You’re out for a Sunday drive with your significant other. You turn the corner, and BAM, there it is: your dream house. Better yet, there’s a For Sale sign in the lawn.

You didn’t expect such good fortune. You were going to hunt for a home of your own when your current lease expires in eight months. But your dream place is for sale right now -- and as it turns out, at a price you can handle.

You have 240 days to go on your lease, and the place is certain to be sold by then. So what can you do?

One option is to buy the house and sublet your rental to someone else. In that situation, you become a landlord. And therein lies the rub. If your tenant doesn’t pay their rent, or is habitually late, you are still responsible for paying your own landlord until your lease expires.

But let’s back up a moment. Your first step is to determine whether or not you can sublet. Check your lease to see what it has to say on the subject. And while you’re at it, check the laws in your community.

Even if you are within your legal rights to sublet, it’s always a good idea to let your landlord know. She may object, in which case you’ll either have to drop the idea or go to court, say the folks at ApartmentList, a free service that helps people find rentals.

But let’s say your landlord agrees. After all, the alternative could be a disgruntled tenant at best -- or, if you simply break the lease and move out, lost rent at worst. (By the way, if you do move out clandestinely in the middle of the night, you’ll not only lose your deposit, but your rental record will be tarnished forever, making it difficult to find another place to rent, should the need ever arise.)

Property manager Wallace Gibson advises her Charlottesville, Virginia, clients to be understanding. “Situations arise and you should do your best to work with your tenants to find a solution that satisfies everybody,” she says. “If you’re not willing to be flexible, you may find word-of-mouth can hurt you, and finding tenants can be much more difficult.”

So now the ball’s back in your court. Your next step is finding a viable tenant.

One way is to search online bulletin boards like Nextdoor and Craigslist. You can also run an ad in your local paper or, if you’re near a college or hospital, put your place in the hat with their housing offices. Another possibility is to tack a notice on local restaurants’ or grocery stores’ bulletin boards.

Once you’ve found two or three candidates who seem rent-worthy, check them out thoroughly. Here, references, credit checks, rental histories, even a criminal background search are all in order.

A thorough screening process may be somewhat costly, but it’s an absolute necessity to protect yourself against a bad apple who fails to pay rent and leaves you holding the bag. Consequently, you’ll want to know if they’ve been the subject of previous evictions, ever failed to pay rent or been arrested and convicted of a crime.

At this point, some landlords might want to screen your candidates themselves. If they know what they’re doing, they should be better at it than a novice like you. In fact, if they’re going to all that trouble, maybe they’ll let you out of your lease altogether and sign up one of your prospects to replace you.

If the landlord wants you to remain as a “sublessor,” you should insist on a lease with your “sublessee.” A handshake just won’t do, even if the guy taking over your lease is your best friend. You can find standard lease forms at your local office supply store, or perhaps your landlord will allow you to use one.

Finally, make sure you obtain a security deposit. This will give you at least one month’s cushion should your tenant miss a payment or, like you, decide to move out early.

As you can see, subletting can work, but it is fraught with risk. There’s no guarantee your subtenant won’t experience a life change -- a new job in another city, for example, or a major illness in a loved one back home -- so you could be stuck paying rent for a place you no longer occupy, as well as the mortgage for the house that started this whole process in the first place.

And if your renter turns out to be a dud, or even causes a full-on fiasco, you’re still responsible -- not only for the rent, but also any damages. So if you decide to go this route, proceed carefully.

The Trump administration’s moves to change -- some say “gut” -- the nation’s fair housing policies may have awakened a sleeping giant.

And the reason is pretty straightforward: It’s simply bad for business.

Besides being unfair, discrimination against consumers on the basis of race, gender or income means fewer people will be renting or buying houses.

Among the fair housing building blocks the administration has been trying to weaken are the long-standing Fair Housing and the Community Reinvestment Acts, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created only a decade ago in response to the mortgage crisis, largely to protect borrowers.

Responses from proponents of federal protections have ranged from jawboning by consumer advocates and real estate trade groups to congressional hearings. California is going even further, by proposing to create its own version of the CFPB to make up for what it perceives as the federal watchdog taking its eye off the ball.

“As the Trump administration undermines and weakens the rules that protect consumers from predatory businesses, California is filling the void and stepping up to protect families and consumers,” Gov. Gavin Newsom told local media recently.

The Golden State’s proposed Department of Financial Protection and Innovation reportedly will be given more staff and money than the current Department of Business Oversight, which it would replace.

The state is going its own way because the White House is challenging the structure of the CFPB, arguing that it infringes on the power of the president. The case is now before the Supreme Court.

“The structure of the Bureau, including the for-cause restriction on the removal of its single director, violates the Constitution’s separation of powers,” the administration is arguing. “The United States previously informed this court that it has also concluded the statutory restriction on the president’s authority to remove the director violates the Constitution’s separation of powers, and that the question would warrant this Court’s review in an appropriate case.”

Consumer advocates are also rankled by recent changes to the Fair Housing Act’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing standard, saying they eviscerate fair housing protections.

According to an analysis by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the proposed FHA changes “would discontinue rules promulgated by the Obama administration that require communities to address racial discrimination issues in housing. The rule proposes to reduce regulatory burdens to governments by eliminating an assessment tool used to map racial segregation.”

After a quick huddle with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, another prominent housing trade group, the National Association of Realtors, came out reaffirming the group’s own commitment to fair housing.

Elsewhere, Sam Tepperman-Gelfant, deputy managing attorney at nonprofit Public Advocates, said, “The proposal would further an already devastating affordable housing crisis caused by policies that put the profits of developers, speculators and billionaires over our right to have a place to call home.”

And Malcolm Torrejon Chu, director of programs at the Right to the City Alliance, said that “the proposed changes will further target communities of color and increase racist discriminatory housing policies.”

Meanwhile, upcoming changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, which has been in effect since 1977 and was last updated in 1995, have consumer advocates crying foul and one key congresswoman alleging cheating.

In December, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed to “modernize” the CRA to ensure “increased bank activity in low- and moderate-income communities where there is significant need for credit, more responsible lending, greater access to banking services, and improvements to critical infrastructure.”

But consumer groups think the changes will only weaken the CRA.

What the changes will really do, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition maintains, is “weaken affordable housing standards” by devaluing bank branches in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, scaling back bank accountability and excusing small banks from rigorous CRA exams.

“There is no doubt that these proposed changes will be disastrous for low- to moderate-income communities,” says NCRC chief executive Jesse Van Tol.

The rule will become effective at the end of the period allowed for receiving comments, but one congressional housing advocate thinks there is some hanky-panky going on. House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is worried that someone has been stuffing the ballot box, seeking to validate changes to the landmark bill.

Waters, whose committee recently held a hearing on the proposed changes, has written to the Comptroller of the Currency and the chairman of the FDIC, saying “certain special interest groups have submitted comments in other rule-makings while posing as consumers, small-business owners and other stakeholders. These fraudulent comments undermine legitimate debate on proposed rules by creating the false appearance that a position has widespread, grassroots support.”

Cheating like this might not seem as momentous as baseball’s sign-stealing crisis, but the CRA has a lot of fans -- especially considering it can be used to challenge big banking mergers, often causing the banks to open their wallets to promise more mortgage money for more people.

Waters also accused regulators of trying to push the changes through “as soon as possible” by cutting the customary 120-day comment period in half.

On the substances of the proposed changes, she maintains the Community Reinvestment Act would become the “Community Disinvestment Act,” and would lead to a “widespread” retreat of bank investment in these communities.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to the writing of this column.

It may never be too early to become a homeowner. But for some, it may be better to wait until they mature a tad.

That’s one of the findings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recent National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It tracked lifetime homeownership rates and how long individuals sustained ownership, covering the years from 1979 (when most participants were between the ages of 17 and 21) to 2016.

In contrast to the homeownership rate, which measures ownership at a specific point in time, the lifetime rate measures whether someone has been a homeowner at any point in his or her life. And concurrently, it can show how long people survive as owners once they take the plunge.

As economists at the National Association of Home Builders read the results, survival rates gradually improved as the studied cohort grew into their 30s.

Of those who became owners in 1980 at around age 23, only 53% were owners after eight years. But of those who joined the ranks in 1992, in their mid-30s, 88% were still owners eight years later.

Another observation from the NAHB: Most likely the result of the Great Recession, survival rates fell steeply between 2004 and 2012. Those who bought just prior to the downturn were most likely to fall by the wayside, because they bought at the top of the market and had little time to build equity before prices crashed.

As they say, timing is everything.

Single women may earn just 79 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men. But they own more homes than single men, according to an analysis from online mortgage marketplace LendingTree.

In total, unmarried women own more than 1.5 million more homes than unwed men in America’s 50 largest metro areas: about 5.1 million homes to men’s 3.5 million. There isn’t a single Top 50 metro where men out-own women.

Women also take out more equity-conversion mortgages than men, and almost as many as married couples, according to data shared by the Department of Housing and Urban Development at a recent industry gathering.

Nearly 40% of such mortgages insured by the government last year were to multiple borrowers (likely married couples). But 38% went to single women -- most likely recent widows who found themselves short on cash.

Fannie Mae, the big secondary mortgage market entity that purchases loans from other lenders, now has a catalog of 65 fake outfits listed as employers on loan applications -- businesses whose existences could not be confirmed.

There are all sorts of tipoffs. One is that the occupation listed by the borrower does not credibly coincide with the borrower’s age or experience. Another is that the applicant has only been on the job for a short time.

Other red flags: Prior employment is listed as “student,” the starting salary appears high, the employer’s stated location can’t be ascertained, the templates of submitted pay stubs are strikingly similar to those of other fake employers, and the pay stubs lack such typical withholding items as health and medical insurance.

In one case, the would-be borrower said he’d been a student prior to his current job. But he claimed three years of work experience, and had only been at the job three months. In other instance, the applicant’s pay stub didn’t match previous stubs from the same employer.

Remember, boys and girls: It is a federal crime to prevaricate on an application for a mortgage.

Home-sellers last year nailed a gain of $65,000, a 13-year high, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ end-of-year report.

Notice we didn’t use the word “profit” or the term “pocketed.” Because people probably didn’t do either.

The gain, as measured by the data analytics company, is based on the selling price minus the purchase price. It’s highly likely these folks spent some money from their own resources to improve their properties -- and that’s a debit, not a credit, on every homeowner’s scorecard. So is whatever they may have had to lay out at closing on behalf of the buyer.

Sure, we can “deduct” the cost of a kitchen or bath remodel, as well as some other expenses. But it’s still money out-of-pocket that has to come off the bottom line before figuring your profit, or return on investment.

That said, sellers last year still did better than the previous group, when the gain on the typical sale was “only” $58,100. One reason: People had been in their houses a wee bit longer than in 2018. Indeed, tenure last year -- 8.21 years -- was the longest since 2000.

According to a recent report from the CBC Mortgage Agency, families provide financial assistance on about a third of all purchase transactions in which the financing is insured by Uncle Sam.

But because minorities often don’t have the inter-generational wealth to help their family members, down payment assistance has become an effective tool for them to achieve ownership, a status they might not otherwise be able to afford.

A CBC study found that more than half of borrowers receiving assistance in the form of grants, silent second mortgages and the like were racial or ethnic minorities, and more than a third were the first in their families to buy a house.