 to $100,000, according to Chrane.

In Chicago, a family of three to six people earning up to $80,000 has access to 11 different programs, including a $2,000/year federal income tax credit for the life of the mortgage, a grant of 3 percent of the loan amount to use to cover a down payment and closing costs, or an interest-free loan of $5,000 to use as part of the down payment and closing costs.

In Sarasota, Florida, a three-person household with a veteran or military applicant making $50,000 a year and buying a $175,00 house has access to 14 programs, including a two-for-one matching grant up to $5,000 for a down payment and closing costs, a below-market-rate mortgage and a tax credit.

And in San Francisco, a couple -- one person a police officer and the other a teacher, with a combined income of up to $125,000 annually -- has access to five programs, including a "silent" second mortgage for 3 percent of the loan amount plus $6,500 in down payment and closing cost assistance, and a deferred, zero-interest 30-year loan for up to $200,000 in down payment and closing cost help.

Nationally, the average down payment benefit is $7,333, according to the latest count. And across all 2,359 programs now available, the average benefit of any kind, not limited to down payment assistance, is $22,138.

Benefits like that are worth looking into!

Chrane, a longtime real estate and mortgage professional, started building his database in 2007 when his employer, HomeBanc Mortgage, shut down at the beginning of the housing debacle.

He learned about assistance programs at NationsBanc, where he worked previously and where loan officers were required to reach out to low-income buyers. At HomeBanc, on the other hand, Chrane says "almost nobody" worked with eligible purchasers on a regular basis, so loan officers tended not to bother to learn what was available.

He also found that the same is true with realty agents, who tend to work their own particular niches. Moreover, many of the programs' parameters are constantly changing, which makes them complicated and difficult to follow.

"The biggest problem with assistance programs is awareness," says Chrane. "You might not qualify, but you ought to at least look."

It took Chrane several months to "get clarity" about what he was about to wrap his arms around, he says, and more than a half-dozen years to aggregate the details of the thousands of assistance programs into a database that consumers, as well as real estate agents and loan officers, can access.

"It can be overwhelming to find all the possibilities that may work," Chrane says. "Just as we would advise buyers to get prequalified for financing, we also recommend that they determine if there are any ownership programs that fit their personal situations."

The search engine (downpaymentresource.com) tracks programs from 1,250 housing agencies, a little more than a third of which do not include a first-time buyer requirement. The site not only matches buyers to the programs that are available to them but also flags houses listed for sale that are eligible for them to purchase.

All programs are available for single-family houses, including townhouses and condominium apartments; under 17 percent of the assistance programs, two- to four-unit properties are also eligible. In many cases, the programs can be combined with each other and used with all types of loans, including those backed by Uncle Sam.

Nearly 15 percent of programs are aimed specifically at veterans, first responders, educators, persons with disabilities or other special circumstances.

Some 71 percent of the programs currently listed in the database offer help with down payments and closing costs. They include grants -- which need not be paid back -- and no-interest or low-interest second mortgages with payments that may be deferred or forgiven. There are also neighborhood stabilization programs aimed at revitalizing communities hit hard by foreclosures or unemployment.