If you're in the market to buy or sell a house, you'll want to make informed decisions every step of the way. Luckily, Uncle Sam has a huge treasure trove of data you can use.

Information from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) database is at your disposal, and can be accessed at consumerfinance.gov/data-research/hmda.

For instance, the database shows that average mortgage amounts jumped between 2014 and 2015, meaning that average home prices jumped, as well. The average home-loan amount in 2015 was $261,000 for a first lien (an increase of 6 percent over 2014), and $65,000 for second mortgages and home equity lines of credit (a 10 percent increase).

Great new if you're selling a house, but not so great if you're buying one.

An analysis of the data by the Federal Reserve confirms that real estate grew pricier last year. "In 2015, house prices continued their upward trend evident since 2012, and mortgage interest rates remained low, although slightly above the historical lows reached in late 2012 and early 2013," according to the central bank.

Based on HMDA figures, more than 90 percent of last year's total of $1.8 trillion in mortgage money went to one- to four-unit homes. Non-owner-occupied units (usually investment properties) accounted for 10 percent of loan dollars. (The data are gleaned from the LendingPatterns tool of ComplianceTech, a fair-lending and technology company in McLean, Virginia.)

Multifamily loans accounted for just 8 percent of all mortgages last year, with a tiny 0.6 percent going for manufactured housing. However, that figure doesn't tell the whole story. There are two kinds of manufactured housing loans: one for properties secured to a lot and cannot be moved, and one for units that remain detached. The former is a mortgage; the other, more like an auto loan. The mortgage amount is far lower than the car-type loan.

Getting a mortgage was slightly easier for buyers last year than in prior years, when lenders put a tight squeeze on credit, according to the Fed analysis.

"Mortgage credit conditions continued to slowly ease, but credit remained more difficult to obtain for individuals with lower credit scores," the central bank said.

"Reports throughout the year from the Survey on Bank Lending Practices indicate that several large banks relaxed their credit requirements, on net, for mortgages that were eligible for purchase by the government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) or that met the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's standards for qualified mortgages. Growth in new housing construction continued at a moderate pace."

More good news: Fewer people were turned down for a mortgage in 2015.

"In 2015, the overall denial rate on applications for home-purchase loans of 12.1 percent, as well as the denial rate for refinance loan applications of 27.4 percent, was somewhat lower than in 2014," according to the Fed report. However, denials for minorities were higher than for whites.

HMDA was designed by Congress to make sure banks lend to minorities and to low- to moderate-income borrowers ("low-mods"). Minorities make up more than a third of the U.S. population, but received only 19 percent of 2015 mortgage dollars ($351 million out of $1.85 trillion).

Breaking it down further, Asians received most of the minority mortgage dollars last year: $134 billion. Latinos were close behind at $129 billion. Blacks trailed at $71 billion, or about 4 percent of total volume. Native Americans and Native Hawaiians together received about $10 billion, or about one half of 1 percent of total lending dollars.

In comparison, whites received 62 percent of all mortgage dollars last year: $1.1 trillion. The balance fell in the "unknown" and "not applicable" categories.

Two-thirds of 2015 minority lending was in conventional (non-governmental) mortgages. The rest was in government loans like those offered through the Federal Housing Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Rural Housing Service and the Farm Service Agency.

Minorities used 54 percent of the dollars they were granted to buy houses, and 43 percent to refinance their current abodes. That's slightly different than the national average, in which 51 percent of the mortgage money went for purchases and 45 percent for refis. (In both cases, the balances were in home-improvement loans.)

Fifty-five percent of 2015's minority mortgage money went to upper-income borrowers. Only 16 percent went to low-mods. Even so, that was more than went to low-mod borrowers overall, which was just 12 percent.

Average loan amounts to minorities were lower than the overall average, at $248,000 for first liens and $38,000 for subordinate liens.

So just how big is the HMDA database? It's huge. Nearly 7,000 lenders reported their mortgage data for 2015 to the Federal Financial Institution Examinations Council, a multi-agency government group. While the database is enormous, it is not quite comprehensive. Mortgage lenders with less than $44 million in assets do not have to provide data. But the large majority of mortgage lenders are required to file.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.

The foreclosure crisis that hurt so many homeowners may be waning, but now, more and more renters are facing eviction.

Property data provider CoreLogic's most recent foreclosure report shows that serious delinquencies -- those 90 days or more past due -- in the U.S. have dropped below the landmark 1 million plateau. So it just might be time to declare the repossession plague over.

October's 997,000 seriously delinquent loans represent a huge drop from the 1.3 million serious delinquencies a year ago. The October number means just 2.5 percent of mortgages are dangerously late, nationwide. That's the lowest percentage since August 2007, just as the real estate and mortgage crises were ramping up.

The year-over-year drop in foreclosure inventory is even more dramatic. It fell by 31.5 percent, from 465,000 units in November 2015 to 328,000 in October 2016. Currently, less than 1 percent of homes with a mortgage is in foreclosure.

The number of loans going into foreclosure has experienced year-over-year drops for the past 60 months. And with fewer and fewer homes still in foreclosure, the number of completed repos also is dropping. There were 30,000 of them in October, down 25 percent from the 40,000 seen in October 2015.

"By comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006," according to CoreLogic.

But, as foreclosure rates finally dwindle, renters are feeling increased financial pressure and the very real possibility of eviction.

No one really knows how many renters are being put out of their homes; the Census Bureau hasn't started tracking the number yet, but plans to in 2017. But real estate firm Redfin estimates that 2.7 million renters faced eviction in 2015.

There are local efforts to tally evictions, according to Redfin researcher Taylor Marr. But "even those can far undercount the true number of families that are forced into a move, either formally through housing courts, or informally through unscrupulous methods by property owners," she says.

Marr cites some glum market statistics: Rents are up 66 percent since 2000, while incomes have risen only by 35 percent. And in 2015, one in four renters was spending at least 50 percent of their income on rent.

Hoping to get some useful national numbers in advance of the upcoming Census Bureau effort, Redfin looked at 6 million eviction records in 19 states. That data gave the company enough confidence to estimate local and national eviction rates.

"Insufficient supply of affordable housing in many cities continues to push up housing costs, which have been rising rapidly," according to Marr. "Household incomes have not kept pace. As a result, the median rent–to-household income ratio grew by more than 2 percent in most metros from 2011 to 2014, according to the U.S. Census. We also found that neighborhoods with the highest median rent–to–income ratios have much higher eviction rates than neighborhoods that spend less of their income on rent."

Two of the three cities with the highest eviction rates are in New Jersey. Newark and Camden both have increasingly high cost-burden ratios. But Marr says that isn't the only indicator.

"In Las Vegas, where the ratio is relatively low, one out of 12 rental households are evicted each year," she reports.

One factor at play: Evictions are most common in places with a high concentration of foreign-born residents.

Evictions are especially damaging, perhaps even more so than foreclosures. Whereas former owners can often find rentals to suit their needs, evicted families are often excluded from other rental properties and from participating in the federal Section 8 subsidy program.

Getting booted from your apartment or single-family rental has also shown to cause job loss, or worse, homelessness. "Communities with high eviction rates have an unstable social structure and are plagued with crime," Marr points out.

Back to foreclosures: New Jersey turns out to be the state with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of mortgaged homes, with a rate of 2.8 percent, according to CoreLogic. New York follows at 2.7 percent, with Hawaii taking the bronze at 1.7 percent. Arizona had the lowest percentage, at 0.3 percent.

Twenty-one states showed big decreases in foreclosure inventory, with Florida, one of the epicenters of the housing crisis, having the biggest decline at more than 41 percent. Florida completed more than 50,000 foreclosures from late 2015 through late 2016. In contrast, Washington, D.C. had the fewest, at 212.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.

Trying to build or improve your credit score so you can qualify for a mortgage? If so, count the credit cards in your wallet: Too many or too few can negatively affect your score, but there is a sweet spot.

The ideal number of credit cards, according to Philip Tirone of 720CreditScore.com, is three to five.

More than five, and the credit bureaus will worry that you could get yourself into a financial bind if you use them all at once. It doesn't matter to the bureaus whether or not you actually use them. It's the potential that raises a red flag.

Less than three cards, on the other hand, and the bureaus aren't presented with enough information about your spending behavior. Hence, they score you lower.

Here are some other things to keep in mind when applying for credit:

-- Make sure your creditors report to all three credit bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian.

-- If you need to apply for more than one card to reach the three-to-five goal, do so all at once. Part of your credit score is based on the age of your accounts, says Tirone. If you open one now, and then wait six months to open another, you will lower the average age of your accounts.

-- If you already have more than five cards, don't close the "extras" -- doing so could hurt, not help, your score. Yes, it's counterintuitive, but closing an account could lower the average age of your accounts. Instead, simply stop using the unnecessary cards and allow them to become inactive.

-- Never apply for credit jointly with your spouse. Rather, each of you should apply separately so that you both build individual credit identities.

Tirone says this is important in case you ever find yourself in a financial bind and unable to pay all of your bills. "If you have joint credit cards, both of your credit scores will take a hit, but if you build separate credit profiles, only one spouse's credit score will suffer," he says. "The other can be preserved and then leveraged for loans."

Hurricane season came and went with only one major storm hitting our shores. But a new report from Trulia suggests many of those in Matthew's path are paying for the damages out of their own pockets.

According to a Trulia analysis of government data, households in the Southeast are not as heavily insured as they were just eight years ago. Because the cost of hurricane coverage is an add-on to homeowners' policies, many people are not covered at all.

But it's not just a trend in the Southeast -- it's also a national trend, Trulia discovered. Nationwide, the number of insured homes fell from 94.1 percent eight years ago to 89.2 percent in 2014. That means more folks are choosing to go it alone.

There are numerous reasons why an owner would drop insurance coverage on perhaps their most valuable assets, but to Trulia, one stands out: Insurance is required to keep a mortgage in good standing. When people pay off their loans, they forgo insurance to save even more money.

Another reason? During the last eight years, Trulia says, premiums have climbed more than 28 percent nationally.

Landlords are legally allowed to check your criminal history, whether would-be tenants give them permission or not. So if you have a checkered history or previous housing court actions, gather together any paperwork you have showing how the legal actions were resolved.

But if a landlord tells you not to bother applying because you have a criminal record, that could be considered discrimination, according to Lisa Weintraub Schifferle, an attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer and Business Education.

In that case, you should lodge a complaint. You also have rights when a landlord or property manager uses any kind of background check to deny your application.

Says Schifferle: The landlord must give you notice of the action -- orally, in writing or electronically. The notice must provide the contact information for the company that supplied the report. The notice must tell you about your rights to correct inaccurate information, and to get a free copy of the report if you ask for it within 60 days of the landlord's decision.

You should obtain your free report, fix any errors, and have the company that supplied the report give the corrected info to the landlord. Tell the landlord about the mistake, too.