People die in their homes all the time. Many pass from natural causes. But others go more violently -- a suicide, perhaps, or even a murder.

If that thought makes you skittish when shopping for a new home, there are a couple of spooky online tools to help you out find out if someone met their demise in a place you're considering. One is the "Death in Home" feature at HomeDisclosure.com; the other, DiedInHouse.com.

While real estate agents are often instructed to disclose when a death has occurred in a property, only three states -- Alaska, California and South Dakota -- require them to do so.

In California, sellers and their agents don't have to disclose the death if it happened more than three years ago. But if a would-be buyer asks about a death that occurred at any time, even long ago, the seller has to respond truthfully. In Alaska and South Dakota, only murders or suicides must be disclosed, and only if they happened within the past year.

Because things are less black-and-white in other states, many agents adopt a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude about the subject.

Of course, some buyers don't care. They find it silly to even consider such ghostly goings-on. But many others want nothing to do with these "ghastly" properties. And there are plenty of those properties, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, the parent company of HomeDisclosure. More than you might think.

More than 40,000 currently vacant single-family properties nationwide are owned by someone who is deceased, ATTOM reports.

In five Chicago-area ZIP codes, there are a total of 324 potentially haunted houses. But the prize goes to ZIP code 46407 in Lake County, Indiana, where one in every 41 houses could be occupied by the specter of the former owner. The kids should have a field day there this Halloween.

The Death in Home feature at HomeDisclosure "fits with our philosophy of providing as much information as possible about a property," says ATTOM Chief Economist Daren Blomquist, "particularly when that information may affect the value in the buyer's eyes."

The information was something the realty data company's customers had been asking for, according to Blomquist. But there has been some pushback from agents who think it's something would-be buyers don't really need to know about. "What's next?" asked an agent on a real estate website. "(Asking) 'Did someone fart in the house?'"

DiedinHouse was created by Roy Condrey, who was inspired when one of his tenants texted him in the middle of the night to ask if he knew his house was haunted.

Condrey wasn't able to find any proof one way or the other that the house had been the site of any kind of fatality. But the South Carolina software designer did learn that a death in a house is not regarded as a "material defect" in most places, and therefore need not be disclosed. His search also revealed dozens of others asking the same question about their houses, or the ones they were thinking about buying.

He also found many cases in which people who bought places in which someone had died were now uncomfortable with the idea. And he was less than thrilled with the advice he found about trying to determine such things before committing to a 30-year mortgage: Most advice consisted of "ask the agent, seller, neighbors and/or local government agencies." That didn't cut it for Condrey.

"The process is easier said then done, not to mention very time-consuming," he said. So he created a site that gathers data from more than 130 million police records, news reports and death certificates, among other sources.

HomeDisclosure's Death in Home report costs $9.99 --it's the only part of the site's report that has a fee, due to the added expense necessary to collect the data. At DiedInHouse, one search runs $11.99.

The term "aging in place" refers to the millions of seniors who would rather remain in their longtime homes than pull up stakes and move -- whether to a warmer climate or closer to their children. And certainly no one wants to go into a nursing home, some of which are more like storage boxes where people wait to die than actual homes.

To most people, aging in place means mostly that they'll have to modify their homes in some fashion so their remaining years will be comfortable. Perhaps a ramp to accommodate a wheelchair, or turning that little-used dining room into a first-floor master bedroom to avoid climbing stairs. Or maybe it simply involves changing the doorknobs to handles so they'll be easier to use.

These are all real estate-related functions, and can usually be accomplished by licensed remodeling contractors or possibly even a local handyman. But as seniors age in their homes, they often realize that they need assistance beyond reconfiguring their houses: with things like transportation, maintenance, health care, cooking and financial resources.

Enter the National Aging in Place Council (NAICP), an alliance of in-home aging services providers that run the gamut from builders, lenders and businesses to senior organizations and government agencies. Presently, there are 25 NAIPC chapters nationally, but the group is expanding rapidly, says Executive Director Marty Bell.

The council's growth coincides with a report this month from the Government Accountability Office that calls on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to do more to connect senior residents to supportive services. The report refers specifically to HUD's Section 202 "housing for the elderly" program. But the need goes well beyond that, says Peter Bell, Marty's younger brother and a longtime association executive who operates several trade groups, including NAIPC.

Surprisingly, the NAICP was created as an offshoot of the reverse mortgage business, another trade organization that the Bells manage. Reverse mortgages are loans that allow seniors to cash out the equity they have in their homes. They can use that money to make modifications to their houses, pay their bills and otherwise live comfortably as they age.

But for one reason or another, many elderly people, after taking years to pay off their first mortgages, don't want to encumber their houses once again. Maybe they want to leave their homes mortgage-free to their kids. Perhaps they don't have enough equity to make a reverse mortgage worthwhile, or maybe they simply can't qualify.

There's nothing wrong with shunning another loan. But if you want to live independently in your home for your remaining years, you have to plan for it.

"If you don't plan, you are going to run into trouble," says Peter Bell. "It's one thing to live on your own in your 70s, but another thing in your 80s and something else again in your 90s."

Unfortunately, that's the exact opposite of the way most of us operate. "We have a habit as a society of waiting for an emergency before we take action," says Marty Bell.

NAIPC's goal is to be a one-stop shop in every community where seniors and their loved ones can easily find the assistance they need -- from the local version of Meals on Wheels to geriatric medical care. In Charleston, South Carolina, and Atlanta, for example, the local chapters list more than 50 different in-home services local residents can access. Resources can be found at ageinplace.org.

All members of local chapters are vetted and screened to make sure they are legitimate. They agree to background checks, are interviewed by local leadership and sign a Code of Conduct in which they pledge to put their clients' needs ahead of their own. That should allay any fears of inviting strangers into your home, a concern that often intensifies as people age.

"As an organization," Marty Bell says, "NAIPC is trying to shift the conversation from explaining aging in place to helping people age in place." He said he sees the industry becoming "a department store, if you will, where one counter offers a choice of caregivers, another lists transportation options, a third provides food delivery options and a fourth lists options to make your home easier to navigate."

In an effort to get aging adults to start thinking about their own situations, the Council has developed "Act III: Your Plan for Aging in Place," a toolkit to help people start thinking about their own situations. What do they have now and what will they need in the future?

The 24-page document takes about an hour to complete, but it is time well spent. Covering key areas like housing, health, finance, transportation, social interaction, education and entertainment, it walks seniors through the essential concerns necessary to sustain a safe and secure lifestyle in their homes.

The NAICP is also collaborating with the School of Social Welfare at Stony Brook University in New York to develop a college course to teach social work students how to become aging-in-place specialists. And by the middle of next year, it expects to have in place a home-assistance hotline for round-the-clock advice and assistance.

For now, the Act III toolkit is available at no cost at ageinplace.org.

Many homeowners don't realize they have private mortgage insurance (PMI). But if you put less than 20 percent down, you are paying it each and every month in order to protect your lender against the possibility that you might default on your loan.

Even if you're aware of your PMI, and couldn't have purchased your house without it, you probably hate the fact that hundreds of dollars are added to your monthly payment for the lender's benefit, not yours. Especially when you are among the 95 percent or so of borrowers who have never missed a payment and never will.

Nearly 750,000 homebuyers obtained loans requiring PMI in 2015 alone, mostly first-time buyers earning less than $75,000 a year. Under the law, PMI must be dropped when your loan balance reaches 78 percent of your home's original value. But did you know that there are other circumstances in which PMI can be canceled, but only at your request?

Enter the PMI Terminator, a detailed analysis describing eight possible scenarios under which you can jettison PMI coverage early -- without refinancing and without waiting for the loan balance to reach that all-important 78 percent level.

"For PMI removal, the question is not if, but when," says David Ginsburg of Loantech, the Gaithersburg, Maryland, mortgage audit company that created the Terminator. "There are a lot of different scenarios, but they are somewhat complicated."

The PMI Terminator is an eight-page personalized report based on each homeowner's particular situation. The report costs $99, but "the savings can be significant," Ginsburg says. PMI monthly payments can range from $50 per month to more than $400, so canceling just two years early can result in some real money.

Note: PMI should not be confused with a mortgage insurance premium (MIP). PMI is placed on conventional mortgages, whereas MIP is paid on loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The PMI Terminator is based on loan and property information supplied by the owner. To complete a report, LoanTech needs to know the property's original value, the original loan amount, interest rate, loan term and the date of your first payment. Once those variables are in hand, the program crunches the numbers and spits out the options.

Here are some of the possibilities for dumping PMI:

-- If your loan is owned or held by Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage company that purchases loans on the secondary market from primary lenders, you can ask the lender to delete PMI when your loan balance drops to 80 percent of the property's original value, rather than 78 percent.

Because Fannie's rule is based on a home's original, not current, value, you won't need a new appraisal. And if you prepaid any of the principal before it was due, those amounts are considered as part of the loan balance. Consequently, if you were to make a sizable prepayment to reach the 80 percent threshold, you can petition earlier for cancellation.

Give the Terminator the information it needs, and it will tell you to the month and day when you can solicit your lender under this and all other scenarios.

-- The rule is the same at loans owned or held by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae's chief competitor and the other government-sponsored secondary market institution. But with Freddie, loan prepayments are not counted against the principal.

-- Your lender must cancel PMI by the midpoint of the loan -- that is, 15 years for a 30-year mortgage -- regardless of whether the 78 percent threshold has been reached.

-- If you make substantial improvements that have increased the value of a house that serves as collateral for a Fannie Mae loan, you can request cancellation when the loan-to-value ratio (LTV) drops to 75 percent or below of present value. Here, though, you'll need an appraisal.

-- With a Freddie Mac loan, if you made such improvements, you can call for cancellation when the LTV is 80 or below. Again, a new appraisal is required.

-- You can't ask for cancellation until the loan is at least 24 months old. But between 24 and 72 months, you can ask to cancel if the LTV doesn't exceed 75 percent of current value. Ditto for loans older than 72 months in which the LTV doesn't exceed 80 percent of current value.