Well that was fast!

Just two week’s after Nicolas Cage’s 11,817 sq. ft, six bedroom/nine bathroom home in Bel-Air, Calif., failed to sell at public auction, Foreclosure.com already has it featured in its nationwide database of more than 1.8 million distressed real estate listings.

To view the foreclosed home of Nicolas Cage, as well as photos of the million-dollar mansion, on Foreclosure.com click here.

It’s currently on the market for a cool $12.75 million. However, the mansion, which legendary crooners Dean Martin and Tom Jones once called home, was on the market for as much as $35 million not too long ago.

For more background on Cage’s financial meltdown and other run-ins with foreclosure click here.

Remember: You need to get a deal in the works by this Friday, April 30, 2010, and close by June 30, 2010, to be eligible for the first time ($8,000) or existing ($6,500) tax credits.

Of course, the limited-time blog reader special discount on our FREE 7-Day Trial is also set to expire at the end of this month.

Hurry!

Be sure to act fast because the best deals — and these incentives — won’t last much longer! Search now.

Learn how to properly prepare and close successful short sale offers in record time with help and direction from investing pro, Sharon Restrepo.

Sharon will demonstrate how you can put the “short” back in short sale, leveraging the recently-introduced Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program, which provides incentives for lenders to close these types of deals fast.

Register for “Short Sale Intensive Training” before it’s too late. Click here. The educational session is available to watch LIVE online during an information-packed presentation scheduled for Thursday, May 13, at 7 p.m. ET.

Here are just some of the many invaluable nuggets you will take away:

• How to make more money on short sale transactions
• How to put together the best short sale package
• When to avoid a short sale
• How to short sale as an investor or agent
• What banks are looking for when short selling

Expect more short sales (and great deals) to flood the market now and well into the future. So you need to know exactly what you’re getting into with short sales today and how to purchase them for pennies on the dollar as soon as tomorrow!

Register for “Short Sale Intensive Training” before it’s too late. Spots are limited and filling up FAST! CLICK HERE.

Webinars are LIVE educational sessions that let participants see, hear and interact with real estate experts right from their personal computer screens. In fact, Webinars are driven in part by visitor feedback and questions that are posed during the sessions. For more information and course offerings click here.

Madoff, Madoff, Madoff!

The former building in which infamous Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff bilked countless high-profile investors out of approximately $65 billion over two decades is “inching” toward foreclosure, according to the NY Post.

The tower at 885 Third Avenue in New York, N.Y., which resembles a tube of lipstick, “has fallen on hard times” and the bank that holds the note on the skyscraper is shopping its $210 million mortgage.

Renters, and a lack of tenants, including Madoff — who started serving a 150-year bit in federal prison in 2009 — appears to be the reason behind the building’s financial distress.

Howard Michaels of the Carlton Group explains what went wrong:

“It was an ingenious finance structure at the time, which was predicated on a significant growth in rent, which due to Madoff and market factors did not occur.”

Madoff and his crooked operation reportedly took up three floors of the building — all told 40,000 sq. ft. — at $49 per sq. ft.

(That’s $1.96 million in case you don’t want to do the math.)

CNNMoney.com passes along some great information via Fair Isaac, which is the brains behind the all-important FICO scores.

Here’s a breakdown of how being late on your mortgage, or not paying it altogether, impacts your credit score (in negative points):

• 30 days late: 40 to 110 points
• 90 days late: 70 to 135 points
• Foreclosure, short sale or deed-in-lieu: 85 to 160 points
• Bankruptcy: 130 to 240 points

For all the calculations and hypothetical number-crunching that went in to arriving at the numbers above we suggest that you check out the original article right here.

However, keep in mind that no two borrowers are alike — the same delinquencies can and do affect credit scores differently.

Maxine Sweet from Experian explains:

“If you picture someone who has just one mortgage and one other credit account versus a mature credit user like me with 15 accounts, if they miss one payment that would impact their scores a lot more. For me, one missed payment would just be a blip.”

The moral of the entire article is to “cut your losses quickly” and to “not worry about your credit score.”

Easier said than done, but perhaps words of wisdom when facing a seemingly insurmountable financial crisis.

For more information on this topic and more remember to check out the Foreclosure.com Credit Center right here.