If you've wondered why more homes are not on the market in your area, especially since would-be buyers are jumping all over themselves to find houses, the latest "homeowner sentiment survey" by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices could offer some clues.

Some 71 percent of owners polled said real estate seems to be heading in the right direction. But 73 percent of the owners who are considering selling said prices have yet to reach prerecession levels, and 61 percent said queasiness about the economy is keeping them sidelined.

"Though home prices around the country have recovered much of the ground lost during the downturn, 'contemplators' are telling us they want more confidence in the decision to list," said Gino Blefari, CEO of HSF Affiliates (the real estate network to which Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices belongs). "They're also telling us they need more information about their markets, pricing and specific home improvement in order to list."

Only 6 percent of current owners surveyed realized that the current low inventory of houses for sale makes for a seller's market. Even so, many said the shortage holds little meaning to them. The most common reasons for holding off selling? "Waiting for the right opportunity" and "haven't found my ideal home yet."

Here's an interesting tidbit from the National Association of Realtors' latest profile of homebuyers and sellers:

If you bought your house eight to 10 years ago, at the height of the housing recession, you only have around $3,000 in equity to put into your next place. But if you purchased within the last year, in this largely recovered market, you've already accumulated $31,000 in equity, on average.

If you bought two to three years ago, your gain so far is $30,000, again on average. And if you took the plunge four to five years ago, you've made a tidy $35,000.

As they say, timing is everything.

If you determined your credit score using an online portal, chances are you have no clue of your actual creditworthiness, whether you paid a fee or not.

Credit scores are used by most lenders to determine whether you are a good risk. For the most part, they use scores formulated by FICO, an analytics software company. But even within similar groups of lenders, such as mortgage companies, each company might use different scoring algorithms produced by FICO. The FICO formula one lenders uses could very well differ from another's.

But nearly two-thirds of the people polled in a recent study believed they received a true FICO credit score online, when they actually did not. (The study was conducted by independent research firm BAV Consulting.) And 8 out of 10 people said they thought the score they got was the one used by lenders.

The problem is that the mathematical formulas used by each scoring company are unique, and they create credit scores for consumers that are often significantly different from their true FICO scores -- sometimes by 100 points or more.

Such large score discrepancies can lead consumers to over- or underestimate how a lender will view them.

"Because other credit scores look similar to FICO scores, consumers have no way of determining, through the credit score itself, whether or not it's a FICO score," says FICO executive James Wehmann. "Credit scores are unlike other products; the consequences of not recognizing credit scores from different companies can be much more serious. ... If the majority of consumers are confused about these non-FICO credit scores being provided to them, then millions of Americans are likely to be mistaken about their actual creditworthiness."

The good news is that anyone with a consumer credit account has access to his or her true FICO score, for free, through the FICO Score Open Access Program. To learn more, go to fico.com and search for "Open Access."

Uncle Sam may or may not be watching you. But if you have a mortgage, your lender could be.

Black Knight Financial Services is an analytical and data firm that has deals with 23 of the top 25 loan originators, and all of the top 25 mortgage servicers. The company recently introduced new software that can reveal any number of things about your personal situation.

If you put your home up for sale, for example, the program can flag your account with your lender or servicer. That way, Black Knight officials said at a recent press briefing, you can be contacted and offered a new loan on your new place -- before you even find it. Or maybe they can allow you to carry your old loan with you to help cover the cost of the new residence.

Another possibility: If you stop paying your recurring monthly bills such as cable, cellphone or utilities, the software will mark your account for the lender, who can call and ask what the company can do to help you out. Lenders know that pretty soon, in such cases, you'll start getting behind on your mortgage; perhaps an offer of help to manage your finances -- say, reworking your mortgage so your monthly payment is lower -- can protect them from losing you to foreclosure.

And how about this: The software will tell lenders and servicers if you place subsequent liens on your property. That way, they'll know if your debt-to-income ratio has exceeded their particular benchmark. If it does, they can start to watch your account very carefully.

Black Knight says it tracks postings 24/7 from 3,000 courthouses nationwide to collect the data to support this scenario.

"If such a program was in place a decade ago, when people took out an 80 percent first mortgage, a 20 percent second mortgage and a 25 percent home equity loan -- all with different lenders who didn't know of the others -- there may not have been a housing recession," a Black Knight spokesman told me.

OVERALL, HOMEOWNERS SITTING PRETTY

While some people always struggle to get into homeownership, folks on the other side of that "velvet rope" have it made, according to Ben Graboske of Black Knight Financial Services.

"If you are a homeowner today, life is good," says Graboske.

As an indication that current owners are in "really good shape," take note that home equity in the last year has grown by $1 trillion nationally, bringing the total to $7.6 trillion. Of that, says Graboske, $4.5 trillion is sitting there ready to be tapped, even with today's super-tight lending standards.

And that's just for the people who have one of today's 30 million active mortgages. There's no telling how much equity mortgage-free owners are sitting on.

According to Graboske, owners are tapping into their equity at great numbers these days. But if that sounds like people are pulling too much money out of their homes, as they did in the run-up to the housing recession that brought the economy to its knees, have no fear.

The average home equity loan taken out by owners is $67,000. But even after that, the average borrower still has 32 percent of their equity left.

Another sign of the strength of the house market: Put the typical primary mortgage and home equity loan together, and the total loan-to-value ratio is a mere 68 percent -- a ratio almost every lender can live with. Better yet, the average credit score of a home equity borrower these days is 782, the "highest on record," says Graboske.

DON'T FALL FOR LATEST DOOR-TO-DOOR SCAM

Your home alarm system may alert you and the authorities about a would-be burglar scratching at your rear window. But it will do nothing to protect you from the latest scam making the rounds these days. In fact, the criminals are taking advantage of alarm systems to get into homes, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

How's that work, you ask? Simple, really. A fake sales agent knocks on your door, claiming he's there to upgrade your system. If you are gullible enough to allow him in -- and many people are, it seems -- he yanks out your system and installs a completely new one. Then he asks you to sign a document, which just happens to be a new contract.

Most people don't know they've been scammed until they get a call from the original home security company -- or until they start receiving bills from two outfits.

If you think you've been had, here's what the consumer watchdog agency says to do:

-- If the salesperson says he works for your current company and that he wants to upgrade your system, or he claims your company has gone out of business and that his firm has taken over their accounts, check his ID. Call your current company using the phone number on the paperwork you already have.

-- It's always safer to say no to salespeople before they enter the house than to ask them to leave once they are inside. So do your due diligence at the door, not in the hall or kitchen. And if they won't leave, call the cops.

-- Always beware of limited-time offers: "today only," for example, or "Act now to protect yourself from crime sprees in your neighborhood." Report such high-pressure tactics directly to the FTC at ftccomplaintassistant.gov.

Each year, like clockwork, Uncle Sam calls all of the country's mortgage lenders on the carpet to prove they are making mortgage money available to everybody, everywhere -- not skipping over an ethnic group here or a county there.

There's an awful lot of data in the report that some call the mortgage census -- formally, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), created by Congress in 1975. The law was intended to give hard data on lending and mortgage investment -- or the lack of it -- to minority groups and other communities.

The data collected under HMDA offers a cornucopia of mortgage information, like which companies are the largest lenders, what percentage of loans were on single-family houses, how many loans were sold by lenders into the secondary mortgage market, and how many first liens there were versus other liens.

2014's epic report has now been released: It includes numbers from 7,000 lenders and information from nearly 10 million loan applications. So what was 2014 like for the mortgage market? According to the Federal Reserve's HMDA summary, "House prices continued their upward trend evident since 2012 and mortgage interest rates declined throughout the year, although rates remained slightly higher than the historical lows reached in late 2012 and early 2013."

How difficult was it to obtain financing last year? "While mortgage credit stayed generally tight, conditions appeared to ease somewhat over the course of the year as the fraction of mortgage lending to lower-credit borrowers increased," according to the Fed. "However, growth in new housing construction was slow throughout the year, suggesting some persistent softness in new housing demand."

What percentage of the nearly 10 million applications in 2014 actually became mortgages? About 6 million. The dollar volume of those loans totaled almost $1.4 trillion, which is lower than 2013's volume, but somewhat higher than most industry pundits predicted.

The undisputed mortgage champ was Wells Fargo Bank, which made loans at a dollar volume that was twice what the next two banks originated, combined. The giant bank's total of $111.1 billion, about 8 percent of the total national volume, dwarfed Quicken Loans and Chase, which had about 4 percent each (about $56 billion apiece).

In professional football's annual draft, the last player chosen is called Mr. Irrelevant. In the lending world, that title would go to Affinity Bank, which lent only $20,000 in home loans in 2014. Rapid City, South Dakota's Telco Federal Credit Union was next to last, at a mere $24,000.

In going over the numbers, it's easy to lose sight of HMDA's original intention, which was to track loans to minorities and cull out lenders who were redlining or not making loans in the communities where they were located. But those figures are in there, too:

Of the $2.5 trillion in applications made to lenders last year, about 59 percent came from whites, and just over 20 percent came from minorities (blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, native Hawaiians or people of mixed race). More than 1 in 5 applications were in the "unknown" or "N/A" categories, because many people do not fill in the "race" blank. But with minorities now around 38 percent of the American population, it appears that they continue to be underserved.

The disparity is even larger in the dollar volume of loans actually made, with whites getting 63 percent of all mortgage money last year.

Beyond those figures, HMDA also offers a wide-angle snapshot of the country's appetites for home loans. Of the 10 million applications, 89 percent were for owner-occupied units, with just 10 percent non-owner-occupied. Applications to purchase homes were just slightly more popular (51 percent) than those to refinance loans (41 percent), with just seven percent seeking home-improvement lending.

Together, the 10 million applicants sought nearly $2.5 trillion in funding, and 6 million borrowers were approved for $1.4 trillion. More than 9 in 10 sought amounts at or lower than the "conforming" mortgage ceiling imposed on investors like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. The rest were seeking "jumbo" mortgages, or loans made in amounts above the $417,000 conforming ceiling. (The ceiling is higher for many high-priced areas).

The average loan amount for a first-lien mortgage last year was $233,000.

HMDA allows interested parties to track data by state, county, metro area and even census tracts to see how many -- or how few -- loans were made. Take Corson County, South Dakota. Only four mortgages were made last year, at an average of less than $100,000, in this remote area near the North Dakota border. In other words, the county is hurting for mortgages.

Corson County is wholly within the borders of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, but it would be a mistake to think that American Indians comprise all of the 4,000 people who reside there. About a third of the population is white, and a little more than a third of the $326,000 in mortgages made there in 2014 went to whites. About 17 percent went to American Indians.

Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report. The HMDA data was analyzed for the Housing Scene by LendingPatterns.com.