Consumers looking for coastal real estate quickly learn the difference between an "ocean peek" unit and an "ocean view." A "peek" apartment is on the lower floors and offers only an obstructed view of the water, so it is less valuable. But the peek can sometimes become a view, and the unit's value may not be enhanced at all. In fact, quite the contrary.

What we're talking about, of course, is what can happen if your property is unlucky enough to take a hit from Mother Nature in the form of a hurricane. The results can be pretty devastating.

Take the case of a mid-Florida building about 50 yards from the Atlantic Ocean, where a friend (who asked to remain nameless) owns an apartment. When struck full-on by two hurricanes a few weeks apart in 2004 -- Frances and then Jeanne -- his unit and others were heavily damaged and the building's lobby became a swimming pool.

While you may believe the chances of a hurricane, tornado or other natural disaster are slim, their effects are being felt in the government's National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Even the general rise in sea level is having an impact.

The insurance pool, if you will pardon the pun, is already underwater -- and projected to become even more so.

In fact, if you don't have flood insurance, or not enough to satisfy the NFIP requirements, Uncle Sam allows lenders to place expensive flood insurance on properties on which they hold the mortgage. And guess what? Lenders don't pay the premiums; you do -- and the rates are often much higher than if you purchased coverage yourself.

The New York State Department of Financial Services has a short and sweet explanation of the process:

"Force-placed insurance, also known as creditor-placed, lender-placed or collateral protection insurance, is an insurance policy placed by a lender, bank or loan servicer on a home when the property owners' own insurance is canceled, has lapsed or is deemed insufficient and the borrower does not secure a replacement policy. This insurance allows the lender to protect its financial interest in the property."

New York regulators have some direct experience with the problem of rapidly rising sea levels. One of the buildings where it has offices along the riverfront in Manhattan's Battery Park was extensively flooded by Hurricane Sandy.

But as it turns out, rising water in the Battery Park area has been tracked for a long time. In the last century, the level of the water there has risen nearly 12 inches, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. While that doesn't sound like much, an extra foot of water flooding your property adds geometrically to a storm's destruction.

Flood damage, which can run into the tens of the thousands of dollars, isn't always caused by storms. Sometimes the cause is a broken pipe, or a major rain storm. And who pays for the necessary repairs depends on whether or not you have flood coverage, which isn't included in your homeowner's policy.

With the passage of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act in 2012, Congress decided that the federal flood insurance program should be actuarially sound, meaning the premiums collected should be enough to pay for the insurance claims the program paid out.

The NFIP's current deficit has been estimated at anywhere between $24 billion and $28 billion. And that's only going to increase. But shortly after the Biggert bill went into effect, consumers began to squawk when their premiums rose, some to as much as $28,000 a year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

When the screaming became loud enough, the mortgage and real estate businesses lobbied successfully to obtain relief from big jumps in premiums. And just two years after lawmakers passed Biggert, they backtracked a bit by passing the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, which set limits on how much premiums could increase in any one year.

Now, premium increases are limited to 25 percent annually until the full actuarial rate is reached. People who buy existing homes or condos fall under the same formula. But buyers of brand-new units in flood-prone areas must pay the full cost from the get-go.

Even then, the flood insurance program may never be self-sustaining.

A study commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has some pretty stark projections on the increase in the number of flood insurance policies and the cost of claims in this century. It attributes 30 percent of the increases to added population and 70 percent to climate change.

"Under the assumption of a fixed shoreline, the total number of NFIP policies may increase by approximately 100 percent by the year 2100, with the number of riverine policies increasing by about 80 percent and the number of coastal policies increasing by as much as 130 percent," the FEMA study said. "The greater number of coastal policies is the result of the enlargement of the SFHA (Special Flood Hazard Area) caused by sea level rise."

In addition, according to the report, the average loss cost per policy could increase 50 percent and the average premium rise by 40 percent.

Information on the NFIP is available at FloodSmart.gov.

(Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.)

Heads up for homeowners who are trying to obtain a loan modification: You better be careful out there.

Ditto for anyone whose loan has been sold or transferred from one lender to another.

These are the most complained-about issues that consumers have with their mortgages, according to the latest tabulation of consumer complaints by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

These types of issues pop up again and again, according to the CFPB. In fact, since the agency started accepting complaints in 2011, it has received more mortgage-related gripes than any other kind of financial products -- close to 200,000 of them. Here are some of the most common issues, and tips on how to handle them.

THE PROBLEM: Payment confusion. More than a third of the beefs have to do with just trying to make a payment, which should be a rudimentary task: Stick a check in the envelope the lender sent you, put a stamp on it and put it in the mail. Or, make the payment online. What can be so hard about that?

But the problem isn't on the sender's end; it's on the recipient's. And that's especially true if your lender -- or company that services your loan on behalf of your lender -- transfers your account to another entity. That's when it gets complicated, as many borrowers have found.

According to the CFPB, consumers report "confusion and frustration" about where to make their payments when their loans change hands. They maintain that they do not feel properly informed about the switch. And they complain that their payments often increase unexpectedly.

WHAT TO DO: You should receive a "goodbye" letter from your original lender and a "hello" letter from the new one. If you have any questions whatsoever, get on the horn with the first lender to make sure your loan has indeed been sold.

When you write your first check to the new lender/servicer, make sure you put both account numbers -- the old and new ones -- on the check, and make sure you put down which number belongs to which lender.

About the amount changing without notice: Frequently when a loan changes hands, the new servicer will re-calculate your escrow accounts, and your payment will float up or down according to the new calculation. But again, if you have any questions, call.

THE PROBLEM: Misapplied payments. According to the CFPB, many homeowners say that despite their explicit instructions, their payments are not properly applied. And they grouse that partial payments were sent back to them.

WHAT TO DO: Lenders won't accept partial payments; they say their software programs are not set up that way. So if you can only send part of what you owe in a particular month, call the company and tell them what's up.

The same goes if you feel the need to send the lender special instructions, say, to apply an additional amount to your principal. Call and ask how you should go about this, then call again a week or two after you send the payment to make sure your wishes were carried out.

THE PROBLEM: Loan-mod gridlock. According to the CFPB, financially strapped consumers continue to have big problems when they try to work with their lenders to prevent going into foreclosure. They complain of long delays and a lack of information when applying for a loan modification. And they say that servicers move forward with foreclosure proceedings while their application for a loan mod is under review -- a tactic known as dual-tracking.

WHAT TO DO: This is a tough one, but probably the best advice is to work through an independent housing counselor who knows the ropes better than you. You can find a list of government-approved counselors at www.hud.gov.

As far as dual-tracking is concerned, realize that the servicer is concerned with one thing and one thing only: collecting your money. The lender, on the other hand, would very much like to save the loan. Unfortunately, the two entities, or perhaps the two departments, don't talk to each other.

But under the rules put in place by the CFPB nearly three years ago, servicers are not supposed to start a foreclosure proceeding if a borrower has already submitted a complete application for a loan modification or other alternative to foreclosure, and that application is still pending review. So make sure your application is complete.

Also, to give borrowers reasonable time to submit such applications, servicers cannot make the first notice or filing required for the foreclosure process until you are more than 120 days late. And remember, foreclosure is not just an event; it's a process. How long a process depends on the rules in your state.

Foreclosures are never pretty. Just ask one of the millions of people who were put out of their homes during the housing crises of recent years.

If you want to see what it's like, or what goes on behind the scenes, the recently released movie "99 Homes" will give you an idea.

In my landlording career, I've only been on one eviction when I was left with no choice but to remove a tenant; he hadn't paid rent in several months and wouldn't respond to my appeals. When the sheriff's deputies who served the eviction notice pulled out their weapons before banging on the front door, it gave me a chill down my spine that I'd never anticipated. I quickly backed up -- way up, around the corner -- in case shots were fired.

"99 Homes" will give you that same kind of sinking feeling -- and then some.

It's the tale of an unemployed contractor and single dad named Dennis Nash (played by Andrew Garfield) who loses his home to foreclosure. Out on the street with his young child and widowed mother (Laura Dern), Nash tries to earn the house back by going to work for the shameless realty broker (Michael Shannon) who handled the eviction.

For Nash, the agreement turns out to be more dangerous and brutal than he ever imagined. The movie tumbles deep into the personal side of repossessions, and the bank's agent teaches Nash the legal, and illegal, ins and outs of the foreclosure game.

Another film, due out in December, depicts the housing implosion from the point of view of bankers, who are generally credited with causing the whole mess. Others, too, must share the blame, but "The Big Short" tells the story of how a few Wall Street "outsiders" bet against the housing market and raked in millions when it collapsed.

It's based on "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine," a nonfiction book by Michael Lewis that spent 28 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Lewis is also the author of two other highly regarded books-turned-movies, "Moneyball" and "The Blind Side."

Directed by Will Ferrell's frequent partner-in-comedy, Adam McKay, the movie's cast includes Academy Award winners or nominees Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell and Marisa Tomei. It depicts how banks got greedy by giving out mortgages to people who were not qualified, and how a few traders profited from the banks' "stupidity."

For example, Carell's character goes to a men's club in one scene, where he talks to an exotic dancer who finds out that she can't refinance the loans on her five houses and one condo.

"No one's paying attention," says Gosling's character, who, along with three other small-time financial whizzes, realizes the housing market is on the verge of collapse. They race to cash in on the pending catastrophe -- a tragedy the banking industry, the media and the government either failed to see coming, or didn't want to.

"The whole housing market is propped up on bad loans," says Bale's character. "It will fail."

On the other hand, everyone saw the foreclosure crisis, which unfolded front and center in the media. But most of us were on the sidelines. We had no idea of what it was like to lose our homes, or about the shenanigans that went on behind the scenes as some people profited from others' misery.

The R-rated "99 Homes" tells that story. Director Ramin Bahrani spent months in Florida researching the film. He saw first-hand the so-called "rocket dockets," in which the legal fate of struggling homeowners was sealed in 60 seconds or less. He even went on several evictions, which he called "frightening and horrific things."

The taut drama also describes the dual-tracking system some lenders followed, in which one arm of the bank told owners one thing and another arm told them something else. Many people were trapped in the system and eventually lost their homes.

Garfield, who met with several Florida families who had lost their homes in researching his role, told Yahoo Movies that his own family was nearly foreclosed on when he was a teenager. "A couple of baby steps to the side, and this could have been me," he said.

In the film, Shannon's character, the greedy foreclosure broker Rick Carver, heartlessly evicts Nash with the cops standing at his shoulder. He later tells him, "I didn't evict you. The bank did."

Carver also delivers this chilling homily: "Do you think America gives a rat's (behind) about you or me? America doesn't bail out the losers. America was built by bailing out winners ... by rigging a nation, of the winners, by the winners, for the winners."