With the end of the year rapidly approaching, it's time to catch up on a few of the hottest topics this column covered since the first of the year:

-- In April, we wrote about some jurisdictions that confiscated all the equity owners have in their homes to satisfy property tax liens that were well below what their homes were actually worth. At least 12 states allow what the Pacific Legal Foundation labeled "legal tax lien thievery."

Actually, make that 11 states. In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Michigan violated the constitution when it took Tawanda Hall's house to satisfy her unpaid tax debt.

With combined interest and fees, the state was owed $22,262, which it had every right to collect. But the nursing assistant's house was worth $300,000 when the state took it. And she never saw a penny of the difference.

Judge Raymond Michael Kethledge would have none of it. "The Michigan statute is not only self-dealing, it is also an aberration from some 300 years of decisions by English and American courts," he wrote. "The government may not decline to recognize long-established interests in property as a device to take them."

Now Pacific Legal, which represented Hall, is continuing its battle elsewhere. "Our fight isn't over," said senior attorney Christina Martin. "We will continue to advocate for people like Tawanda until home equity theft is rejected across this country."

-- In a July Housing Scene column, I took apart an outfit called Home Title Lock for charging homeowners for "monitoring" their titles -- which owners could do themselves, often for free -- and for exaggerating the breadth of the crime.

Not that title theft doesn't happen. It does, and in a few spots, it is rampant. As a first step toward stopping the crime, two Democratic lawmakers -- Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania -- dropped a bill that would establish the first federal definition of deed fraud, as well as sentence those who commit it.

The Good DEED Act (for Good Documentation and Enforcement of Estate Deeds) also would establish a $10 million annual fund to assist states in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of title theft. Any jurisdiction receiving funds would be required to fingerprint, photograph and video anyone filing a deed.

-- In January, I covered Uncle Sam's efforts to end money laundering through real estate. Now, the government is once again expanding the rules that require title companies to identify individuals who purchase residential real estate for cash through shell companies when the deal exceeds $300,000.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, has now renewed the program and added the counties encompassing Houston and Laredo, Texas, to the list of 20 other jurisdictions where title agents must comply.

The other places include the counties within these metropolitan areas: Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and the District of Columbia. Also included are the city and county of Baltimore; Fairfield County, Connecticut; and the Hawaiian islands of Maui, Hawaii and Kauai.

According to FinCEN, the program has provided "valuable data" on the purchase of residential real estate by persons possibly involved in various illicit enterprises.

-- Most recently, I wrote about MV Realty, which is luring homeowners into 40-year listing contracts by offering them a small stipend in cash. In October, I reported that the Florida firm is paying up to $5,000, based on the value of the house, to owners who sign a four-decade listing agreement that most don't realize will be recorded as a lien against the property.

Now, regulators in North Carolina, as well as the state real estate commission, are investigating the company to discern whether the agreements constitute predatory lending. Other state attorneys general are also said to be looking into the firm.

Meanwhile, a Maryland homeowner whose wife was cold-called by MV Realty -- despite the company's claims that it doesn't contact anyone who doesn't reach out first -- and his attorney have succeeded in convincing the company to release its lien on the property. The homeowner reached out to this column.

The man and his family had just moved into their new house when his wife was offered $1,500 to sign a listing agreement. She agreed, but he didn't know about it until a notary showed up at the door to collect their signatures. He said thanks, but no thanks.

"We had just moved in, so we had no need for an agent," he told me on the condition that his name not be used.

At the same time, Sherryll Martens Dunaj, an attorney with Simon, Schindler and Sandberg in Miami, believes she's the first to challenge MV Realty on legal grounds and win. Her clients, the heirs of the homeowner, were trying to sell his residence after he had died.

Dunaj said she had another client who decided not to challenge his contract with MV because it was cheaper to pay the company's commission than to incur the legal costs of going to court.

The Maryland man agreed to speak with me because he feared people who signed up with MV "could lose their houses."

And lawyer Dunaj believes the company is "laying in wait" for people who violate their agreements by selling their homes using other agents.

"These are very bad people," she said.

It's that time of year when everyone makes bold predictions about what lies ahead in 2023. Just last month, the California Association of Realtors projected the average price of houses in the Golden State would drop nearly 9% next year.

But I have my own theory. Yes, prices are coming down, but that doesn't mean sellers are losing out. Unless they purchased their homes within, say, the last 12 months, sellers aren't taking losses -- rather, they are taking less profit.

To me, prices don't truly "fall" until homeowners sell for less than they paid. Houses today may sell for less than they would have, say, six months ago, but still for more than what sellers paid.

You can't lose what you never had, which, in this case, is the equity you build up over time as home values rise and fall. The only way to cash in on equity is to sell your place or borrow against it. Unless you do one or the other, "equity" is a nebulous term for something you know is there, but you can't touch.

To support my hypothesis, I give you the latest sales report from data services company ATTOM: The profit margin on the median single-family home slipped from 57.6% in the second quarter to 54.6% in the third. There's still a lot of profit to be eaten away before sellers actually lose money.

Housing is already in a recession, and the Federal Reserve Board isn't likely to take its foot off the brakes until 2024, according to Robert Dietz, the chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.

Dietz believes the sector will rebound in 2024, but until then, the slowdown will only exacerbate the shortage of new houses. "We've been under-building since 2008," he says, noting that the market is short about 1 million houses nationwide.

This year's decline in homebuilding is the first since 2011. "We finally got to 1.1 million starts" last year, Dietz said. "That's in line with what we think we need to meet demand. And by 2025, we should be back to that level."

Manufactured homes, aka mobile homes, are a less expensive alternative to site-built houses. Last year, the median price of a factory-made house was just $61,400 -- that's $220,000 less than that of a conventional single-family house.

One of the knocks against manufactured homes is that they lose value, rather than appreciate. But according to LendingTree, that hasn't been the case over the last five years.

Between 2016 and 2021, the median value of a manufactured house increased by an average of 34.6%. Single-family houses increased just barely more -- by 35.4% -- over the same period.

Impressive: According to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, homeowners aged 62 and older saw their combined housing wealth reach a record $11.6 trillion in the second quarter.

More Signs of the Apocalypse

-- Thanks to a title company error, a woman who thought she was buying a house outside of Reno wound up with the entire neighborhood: 84 houses plus two common areas. It seems the title company cut-and-pasted the legal description for the whole shebang onto her deed.

-- In Texas, a retired couple is being sued by their homeowners association for $250,000. Their crime: feeding ducks. According to the suit, neighbors claim the ducks defecated on their property and destroyed their gardens.

-- How would you like to live in a $1.7 million house in San Ramon, California, for free? Anita and Mahesh Khurana did just that for years: The couple made six payments on their loan and then stopped cold, somehow avoiding foreclosure since 2009. They were finally evicted this summer. But they may not hold the record: According to one source, someone in New York fended off foreclosure for more than two decades.

More buyers of newly built houses paid cash in the third quarter than those who financed their purchases through the Federal Housing Administration.

According to Census Bureau data, 7.5% of all the new houses sold during the period were backed by the FHA. That's the smallest share since the fourth quarter of 2007, economist David Logan of the National Association of Home Builders points out.

On the other hand, 9.5% went to all-cash buyers. That's a 20-year high, Logan notes.

Typically, cash buyers are those who sold their homes in expensive markets and moved to less costly places. Loaded with a pocketful of moolah, they can pay whatever a seller is asking, and then some. And that drives prices higher.

Census data also shows that 78% of the new places sold in the third quarter were financed with conventional loans, even though FHA-insured mortgages are somewhat easier to qualify for. In the existing-home market, meanwhile, 22% of the resale houses sold in September went for cash, NAHB reports.

Selling a property fully furnished is fairly common in vacation-home markets, where a house without furnishings can become a chore for buyers rather than an immediate retreat. But it's probably not a smart decision most anywhere else.

In the popular Colorado ski town of Crested Butte, furnished listings are expected, reports Briggs Freeman Sotheby's agent Shelle Carrig. "Vacant homes always take longer to sell unless there is a noticeable price incentive," she said in a piece for Inman.com.

That's not the case in Dallas, where "very few homes" are sold with their original furnishings, says Lucy Johnson, a Briggs Freeman Sotheby's executive. Most buyers want to put their own touch on a new place, she told Inman.

Indeed, it's highly likely that wannabe buyers will simply scroll past any place listed as "fully furnished" when they peruse the market. Even when the idea is intriguing, they're not likely to give a property much thought unless the furnishings are up to date.

"Furnishings that aren't on trend and fresh can prevent some prospective buyers from seeing the underlying positive attributes of any home," Johnson warns.

Then there's the matter of cost. In Florida, where thousands of houses and apartments are sold full of furniture, plates, silverware, pictures and sometimes even towels and sheets, many sellers believe that offering their properties "turnkey" adds value and justifies a higher price.

But some buyers may not see it that way, says Christopher Carter of the Waterfront Realty Group in Naples. Carter is also a mortgage broker and writes a popular blog about Florida real estate. "In most buyers' minds, furnished real estate asking prices already reflect added cost, which they may or may not be willing to pay," he wrote on his blog.

Beyond all this, selling a furnished house tends to complicate the transaction -- in more ways than one. Consider sales taxes, for example.

In most places, sales tax is not levied on the sale of a house. (There are transfer taxes and other fees, just not a sales tax, usually.) But furnishings sold with a house are considered tangible personal property. As such, says Carter, they are taxable.

If the contract, or an addendum to it, mentions the personal property remaining in the house, the seller may be responsible for collecting and remitting the tax, Carter points out. In Florida, that's 6% of its value. Some sellers' agents "unknowingly create a taxable situation when they attach a written inventory" to the contract, he warns.

But whether there is an itemized list or not, the value of the furnishings could very well become part of the property's assessed value. Consequently, the buyer's property taxes could be higher than they need to be. More important, the buyer's lender is probably going to look askance at the deal, and the appraiser will want a say, as well.

Carter points out that lenders lend funds for real estate, not personal property. So if the contract includes furnishings, the lender is going to either send back the borrower's application or deny it altogether.

Why? The house is a permanent structure that stands as the collateral behind the mortgage. "Houses and condos usually stay where they were when purchased," he says, "which is not always the case with couches, beds, dressers and lanai lounge chairs."

It's OK to list items like ceiling fans, light fixtures and draperies that are attached to the property and staying put. Ditto for major kitchen and laundry appliances: Even though they are removable, they usually convey unless the contract states otherwise.

But if the contract lists wall hangings and a golf cart, "the buyer's lender will red-flag the contract and make everyone start over," writes Carter.

"Even when specific or itemized value is not given to the personal property, mentioning it at all in a written real estate contract artificially raises the inferred property value," which lenders won't allow, Carter says. The result: unnecessary delays that neither party wants.

There's also going to be an issue with the appraisal. Appraisers are trained to remove the value of any personal property mentioned in the contract when coming up with a valuation. That is, they must subtract personal property from the agreed-upon sales price -- which, of course, means a lower appraisal.

If the house doesn't appraise for enough, three things can happen: The buyer will have to come up with more cash for a down payment, the seller will have to lower the price to make up the difference, or the buyer and seller can throw up their hands and walk away.

The better way to handle selling a furnished house is to sell the house separately from the furnishings. Place a price on each that will add up to what you wanted for them together. Then the buyer can either pay cash for the furnishings or choose to finance both -- the house with a mortgage and the furnishings with a personal loan.