While many homebuyers, especially younger ones, now prefer to do their shopping online, most lenders are still warming to the idea that borrowers also would rather use their laptops, tablets and even smartphones to take out a mortgage.

Just as technology has not replaced a good real estate agent, it's doubtful it will replace a knowledgeable loan officer who can explain something when necessary. But to smooth the transaction and make it more comfortable for today's borrowers, the lending community is working hard to meet clients on their terms.

In a few weeks, for example, mortgage giant Fannie Mae will roll out an electronic mortgage app that will be able to verify a borrower's income using data from third-party sources.

With the new app, there will be no need for the borrower to deliver pay stubs to the lender. With a click, the lender can access the necessary information faster and more securely, a common concern for both borrowers and lenders.

Fannie Mae also is working on similar validation services for other required borrower income documents, such as bank statements and tax returns.

According to Jane Severn, Fannie Mae's director of product development, the idea of applying for funding online is gaining traction among borrowers who tend to be younger or at the high end of the price spectrum, and "are most active at 10 p.m. when they feel they don't need a loan officer and they're ready to go."

The art of "flipping" -- buying a house, fixing it up and reselling it within months or even days -- is still alive and well in America. According to RealtyTrac, 5.5 percent of all home sales last year were flips in which the property sold in an arm's-length transaction for the second time within 12 months.

But flippers beware: Uncle Sam may have his eye on you. The tax treatment of quick turnarounds hinges on whether the Internal Revenue Service sees you as a real estate dealer or investor.

If you are a dealer, net income is subject to the regular income tax plus the 15.3 percent self-employment tax, which is based on the first $118,500 of adjusted net self-employment income. The holding period of the house is irrelevant.

If you are an investor, on the other hand, net income from properties held a year or less is considered to be short-term capital gains, which are generally taxed at the taxpayer's ordinary income rate or bracket, from 10 to 39.6 percent.

"Investor" is probably the preferred title of most flippers, but the IRS has a list of factors it considers when making the determination, and no single one is more important than the other. Each finding is based on the circumstances surrounding each individual sale.

One factor is the number of flips per year. One or two does not normally trigger dealer status, but as the number rises, so do the chances that the tax collector will view the flipper as a dealer.

Other questions the IRS wants answered: How quickly was the property resold? Is the taxpayer a real estate professional? Is the taxpayer flipping houses full time? What percentage of the taxpayer's income comes from flipping?

One tax benefit available only to dealers is that they can deduct their total losses in the year they were incurred. Conversely, both an investor's long-term and short-term losses may be limited to $3,000 a year, depending on the investor's other capital gains or losses. But the remaining losses can be rolled over to the following year or years.

Would-be homebuyers would be wise to apply for their financing in locations where it is usually sunny, according to a working paper from the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank.

Using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, researchers found that loan approvals are higher when the sun is out. Approvals drop by 1.4 percent on cloudy days, but rise 0.8 percent when the sun is shining.

These are not insignificant shifts. "A rough estimate of the extra credit approved on one perfectly sunny day relative to one fully overcast day is about $150 million nationwide, or $91,000 per county-day," the paper says.

The bad news: Loans cleared on sunny days experience significantly higher defaults, the researchers found.

Most homebuyers base what they are going to be spending every month for their new digs on how much they are borrowing and the interest rate they're paying. But if that's all they consider, they are missing a big component of their monthly housing costs -- their utilities.

What's more, the cost of gas, oil and/or electricity to heat and cool the house is only one part of potential utility bills. Unless you will be using a well for your water and a septic tank for your sewer, you'll have to pay for those conveniences every month, too. And then there's trash removal and possibly even homeowner association fees.

The total cost for these necessities could add as much as 25 percent of your mortgage payment to your total monthly housing costs. Depending on the size of the place and how often you run your dishwasher and dryer, the outlay for utilities could run as much as $500 a month. Maybe even more.

Fortunately, if you are purchasing an existing house, it won't be terribly difficult to estimate your utility bills. At least, not if you have a cooperative seller.

Ask the seller for a list of what he or she paid for the various segments of utilities for the last 12 months. It may be a chore to compile, but bills just for the last month or two won't be terribly meaningful.

Of course, your monthly bills might be different from the seller's. You might be setting your thermostat higher or lower, depending on your comfort level, for example.

You might use more or less water, depending on the number of people in your household and how hot they like their showers and baths. And your kids might be running in and out all day long, which will run up your heating and cooling bills. But at least you'll have a decent approximation of what your costs will be.

Another way to estimate your costs is to use one or two or maybe even three of the various online utility estimators. They aren't pinpoint accurate, and as noted above, how you use the place will have a great deal to do with your monthly outlays. But again, they will give you an idea of what you'll have to spend in addition to your mortgage payment.

Myutilityscore.com is one of the newer sites. Simply plug in your new address, and it will divine your monthly, yearly and peak costs for electricity, gas and water. The site also will estimate your total annual bill and give you an overall score of one to 100, with 100 being the lowest costs.

It also will allow you to refine your estimates by adjusting for the number of people who occupy the house, your intended thermostat settings for winter and summer, and whether or not the place will be occupied during the day.

CPSEnergy.com has separate calculators for appliances, ghost-energy (plugged-in appliances use energy, even when they are turned off), heat pumps, televisions and lighting, plus an overall home energy calculator. These appear to be somewhat more cumbersome to use, but they still do the trick. (San Antonio-based CPSEnergy is the country's largest municipally owned energy utility.)

General Electric has a detailed electric cost calculator that also includes lighting and personal appliances, and a Home Energy Saver (energy.gov/energysaver/energy-saver) estimator from Uncle Sam that allows you to estimate your annual costs plus the cost to operate specific products.

In addition, look for the EnergyGuide label, the yellow tag you'll find attached to most appliances. It tells how much energy an appliance uses. Add the figures up and you'll have something approximating what you will be spending every month.

As you can see, trying to determine what your costs will be for a brand-new house is somewhat more problematic, if only because the place has never been occupied. But savvy builders will have asked the local utilities to provide estimates of what it will cost to run the house.

If your builder hasn't already done so, you can call each provider and ask for an estimate. Not all gas and electric companies do this for individuals, but it is worth a try, nonetheless. (With some, it's a mixed bag.)

Assuming all the major electrical equipment is installed, Potomac Electric Power Co. (PEPCO) in the Washington, D.C. area will "come out and give a customer an energy bill estimate," a spokesman said.

For people buying existing homes in suburban Maryland, PEPCO will send them the previous 12 months' worth of utility bills on the property so they can gauge their energy costs. And if you are an existing customer moving to a new total-electric house, you can enter your account number to use PEPCO's online energy cost calculator.

Finally, if you are willing to spend a little cash -- and your builder is willing to do so -- hire an energy-auditing firm to estimate how much your utility bills should run. Savvy builders will have done so for each of their models. But if yours hasn't, pay a certified auditor using a generally accepted index such as HERS, which stands for Home Energy Rating System, to give you an idea of your monthly outlay.

Would-be buyers of "green" homes may not be speaking the same language as the builders who are putting them up.

The verbal disconnect between builders and buyers is evident in a 2015 study of consumer preferences by the National Association of Home Builders, which focused exclusively on green features in homes and communities.

The primary objective of the study was to ascertain consumers' level of awareness of various Earth-friendly home features. But what was more striking was that buyers and builders are not always on the same page when it comes to terminology. In other words, perception and reality are not always the same.

For example, a builder might describe his offerings as "green," which has become the go-to euphemism to describe a house that's more environmentally friendly than the everyday, run-of-the-mill new house. According to the study, though, people tend to believe they receive more value from one that's described as "eco-friendly."

Both terms mean roughly the same thing, but 68 percent of the 3,370 consumers who bought a home in the last three years, or are planning to do so within the next three years, said they feel the most value comes from an eco-friendly home, compared to the 32 percent who said a green home offered more value.

This wordplay problem continues throughout a number of terms builders use to describe their sustainable products. Take the words "comfortable" and "livable." If the builder advertised a house as livable, according to the study, he might miss the mark with 83 percent of potential customers, who find more value in a property that's said to be comfortable.

Similarly, "low-flow," a term used to describe fixtures that use less water, means little to consumers, only clicking with 18 percent of them. But the same fixtures described as "water-saving" tend to resonate with 82 percent of consumers. Ditto for the term "environmentally friendly" versus "green-conscious" -- 81 percent to 19 percent, respectively.

The same disconnect can be found throughout the 26 pairs of words or phrases builders might use in promoting their "high-efficiency" homes. Even that term isn't immune: Respondents believe there is more value in an "energy-efficient" house than in a "high-efficiency" one.

Some of the other popular terms thrown around by builders that may not be universally embraced by buyers include "low-impact," "reduced energy use" and "nontoxic materials." Buyers, on the other hand, said terms such as "environmentally conscious," "lower utility bills" and "healthy living environment" have more of a ring to them.

There were only four pairs of green concepts for which opinions are close to evenly divided: "health" vs. "comfort," "resource-efficient" vs. "zero-waste," "disaster-resistant" vs. "resilient" and "net-zero energy" vs. "carbon neutral."

Despite the marked differences in semantics, the study found that energy efficiency is now paramount to consumers, who rank that attribute as the second most important to them. Only safe communities ranked higher.

"More than 50 percent of respondents in every age group, income bracket, household type, race, ethnicity, gender, census division and home price point ... agree that being energy-efficient is the most important attribute when facing a home purchase or remodel decision," the study found.

The builder's reputation, proximity to shopping and amenities, proximity to work, preferred school district -- all advertising hooks often used to lure buyers to various subdivisions -- are all further down the list of features that buyers said would influence their purchase decisions.

The study's results don't surprise Suzanne Shelton of the Shelton Group, a marketing and communications firm focused exclusively on energy and the environment. She says builders and product makers often use technical language that doesn't mean much to consumers, who mostly want to understand the benefits of a given feature -- not the building specs.

"The industry throws around a lot of words consumers don't understand," Shelton says. For example, the term "net-zero" means the house uses no energy -- a good thing, surely. But the term "sounds negative, and registers negative" with homebuyers, she says.

Her company's own study of energy-related buzz words found that the terms "green," "eco-friendly" and "sustainable" registered as "expensive" with about 3 out of 4 consumers. Negative-sounding terms such as "net-zero" were even less popular.