When Marilyn Wilson’s mother moved to California not too long ago, Wilson was tasked with selling her mom’s house in Buffalo, New York. She dutifully listed the house and waited for buyers to come calling.

A few days later, Wilson, a real estate consultant and managing partner of the WAV Group, went to Zillow.com to check on her listing. What she found was disconcerting.

She saw four agents mentioned as the listing agent, with her name at the bottom of the list. She called the other three, but none knew anything about the house. “All of them were from the other side of town,” she recalls. “One was 45 miles away.”

Welcome to what some call the “pay-to-play” world of Zillow, which charges agents a premium to be named on listings that are not their own. Zillow calls it the “premier broker” program, by which agents pay a fee to secure leads from people inquiring about houses in certain ZIP codes.

According to the company website, when a shopper makes an inquiry through Zillow (or the Zillow-owned site Trulia), the company confirms that the prospect is ready to speak with an agent. If so, it hands the would-be client off to the “premier” agent -- as opposed to the listing agent, who, ostensibly, anyway, knows more about the property than anyone else, save for its owner.

If the premier agent can’t arrange a showing for the home, or if the buyer doesn’t like it, the agent can take them to other houses on the market -- probably his or her own listings first. Now, the listing agent has lost a potential sale, as well as a potential new client.

On its site, Zillow claims premier agents close twice as many sales. And Matt Hendricks, director of broker relations, says it has been not only “an incredible lead generator” for the “tens of thousands” of agents who participate, but also a top revenue producer for the company.

Hendricks maintains that listing agents always pop up in the top spot, no matter how many premier agents are also listed. But the premier agents tend to have a more robust online resume than listing agents, he admits, which is likely to make them more attractive.

House shoppers are free to contact any agents associated with the listing, but consultant Wilson doesn’t like the concept. And neither do most agents who work hard to secure listings and jealously guard them.

“It can be a crapshoot,” said agent Myrl Jeffcoat of GreatWest Realty in Sacramento, California. “More than once, I have heard from buyers who thought they were contacting the listing agent ... but (actually) called someone else.”

“When buyers click on a listing, they have no idea they are not going to get the listing agent,” agreed Kat Palmiotti of Grand Lux Realty in Monroe, New York. “Sometimes they get contacted by 10 different agents. It can be frustrating to a buyer.”

Wilson called Zillow’s program “very annoying.”

Premier agents are “fishing for new clients,” she said. “They’re trying to buy leads, and they’re using someone else’s listings as bait. There’s no way they can represent the best interests of the seller, or the buyer, for that matter.

“They call back quickly, I’ll give them that. But they do not represent the house. Some have never been inside. Some are not even in that market.”

Wilson and some other angry agents have implored Zillow to remove non-listing agents’ names from listings, but she says the Seattle-based company refused. Zillow’s Hendricks says listing agents used to be able to pay to be the only agent whose name is on the “home details” page, but that feature was dropped a few years ago.

Even sellers have been unable to stop the practice. Hendricks says that since sellers want the most exposure possible, most don’t want their agents to be the only ones listed.

So three years ago, a coalition of 65 of the largest full-service realty firms and multiple listing services in the country came together to wrest control of their bread-and-butter listings from Zillow and other third-party business disruptors -- sometimes known as aggregators -- by creating a public portal as an alternative.

You may never have heard of Homesnap, but it is now the No. 1-rated agent mobile app and desktop site, with traffic up 40 percent in the last year. “The industry-controlled portal has become our industry’s greatest ‘overnight’ success story,” says Wilson, who now advises the portal, but whose experience in Buffalo occurred long before she signed on.

Among other things, Homesnap’s technology allows you to take a photo with your mobile device of any house and instantly be shown all its pertinent details: size, number of bedrooms and baths, property taxes, school district, asking price (if it’s for sale) and even its estimated value (if it’s not).

The idea is to give buyers and sellers a better online search experience than the one provided by companies such as Zillow, where agents spend beaucoup bucks promoting their listings.

Better yet, participants adhere to a set of Fair Display Guidelines, which call for search results to be sorted and ranked by the consumer’s search parameters, as opposed to any type of “featured” listing or paid placement. Only the names and contact information of the actual listing broker and agent can be displayed on the “property details” page. No inquiries by potential buyers will be diverted elsewhere.

Many people rely on online reviews to decide what to buy. Indeed, research from Nielsen Global Media shows that opinions posted online are second only to personal recommendations in influencing purchase decisions.

But how do you know those reviews aren’t bought and paid for by the outfit in question? You don’t, of course.

This fall, the Federal Trade Commission came down hard on two companies for posting false reviews. One was a skin-care company posting tributes written by its own employees, and the other was a (now-defunct) company that sold fake social media followers and subscribers to various entities.

Unscrupulous tactics like these show why homebuyers and sellers should be particularly careful when selecting homebuilders, real estate agents, mortgage brokers and remodelers. For one thing, don’t rely on evaluations posted on the companies’ own websites; you’re certainly not going to find anything negative. But on gripe sites like pissedconsumer.com or ripoffreport.com, you’re not going to find anything positive, either. Frankly, it’s hard to get anything resembling a balanced characterization of any company.

Fortunately, a quick Google search failed to turn up any cases in which builders resorted to the sorts of underhanded tactics flagged by the FTC. But the story’s not the same when it comes to agents.

One agent reported that she was contacted by a colleague, offering to write a glowing review if she would do the same for her. In another case, a Kansas City agent who was given a poor grade on a website (that has since been taken down) was told she could pay $5,000 to have it removed. She said it was nothing more than a “shakedown.”

Some agents have been called to task for penning their own positive testimonials, and in a few cases, poor reviews were posted by competitors just trying to make another agent look bad.

For the most part, though, fake reviews are put up by disgruntled consumers who, rightly or wrongly, feel they’ve been abused in the process of building, buying or selling a house.

Still, good or bad, “it’s hard to know where (reviews) are coming from,” said Adah Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the Southern Colorado Better Business Bureau, in an interview with local news channel KOAA this fall. “It’s pretty safe to say, through any platform, probably at least 50% of reviews are fake.”

In the housing sector, the major real estate listing sites such as Zillow, Facebook, Yelp and Google all have rules against posting false testimonials, and those who violate them can be banned.

Recently, guaranteed honest reviews by real buyers of new construction have been added to the NewHomeSource website, a top site where builders post their communities and listings. (Full disclosure: I occasionally provide content for the site.)

To date, roughly 27% of the 14,000 communities listed at NewHomeSource have signed on to take part in the review program, called TrustBuilder. The list includes several national builders, including KB Homes, Beazer, Centex, Dell Webb, Lennar and Pulte, according to Jay McKenzie of Builders Digital Experience, the Texas company that operates the site.

In the TrustBuilder program, every person who purchases a house from a participating builder is asked to provide a review -- good, bad or otherwise. Of course, not all buyers will do so. Typically, companies only hear from people who are very happy or very unhappy; the rest don’t bother. But no reviews will be posted until there are at least 10, so future buyers can get “a more complete and balanced picture,” McKenzie says. “A true representation.”

No reviews will be changed. “This is all independent of the builders,” says McKenzie. “Reviews will not be censored. We don’t hide, edit or delete them. They are independent, transparent and credible.”

At the same time, though, builders will be given an opportunity to try to fix any issues raised in negative posts, and aggrieved customers will have the option to alter their opinions later if they so desire. “Problems will occur, so this is a good outcome for everyone,” McKenzie explains.

Tyson Kirksey of Highland Homes in Texas says the value of honest customer reviews cannot be overestimated. “We’ve seen many sites struggle with the problem of fake reviews. A program like TrustBuilder is long overdue,” he says. “We’re excited to participate.”

So is Allan Merrill of Beazer Homes. “By providing access to ratings and reviews from known new homeowners,” he says, “TrustBuilder should become an integral part of the new-home shopping process.”

Meanwhile, whether you are shopping for a house, builder, realty agent or lender, it’s always wise to be somewhat skeptical when it comes to online reviews. The FTC suggests also checking other sources -- the Better Business Bureau, for example, or another impartial expert organization.

Don’t consider just one or two reviews, either. Look at as many as you can to see if you can discern a pattern. And while you’re at it, search the name of the builder or agent followed by the word “complaint” to see what kind of negative experiences people have had.

Homeowners who lose their homes to wildfire, flood, tornado or another national disaster often lose the records needed to prove their losses -- for tax purposes, obtaining federal assistance or reimbursement from their insurance companies.

Fortunately, you can reconstruct your destroyed records or obtain copies of key documents.

For starters, ask the Internal Revenue Service for copies of previous tax returns. They’re free at IRS.gov by clicking on “Get Your Tax Record.” Or order them by calling 800-908-9946.

Your credit card companies and banks can provide copies of past statements, either hard copies or digital. This should help put a value on items that were lost.

To reconstruct property records, contact the title company or attorney who handled the closing on your house. If you’ve made improvements to the place, call the contractor who did the work to request a statement verifying the job and its cost. Otherwise, written statements from anyone who saw the house before and after the project may suffice, at least according to the IRS.

When no records of any kind are available, owners should check with their county assessor’s office for any old records that may address value or cost.

Homeowners aren’t moving on, at least not nearly as fast as they did just nine years ago.

According to a recent Redfin report, typical American homeowners had spent eight years in their homes in 2010. This year, they’ve spent 13 years and counting.

The reason isn’t hard to decipher: There aren’t enough affordable houses on the market. Plus moving is stressful, to put it mildly.

That people are staying put longer actually exacerbates the housing shortage. Take seniors age 67 to 85: Because they’re not moving on like they used to, there are 1.6 million fewer houses on the market, according to a report from Freddie Mac. If elders need cash, they can always tap into their equity by any number of means.

Even as they bemoan the lack of affordable housing, some state and local jurisdictions are aiding and abetting the inventory problem by putting policies in place to help reduce seniors’ property taxes, making it less burdensome for them to remain in their homes. In Texas, for example -- where Redfin found owners tend to stay the longest -- those over 65 can defer their taxes until they sell.

Speaking of moving, there are some things your moving company won’t or can’t take. Leftover fireworks, for example, are a definite no-no. So are outdoor plants, which are barred from being taken across state lines by Uncle Sam for pest control purposes, among other reasons.

OCD Moving Services in Northern California has a long list of hazardous materials it won’t carry, including acids, ammonia, car batteries, gasoline, pesticides, propane tanks, SCUBA tanks and cleaning solvents. Perishable foods are verboten, too, because they can spoil and attract rodents.

It’s always wise to keep personal valuables, sentimental items and sensitive electronics with you when you move. Ditto for animals.

OCD advises that every moving company will have a list of items it won’t transport. Ask for it so you won’t be surprised.

Here’s the latest version of a scam involving liens against our homes and other property: It arrives in the mail, in an envelope designed to look like it came from a legitimate government entity. But it didn’t. The nonexistent agency will boast a legitimate-sounding name like the “Bureau of Tax Enforcement.”

Inside is a letter threatening to seize your property or place a lien on it based on overdue taxes. This scam may reference the IRS to confuse potential victims.

If you receive such a letter, the IRS says you should contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to report it using the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting webpage. When reporting the scheme, include the keywords “IRS Lien.”

To cover all the bases, also scan or copy the document and send it to phishing@irs.gov. Report it to the Federal Trade Commission using the FTC Complaint Assistant on FTC.gov, and also to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center -- also known as IC3 -- at ic3.gov.

If you plan to buy a newly constructed house next year, figure it will take the builder a little more time than they tell you. Such is the nature of the labor shortage hampering the business. Access to skilled workers remains the top business challenge for builders, and the predicted modest growth in new-home sales in 2020 is likely to worsen the problem.

The deficit affects a broad set of trades. Four out of five builders report shortages of framing crews and carpenters, but a majority of builders also are having a tough time finding qualified bricklayers, concrete workers, plumbers, electricians, roofers, painters and HVAC specialists.

Half of all building sites sold at a new record high of $49,500 or more in 2018, according to Census Bureau data. But when adjusted for inflation, lot values are still below the peak registered prior to the housing boom.

Given that lots are smaller these days and housing production is still below par, it might seem surprising that costs keep rising. But Natalia Siniavskaia, an economist at the National Association of Home Builders, says the trend is “consistent with persistent record lot shortages, (and) significant and rising regulatory costs that ultimately increase development costs.”