Regular readers of this column may remember a story from a little over a year ago about Crystal Lagoons, a Santiago, Chile-based company which builds huge water features on what are otherwise landlocked properties.

The company recently opened its first project in the States, an 8-acre lagoon at the Epperson development in Florida’s Pasco County. A second lagoon, this one of 14 acres, is ready to go in St. Augustine, Florida, and a third is under construction in the Houston area.

But that’s not all. Crystal Lagoons, which has its U.S. headquarters in Miami, has some 60 projects either under contract or in the negotiation stage here in the U.S. One of those is a deal with Wynn Hotels to turn a 38-acre golf course behind its two properties on the Las Vegas strip into a lagoon where guests can not only swim and sun on white, sandy beaches, but also water-ski, paddleboard and paraglide.

What makes Crystal Lagoons so special is that they are far less expensive to build than a golf course, and use far less water. Plus, they offer residents far more activity options than even an Olympic-size swimming pool.

So far, the company has been dealing mostly with private developers of master-planned communities: places where only residents have access to the lagoons. But it is thinking much broader than that, said Executive Vice President Kevin Morgan in an interview from his Dallas office.

“Real estate certainly is a growth sector for us, and we’re just scratching the surface there,” Morgan said. “But there’s also a high level of interest from outside private real estate development to make Crystal Lagoons more accessible to the public at large.”

Here’s where the company is heading in the future:

-- Open access. Crystal Lagoons is working with developers whose projects aren’t large enough to support the cost of building and maintaining even a small lagoon. In these cases, the lagoons would be open to the public for a fee.

-- Conversions. In an effort to bring traffic back to shopping malls, the company would take an anchor space abandoned by a large retailer such as Sears or J.C. Penney and re-purpose it as a combination lagoon and fitness center or food operation. Morgan calls the result “a synergistic co-amenity,” and says there is a lot of interest from mall owners.

-- Municipalities. Local governments would use public land to build public-access lagoons on ground that may have little use otherwise. Morgan thinks that the feature would generate enough income to recoup the initial cost “very quickly.” The lagoon would operate as a jurisdiction-owned business, but it also would help give value to the land around it and support further development.

-- Colleges. As universities compete for students and student-athletes, a lagoon would become part of a school’s amenity package, for both recreation and water sports. Morgan reports that his company is “beginning to see a lot of traction” in this area.

-- Repurpose. Golf courses are expensive to build and maintain, and many are not seeing enough use to remain profitable. Crystal Lagoons is in discussion with several operators to scale back 18-hole courses to nine holes and build 8- to 10-acre lagoons on the former front or back nine.

What is it about Crystal Lagoons that is generating this much interest?

For one thing, the typical 5- to 10-acre lagoon is relatively inexpensive to build and maintain. They cost roughly $650,000 an acre to build, versus $1 million a hole for a typical golf course -- and up to $1.7 million per hole for a high-end course. Morgan wouldn’t reveal what it costs to monitor water quality from the NASA-like control room in Miami, saying only that it is minimal.

For another, the lagoon-bottom liners can withstand the sun’s ultraviolet rays without deteriorating. And they can last for up to 100 years, according to the company.

Any kind of water can be used to fill a lagoon, even saltwater and brackish water. In Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, a 27 million-gallon lagoon was filled with seawater diverted from the Pacific Ocean. By the time it reached the lagoon, it was clean and clear.

The lagoons use less water, too -- 10 times less then a golf course, and half the water of a park of the same size. Using a patented pulsating mechanism and electronic sensors embedded in the liner, the water is kept pristine at all times. Controlled pulses use only a small quantity of chemicals, as compared to the high level of chlorine and other disinfectants used for conventional swimming pools.

But perhaps most important of all, at least to builders and developers, the lagoons lead to faster sales at higher prices.

According to an independent, third-party study at the 2,000-house Epperson property near Tampa, sales are running at twice the pace experienced by its competitors. Also, prices of the houses are up 20-22 percent, compared to just 4-5 percent for the same models at another Tampa-area location.

Is it any wonder, then, why real estate consultant John Burns reports that Crystal Lagoons has become the top amenity among the 50 best-selling master planned communities?

You paid a premium to live near a rapid transit station. If only you had known that the station was going to be shut down for two or three years for repairs and upgrading.

Or perhaps you realized there was an airport nearby, and even checked out the flight patterns to find out if planes would fly directly overhead. But had you known how darn noisy those jets would be, you might have chosen another house.

Now there’s an app for that. Or there soon will be, promises Steve Kalifowitz, president and head of U.S. Operations for Localize.city. The Tel Aviv-based startup recently opened in New York City, and will expand to up to 10 more cities within the next year.

This column rarely mentions startups, since their futures are so uncertain. But Localize is one of two new companies I learned about recently that seem to have a better chance of survival than most.

The other is Irene, a firm that purchases the homes of seniors with the promise that the sellers can remain there for as long as they desire. The company pays the property taxes, insurance and most operating expenses, allowing seniors to stay in their homes at a much-reduced cost.

Both outfits have raised significant funding from private investors, which is another reason they should make it beyond the beta phase.

Localize began life in 2016 in Israel. It gathers and analyzes “tens of thousands” of data sets, Kalifowitz said in an interview. Its sources include public and commercial databases, plus social media, which it scours for anything people might complain about -- or boast about -- as it relates to housing.

For example, you might enthusiastically buy a house because of the nearby park. But you had no way of knowing the place was an after-school hangout for teenagers, or a favorite spot for drug dealers when the sun goes down. Or maybe the city just doesn’t maintain it very well.

With Localize’s technology, you could find that out ahead of time -- as long as you live in the Big Apple. (Kalifowitz would not reveal where Localize is headed next, so stay turned.)

Consider a family thinking about buying a particular house. They can find out where the schools are, the shopping, the best routes to work and so on. But they can’t know what it’s really like living there until they actually do.

Says the firm’s CEO, Asaf Rubin, “This is the biggest consumer problem the internet has yet to solve.”

In creating its own logarithms, Localize interviewed hundreds of frustrated homebuyers who spoke about mistakes they made because of a lack of information. It analyzed forums and social networks, which are flooded with talk about a wide range of failures in the homebuying process.

The result: an “Insight Engine” that helps people make more informed decisions.

People “choose an apartment for the breathtaking views, without knowing there is already a building permit in the pipeline for a high-rise next door that will block the view completely,” says Kalifowitz. Or they rely on an elevator, only to later learn that it breaks down so often that their fifth-floor apartment is basically a walkup.

“Localize.city’s technology reveals these and many other insights,” says Kalifowitz.

Meanwhile, Irene is taking root as another option for seniors who want to age in place. The company will pay anywhere from 40 to 80 percent of a property’s market value, depending on that value, the life expectancy of the sellers and how much it will cost to maintain the place, according to co-founder Fabrizio Tiso.

The concept is much like a reverse mortgage, except with a reverse loan, seniors still have to pay their own taxes, insurance and maintenance -- and face foreclosure if they don’t. They also have to give up the house if they choose to move out.

With Irene, they don’t relinquish the place until they die. In other words, you keep it for the rest of your life. If you move elsewhere -- say, to your grown child’s house or into an assisted-living facility -- you retain the right to rent the house for extra income. Irene doesn’t take over until you’ve passed.

As with reverse (or home equity-conversion) mortgages, Irene will own the home after you pass. But your heirs can buy back the house if they like.

This kind of relationship is common in Europe, especially in France and Italy, according to Tiso, who is from Milan. There, individual investors -- and sometimes a group of family members -- buy the right to inherit the house when the seller passes away.

“It’s a big innovation for the U.S. market, but it’s definitely not new,” says Tiso. “We see our solution saving tens of thousands of seniors every year across many different European markets.”

A few other details: Irene pays the seller in one lump sum, but monthly payouts are “under consideration,” says the co-founder. Also, the “operating expenses” the company covers are limited: For instance, the company will repair appliances, but won’t replace them -- although that, too, is “under consideration,” Tiso said.

If the company should falter, protections in their contracts allow seniors to remain in their homes. And if the company’s investors fail to make good on that promise, Tiso says seniors will get back the titles to their homes.

Toss a few obstacles in front of Americans, and many will take up the challenge. That appears to be the way some wannabe homebuyers are facing today’s market conditions.

Despite a lack of houses for sale, rising mortgage rates, higher prices and strong competition from other would-be owners, not to mention investors, nearly two-thirds of the people responding to Gallup’s annual housing survey still say it’s a good time to buy.

This doesn’t exactly square with a couple of other recent studies. One, by secondary mortgage market giant Fannie Mae, found that the share of those who believe it’s a good time to buy dipped in April to less than 30 percent. The other, by credit reporting agency Experian, found that many potential buyers have dropped out of the market altogether.

For those of you still in the market despite the odds, perhaps your attitude can be best described by the immortal words of David Farragut, the first admiral of the U.S. Navy. His (likely paraphrased) order from the Civil War’s Battle of Mobile Bay: “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

Here’s what current home-shoppers are up against:

-- Competition. Of the people who told pollsters from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) that they will be buying within the next 12 months, more than 40 percent are out there house hunting right now. These folks know that the current market is “a tough nut to crack,” said NAHB research economist Rose Quint, “but they are not deterred.”

Indeed, of those who plan to continue looking, 60 percent will continue looking for the right home in the same preferred location, while less than half said they might have to expand their search area or change their search criteria.

Only 13 percent said they might have to give up the chase. That, says Quint, “suggests that despite the difficulties and delays, most prospective buyers will press ahead, undeterred.”

New research from Trulia found even more striking results among millennials: Nearly 90 percent of them plan to buy a home at some point, and of those, 35 percent plan to reach that goal within the next year.

-- Time. The NAHB survey also found that active buyers are spending a considerable amount of time stalking their prey. More than half have been trying to find the right home for three months or longer.

-- Cost. What’s taking so long? First and foremost, affordability. The No. 1 reason for homebuyers’ failure so far is they can’t find a place that meets their requirements and that they can afford.

-- Availability. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports that there are now fewer homes on the market than any time since last December.

No one has a count of unsold new houses, though most builders won’t even start building until they have a firm contract. But the number of existing houses for sale at the end of March stood at 1.67 million, vs. 1.8 million a year earlier.

NAR says the inventory is starting to rise, which appears promising until you examine the “housing supply” numbers. Housing supply is a calculation of how many months it would take to exhaust the current inventory of available homes at the current sales pace. A normal supply is seven to eight months, but the current unsold inventory is at a 4.6-month supply.

Why so few houses? Builders are throwing up houses as quickly as they can, but most current homeowners are staying put, for any number of reasons. One is that they can’t find a new place that suits their needs. Another: They don’t want to let go of the lower-than-market interest rate on the mortgages they now carry. And like those buyers in the hunt, they, too, are put off by ever-higher prices.

In other words, current owners are constrained just like everybody else.

-- Hurried closings. If you do find the place of your dreams, be prepared to settle on your financing quickly. According to mortgage-software company Ellie Mae, millennials closed loans in March at a faster clip then ever: 39 days.

“As more millennials reach the prime homebuying age of 29 to 32 years old,” said Joe Tyrrell, an executive vice president at Ellie Mae, “they are finding a mortgage experience leveraging technology that is fast and engaging in ways that their parents couldn’t imagine when they bought their first home.”

-- Rates. Speaking of financing, it’s highly likely you’ll be paying higher mortgage rates over the coming months. HSH Associates, a mortgage reporting service, says the recent run-up in loan costs has paused for the time being, but it fully expects the Federal Reserve to “lift rates” at least a quarter-point more soon.

Such a move, of course, will give lenders an opportunity to boost their own rates, even though there is no correlation between mortgage rates and the central bank-controlled federal funds rate that banks charge each other.

-- Credit. Even though the typical credit score for borrowers in March was in the 721-723 range, it has become easier lately to qualify for financing. That’s partly due to the fact that the loan “pie” is shrinking, so lenders have to figure out how to stand out from the crowd. One way is to take on more risk and accept the fact that more of their loans will become delinquent.