When there is a dispute between buyer and seller over what stays with the house and what goes, it’s usually over a prized bathroom mirror, a beautiful sconce in the hallway or some ornate, custom curtain rods.

The rule of conveyances is fairly simple: If it is attached to the house, it is considered a fixture and it stays for the next owner. If it isn’t attached, the sellers can take it with them when they move out. In other words, you can take the curtains, but not the rods.

But what if the issue involves animals? Now it gets sticky. Obviously, the dog or cat or other critter isn’t part of the property, and normally the sellers will take their pets when they leave. But not always.

Last fall, agent Jeff Dowler of Solutions Real Estate in Carlsbad, California, asked a seller if the peacocks wandering around his spacious backyard would be part of the transaction.

“The lot was large, about one acre, and the seller met us at the property to let us in,” Dowler said in a post on real estate site ActiveRain. “The buyers were out strolling the property, and out of curiosity, I asked, ‘Do the peacocks convey?’”

The seller was adamant: “Yes, they are staying,” he said.

As it turns out, peacocks are protected in several parts of the country, allowed to roam freely. So they had to stay, whether the buyer liked it or not.

Francine Viola, an agent with Evergreen Olympic Realty in Washington, once had to write up a contract that stated the chickens in the coop would stay. If that wasn’t enough, the buyer also wanted the seller to replace any chickens that passed away prior to closing.

“Thankfully the chickens lived,” she said.

Ducks were part of a deal that New Hampshire agent Scott Godzyk once worked on. The buyer wanted the ducks in the property’s small pond to convey. Luckily, the sellers agreed. It seemed the husband, who fed them daily, didn’t want them to be disturbed from their man-made habitat.

Fish or fowl, there can be problems. Twice, Dana Cottingame of Coldwell Banker in Dallas ran into situations with koi in a pond. In Texas, she learned, koi convey just as though they were attached to the house. The moral here: If you don’t want to be bothered feeding fish, don’t buy a house with them -- at least in the Lone Star State.

In Florida, Winifred Smith of RE/MAX Advance Realty says she heard of an issue with the number of koi that would convey with a certain home. The larger koi are apparently “quite expensive, so the buyer made the seller pay to replace a couple” that had gone to the great pond in the sky.

Things don’t always work out when a pet is involved. One odd request reported by Goodson Realty in Bonne Terre, Missouri, came from a buyer who fell in love with the seller’s dog and wrote him into the contract. “My sellers did not accept” the offer, recalls the agent.

And sometimes the problem is big -- really big, as in the case of the three 400-lb. potbellied pigs that greeted Anna Kruchten of the Phoenix Property Shoppe when showing her client an upscale luxury home. The listing agent hadn’t mentioned a thing about the porkers, even when Krutchen spoke with him directly.

The seller’s agent probably thought the presence of pigs was better left unsaid. Otherwise, nobody would want to visit the place. And as you might expect, Kruchten says, “my client was aghast.”

Neither Gayle Rich-Boxman of Fishhawk Lake Real Estate in Birkenfeld, Oregon, or RE/MAX agents Pat and Ed Okenica in Lake Oconee, Georgia, have had any problems with live animals. But they have had issues with taxidermy and telephones.

Rich-Boxman had to remove a moose head on New Year’s Day a few years back, because the sellers thought it was a fixture and left it -- “and weren’t coming back” for it. The buyers didn’t want the “sad old head leering at them,” she recalls, so she hired workers to remove it.

The Okenicas, meanwhile, had buyers who insisted the sellers leave their phone, shaped like a mallard duck, or they would walk away from the deal. “There’s always something that pops up in a transaction that you least expect,” they posted.

Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) are back, especially in the higher price brackets around $453,000 and above. And as loan rates climb, as they are expected to do throughout the year, they probably will become more popular.

But wait: Weren’t ARMs responsible, at least in part, for the 2008 housing crash and subsequent mortgage market meltdown? Are homebuyers setting themselves up for another fall?

Well, no, ARMs weren’t responsible for the crash. Actually, the loan product itself is quite sound. After a set number of years, the rate you pay adjusts to market conditions at that time. The rate could go up -- by as much as 2 percentage points a year, usually, to a maximum of 6 points over the life of the loan -- or it could go down.

No, what got borrowers and lenders into trouble wasn’t ARM loans; it was the loose standards underwriting them. At the time, the joke was that if you could fog a mirror, you qualified for a mortgage.

The dicey variations of ARMs, though, were no joke. These included loans in which only interest was collected for a set period; “pay option” ARMs, in which you decided when to pay and how much; and negative amortization ARMs, in which the loan balance actually went up, not down. Some lenders approved these and other loans with little or no documentation to prove borrowers were employed, or that they earned enough to make their payments.

“The underwriting standards used to approve borrowers for those loans by some lenders were abysmal,” says Quicken Loans Chief Economist Bob Walters.

Today’s ARMs, however, are “very different” from the pre-crash versions, according to Archana Pradhan, an economist for analytics firm CoreLogic. According to CoreLogic, 3 out of every 5 ARMs originated in 2007 were either low- or no-documentation loans. In 2005, 3 out of 10 ARM borrowers had credit scores below 640.

Today, says Pradhan, almost all adjustable loans are full-documentation, fully amortizing loans made to borrowers with credit scores above 640. Also pretty much gone are the so-called teaser rates -- rates that started as much as 3 percentage points below the true starting rate -- that were offered to entice borrowers.

Based on the four major underwriting variables -- credit score, loan-to-value ratio, debt-to-income ratio and documentation -- ARMs are of “better quality” than even fixed-rate loans, Pradhan reports. As of last year’s first quarter, for example, the average credit score among ARM borrowers was 765, versus 753 for those taking out fixed-rate loans. And the typical LTV was 67 percent on adjustables, versus 74 percent for fixed loans.

But the real proof of how well these loans are underwritten now is that they are performing admirably. While their borrowers still become seriously delinquent more often than fixed rate borrowers, according to CoreLogic’s figures, the rate at which ARMs become major problem loans is significantly lower than they used to. And the bulk of today’s super-late loans -- those that are 90 or more days overdue -- were originated between 2003 and 2009.

No wonder, then, that borrowers are heeding the new call to ARMs. (Sorry, I just had to.)

Uncle Sam no longer counts the number of adjustable loans and fixed mortgages, but several private sources show how great a comeback ARMs have made recently.

According to the Inside Mortgage Finance trade publication, ARM originations leaped 40.5 percent in last year’s second quarter. And Black Knight, another mortgage information and analytics firm, says that ARMs now represent 9.5 percent of all active loans.

However, the story with ARMs today is a tale of two markets: one below the conforming loan limit of $453,000, and the other above it. The conforming limit is the ceiling placed on the size of the loans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can purchase from lenders on the secondary market. Anything above that is considered a “jumbo” loan.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, as of October, just 3.2 percent of all conforming loans were ARMs. On the flip side, the ARM share of jumbo loans was over 35 percent (as of December 2013). And more recently, jumbo ARMs have consistently been responsible for a 20- to 25-percent share of the entire mortgage market.

This makes perfect sense to MBA economist Joel Kan, who says higher-end borrowers have the income and credit necessary to “absorb the interest rate risk” that comes with adjustable rate mortgages.

Of course, ARMs are not for everyone. Far from it. “There is never a one-size-fits-all” loan product, says Quicken’s Walters, who uses an ARM on his own residence. “But they are not the villains they are sometimes portrayed to be.”

Because ARMs come with lower starting rates than fixed-rate loans, the ideal candidate is someone who can peg a major life event to the first adjustment period. For example, if you expect to upgrade or downsize within a certain timeframe, or you don’t plan to be in the house you’re buying very long, you should take a serious look at that option.

The great minds of the mortgage market continue to work overtime, coming up with fresh ideas in an effort to reach more would-be homebuyers.

Pilot programs like these don’t always prove worthwhile; in fact, some never make it beyond the testing stage. But they show the lengths to which lenders are willing to go for new buyers.

Below are some of the latest offerings from the mortgage world.

-- Mortgage giant Fannie Mae is looking at a way to help people build their own homes. In what’s known as construction-to-permanent (C2P) financing, buyers get a construction loan to build a house, and when the place is complete, the loan converts to a permanent mortgage. But Fannie Mae doesn’t purchase C2P loans from lenders until they convert to permanent status, and some lenders won’t make them because they have to keep them on their books until they change status.

Under the pilot, which still needs to be approved by federal regulators, the company would buy the loan on Day 1 of construction.

-- San Diego’s Guild Mortgage is looking at a 1-percent-down mortgage in which the lender provides a 2 percent grant and the buyer puts up the other 1 percent. Guild is also trying to develop a shared equity program with both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Fannie’s chief secondary market competitor.

-- New Penn Financial of Pennsylvania has joined with Home Partners of America (HP) to offer financing to purchasers participating in Home Partner’s lease-purchase program. It is the first time HP has worked with a lender to back renters who want to buy their houses.

-- Eagle Home Mortgage, the lending arm of national home builder Lennar, went to Fannie Mae with an idea for helping would-be new homebuyers deal with their student debt. Now, Fannie has expanded the pilot to nine other lenders. Under Eagle’s plan, Lennar contributes up to 3 percent of the purchase price to pay down school loans incurred while attending universities, community colleges, trade schools and other certificate-granting programs. However, buyers whose parents took out loans to finance their educations don’t qualify.

-- Some states are passing laws that allow aspiring homeowners to create down payment savings accounts similar to the popular 529 college savings plans. Montana, Virginia, Colorado, Mississippi, Iowa and Minnesota now allow would-be buyers to open tax-free savings accounts. And Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, Oklahoma, Maryland, Utah and Louisiana are moving to do the same.

Each program has its own subtleties and limits, but according to National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) figures, the Mississippi law could encourage 7,000 first-time buyers to enter the market over the next five years. NAR’s Oregon affiliate says if the bill passes there, 3,200 renters could become owners over the next five years.

-- Michigan’s Flagstar Bank recently rolled out a zero-down-payment program in which the company will gift the required 3 percent down payment, plus up to $3,500 toward closing costs. There is no obligation to repay the down payment money, but borrowers will have to qualify under income guidelines and buy homes in qualifying geographical areas.

-- Angel Oak Mortgage of Atlanta recently rolled out a new program for “just-missed” borrowers: those who don’t quite qualify under Fannie’s and Freddie’s guidelines. The Platinum Program features rates starting around 4 percent. Loan amounts can range from $150,000 to $3 million, with a credit score of at least 660.

-- Citadel Servicing Co. in California has come up with a loan for which buyers qualify with just a verification-of-employment document. Applicants need two years of continuous employment, plus a voice verification of employment on the day the loan closes. They must also confirm they have enough money on hand for at least a 25 percent down payment, though no other proof of income is necessary. The program is open to borrowers with a minimum 650 credit score and is good for loan amounts between $250,000 and $3 million.

-- Guaranteed Rate just launched the “Flex Power” product for loans up to $3 million ($2 million for condos). It requires as little as 10 percent down, with no private mortgage insurance, and interest-only payments are an option if the borrower boosts the down payment to 15 percent.

-- San Diego’s Credit Data Solutions has a new web-based tool called PreQual, which uses only a would-be borrower’s name and address to pull a single-bureau credit score and report. PreQual is considered soft research, meaning it won’t impact your credit score. But it cannot be used for an application for credit; your eventual lender will need to order a full-blown “hard-inquiry” credit score and report. Warning, though: Once you make a PreQual request, the lender is notified and you will receive a follow-up call, especially if you make the grade.

-- Value Insured’s down payment protection policy, now being offered by several lenders, reimburses borrowers for the full amount of their down payments -- up to 20 percent of the purchase price -- should they have to sell their homes because the market turns south. It is a lender-paid service, which may add dollars to your loan amount and result in a higher monthly payment.