A recent advisory from a federal consumer watchdog agency is shining new light on the growing problem of elder abuse. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is urging financial institutions to report situations in which they suspect seniors are being exploited financially.

In the housing sector, elder abuse takes many forms, as do its perpetrators. Sometimes it involves a rogue loan officer or real estate agent who creates false loan documents, persuades an unwitting senior to sign them and then keeps the proceeds for themselves. Or worse, perhaps the scumbag takes ownership of the house and forces the rightful owner to move out.

More often than not, though, the culprit is a family member. According to the MetLife Mature Market Institute, some 60 percent of substantiated financial abuse cases involve an elder’s adult child. Sons are most likely to rip off their parents or grandparents -- even more so than a paramour, bogus contractor, fly-by-night handyman or shady lender or agent.

Whoever is responsible, the CFPB reminded banks to be on the lookout for such instances and report them to them to local adult protective services, law enforcement agencies and other authorities. And with good reason: The agency’s research found that elder financial abuse is “widespread and damaging.”

The CFPB says that between 2013 and 2017, the average loss in these cases among adults age 70 or older was $41,000, with almost 1 in 10 losing more than $100,000.

Most lenders, agents and contractors are lawful. But some aren’t. So if there is an elder in your life who is considering a reverse mortgage or other type of home loan, or is hiring someone to remodel a kitchen, here are a few questions you can ask to make sure they aren’t being exploited:

-- Do they understand what it is they are doing? In situations involving reverse mortgages, in which borrowers remove the equity they have built up in the house, it is mandatory under federal rules that borrowers meet with an independent housing counselor for a full explanation of what is involved.

But no such protections exist for other types of mortgages, or for dealing with contractors. So you should make sure your mom, dad, grandparent, aunt or uncle knows what he or she is getting into before proceeding too far.

Of course, this implies that your senior is willing to discuss his or her financial situation with you. Many keep that information to themselves for fear of losing their independence. But if you can get them to open up, you can discuss the pros and cons of their plans to be sure they have a full understanding.

At the same time, the desire to take out a loan they don’t fully comprehend could be a sign that something else is going on in their lives. Loneliness and isolation raise the risk of elder financial abuse, which covers a lot of territory: theft, misuse of power of attorney, investment fraud, home-repair schemes and identity theft. And a higher rate of dementia makes seniors a tempting target, especially when they own their homes free and clear and have good credit ratings.

-- Who is going to benefit? Find out who the real beneficiary will be and why. If it’s not the senior, your antennae should wiggle.

In one case some years back, a 65-year-old woman was coaxed into taking out a $100,000 lump-sum reverse mortgage by her son, who proceeded to gamble the money away in Las Vegas. The son was charged with criminal elder abuse and spent some time in jail, but the money was never returned to his mother, who is now losing more than $3,000 of her equity every month.

More recently, a Montana woman was convicted of bilking her elderly mother out of $120,000 from the proceeds of a reverse mortgage. The mother suffered from Alzheimer’s, and prosecutors argued she did not have the capacity to appreciate or understand the loan. The daughter used the money to pay off her own credit cards, buy jewelry and stable her horses, among other things.

And a Florida loan officer was convicted for participating in a scheme to persuade seniors to refinance their reverse mortgages. He and his co-conspirators fabricated false loan applications and pocketed the proceeds.

Red flags for this kind of abuse include caregivers who isolate elders from family and friends, newfound anxiety about finances, new “best friends,” missing belongings, or the senior no longer receiving statements or other documents from their banks or investment advisers.

-- Is the senior being coerced? Determine if your senior is being pushed into the loan, and if so, by whom.

One elderly couple turned over the proceeds of their new mortgage to their grandson, who had threatened to commit suicide if they didn’t give him the money. It also appeared that some of the loan documents in this case were forged.

Be particularly aware of in-home helpers, including personal care attendants and meal service providers, who have access to the senior’s financial papers and identifying information. Pay special attention to those hired directly from newspaper ads or referral services, who have likely not been screened or supervised by a government agency.

-- Can the senior’s needs be solved in another way? There are several alternatives to reverse mortgages.

If you suspect your senior is being taken advantage of, contact the Adult Protective Services agency in your state. APS programs are typically housed within local or state departments of social services or aging. Further information can be found on the National Center on Elder Abuse’s website: ncea.acl.gov.

Four longtime friends from the Kansas City, Missouri, area don’t know it, but they are on the leading edge of a growing phenomenon in vacation homes. They are buying places collectively: first in Vail, Colorado, and then in Nashville. Now they are searching for a spot in the Tampa Bay area.

“We buy ‘together places,’” says David Vanlerberg, spokesman for the four longtime construction industry buddies.

At one time, Vanlerberg owned a place in Florida all by himself, but rarely used it. “I got sick of paying all that money and it was not being used,” he says. So he and his friends threw in together. They buy new condos -- “they’re so easy to take care of” -- with at least three bedrooms, and they don’t rent them to others.

With the four owners taking turns, “it seems as though someone’s always using (the condos),” Vanlerberg says. “That’s what so nice about them. They’re always being used.”

Broker John Pfeiffer, president of Vail's Slifer Smith and Frampton firm, doesn’t see that many four-family groups like Vanlerberg’s buying places in the Colorado mountains. But he says there are a lot more families buying together than there used to be.

“Multiple buyers, like the guys from Missouri, are not as common,” says Pfeiffer, whose firm sold the group their latest mountain home. “Usually, it’s one or two high-income, high-net-worth families. Sometimes its multi-generational families, or baby boomers who are bequeathing their apartments or houses as their legacy.”

Groups like these want more square footage, the broker reports, usually for entertaining. Massive kitchen islands, sometimes 20 feet long with lots of seating, also are the order of the day. The more bedrooms, the better, and it’s really nice if each bedroom is a suite.

Group-buying is what gave birth to the timeshare business years ago. Under that concept, instead of spending beaucoup bucks on a place all by yourself, you can share in the cost with other like-minded buyers by purchasing a week or two’s usage.

Now, for the most part, the big timeshare developers like Hilton, Marriott and Diamond are selling points that can be converted for time at their properties. But the concept of shared ownership is the same. And after a run of bad publicity and flagging sales, the business is enjoying renewed vigor.

Indeed, timeshare sales increased in 2018 -- the ninth straight year -- rising nearly 7 percent to $10.2 billion, according to figures from the American Resort Development Association. The average price of a timeshare interval last year was just under $21,500.

ARDA counts 1,580 timeshare resorts with some 204,100 units. More than two-thirds of the units have two or more bedrooms and at least 1,180 square feet.

Two other important facts about timeshares: According to ARDA, the annual maintenance fee paid by each owner is $1,000, an increase of just 2 percent from 2017. The average occupancy rate was 81 percent, whereas it is 66 percent for hotels.

That last point doesn’t square with a Lending Tree poll of people who have whole ownership of a vacation property. It found that almost half “feel guilty” about not using their properties as much as they anticipated.

Of course, families buy holiday homes with good intentions. They expect to make good use of them, and some hope to use them to generate income. But Lending Tree found that only 1 in 4 use their places more than five times a year, and 37 percent use them once a year or less.

While about half the respondents bought their homes to rent to others, 41 percent have never done so. A third rent year-round, meaning they never get to use their places at all.

Meanwhile, one section of the shared-ownership business, known as fractionals, isn’t doing so well. According to the latest report from resort-industry research firm Ragatz Associates, sales are stagnating. Last year’s sales dipped to $471 million, the lowest in 15 years.

Fractionals come in all shapes and sizes, and include deeded shares ranging from two weeks to three months of annual use. It also includes private residence clubs and destination clubs, which typically sell 30-year memberships.

Ragatz found that of the 316 fractional properties in the United States, only 50 made sales last year. The rest are either old, or sold out.

A few other vacation-homebuying trends worth noting:

-- Vacation rental company Vacasa says many people are building portfolios of vacation properties. Its survey of 1,700 buyers actively searching the market found that more than half already have one holiday place, and 1 in 4 are looking to buy multiple places.

-- Tiny homes are finding their way into the sector, said Brian Corbett of Inspirato, an outfit that manages luxury vacation homes. Corbett predicts landowners will temporarily place rentable tiny homes, tents or other accommodations on their properties to create a resortlike experience until they ultimately decide what to build. “It’s a creative way to test concepts on land, rather than letting it sit idle,” Corbett told Urban Land, a trade journal.

-- When people think of vacation homes, they tend to think of ocean properties or mountain chalets. But don’t forget lake homes. “It’s not a small niche; sales could hit $40 billion this year,” reports Glenn Phillips of Lake Homes Realty, which has some 87,000 listings on (or adjacent to) a lake.

“What housing needs is a General Motors.” -- Leo Grebler, father of modern housing economics

Leo Grebler called for auto-like assembly line production of new homes back in 1973. But the new-home business came the closest to that method even earlier: in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, when Levitt and Sons built some 140,000 inexpensive houses along the Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere.

The Levitts broke down the construction process into 27 steps, and specialized crews repeated their jobs from one house to the next. Every third or fourth house was exactly the same. Even the landscaping -- two trees in each front yard, each placed exactly the same distance apart -- was identical.

At the time, Levitt was building up to 180 houses a week when most builders averaged four or five homes a year.

Nowadays, only a handful of residences are built entirely in a factory. Many more are built with factory-built components, such as floor and roof trusses, that are delivered to the building site. But no GM or Ford Motor Co. has emerged to take the industry by storm.

Not that people aren’t trying to industrialize the process, using 3D printing, robots and other technologies that are a far cry from those Levitt and Sons employed.

Today, much of the talk centers around robotics. But for the most part, advances in that field have been limited to commercial construction. For example, a Pittsburgh company has an autonomous rebar-tying robot, which can cut labor costs in bridge deck construction. In San Francisco, another outfit is selling robotic upgrade kits for heavy construction vehicles so they can operate independently of human drivers.

More relevant to housing, New York-based Construction Robotics has developed a bricklaying robot that can lay 3,000 bricks in an eight-hour day, as opposed to roughly 500 for a human. But it works best for multi-family buildings and other larger structures. Smaller walls would need to be built in a factory and driven to the construction site. And a Japanese government-owned research facility is working on a bot that installs drywall (though it’s just in the prototype stage).

Printers seem to hold more promise for housing. What is said to be the first 3D-printed house in the country was unveiled in Austin, Texas, last year by nonprofit New Story and sustainable-housing startup ICON. Now, the team intends to use the technology to build an entire community in El Salvador, housing more than 400 individuals.

Also in Austin, architectural firm Overland Partners has offered a series of proposals for 3D-printed neighborhoods. Teaming with ICON and nonprofit 3Strands, the collaboration wants to address the housing crisis and give disadvantaged families a sense of community.

While 3D printers can extrude plastic, metal or concrete, ICON uses a proprietary, secret cement-based mix that allows it to “rapidly print homes that are beautiful, structurally sound and cost-effective,” the company says.

Gary O’Dell, CEO and co-founder of 3Strands, agrees, saying that these innovations “will allow us to drive down the costs of building and operating new homes and, in turn, reduce the stress of housing in people’s lives.”

American researchers and entrepreneurs aren’t the only ones pursuing new technologies. Last year, for example, a French family of five was reportedly the first to actually inhabit a 3D-printed, 1,000-square-foot house. And in the Netherlands, multiple partners have come together to erect a five-house project using 3D printing.

In Switzerland, meanwhile, researchers have developed robotic and 3D-printing technologies to build a 2,150-square-foot, three-story smart house. It includes a digitally designed and 3D-printed floor slab, plus a casting system that digitally pours concrete into flexible frames that shape the pour as it hardens. A robot builds timber frame modules by following a computerized layout, and an on-site construction robot assembles the parts based on a sensing and computing system.

According to Land Lines, the publication of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “the advantages of this still-evolving form of building include more efficient use of materials, which both cut costs and minimize waste; speed of construction; and potential for customization.”

Finally, we can’t forget academia, which also is trying to push the construction envelope. Take Clemson University’s newly patented Sim(PLY) system, which is best described as a cross between a do-it-yourself kit home and a 3D puzzle.

Developed by faculty and students, the system allows a house to be built without the use of power tools or nails. Not even a hammer is necessary, according to the school. The various pieces are held together by steel zip-ties.

The technique calls for off-the-shelf plywood to be cut by routers into interlocking tab-and-slot pieces that fit together to form a solid, tight frame. Pieces can be fabricated anywhere, then shipped flat-packed to the construction site, ready to be assembled by hand.

“Unlike traditional framing systems, which generally require onsite cutting and other operations that require expertise in the construction process, Sim(PLY) streamlines assembly to the point that no advanced construction knowledge is required,” said a release from the university. And since the plywood pieces are not nailed, the resulting structure can be disassembled, modified and reused elsewhere.

Prototype Sim(PLY) houses have been built and tested in South Carolina. Now, the system is set to debut commercially in British Columbia as part of an effort to build affordable housing for teachers, nurses, police and firefighters.