One of the many things that I love about my job as Foreclosure.com Director of Education is to deliver great news!

And that is exactly what I had the opportunity to do last week when we announced the winners of the 2011 Foreclosure.com Scholarship Program. The five winners — one grand prize and four runners up — were selected out of almost 10,000 applicants located throughout the United States. Our $5,000 grand prize winner was a freshman from Parsons — The New School in New York, N.Y., Cindy Clinton.

You can watch the video of our recent conversation above.

Cindy is a delightful, smart and witty woman who I enjoyed interviewing. She mentioned that she had seen our scholarship on FastWeb.com and had made a note to herself to apply before the deadline. I am always impressed when I see an organized young students who have plans and then work those plans.

If you are an undergraduate student and are looking for scholarships then you should not miss out on our 2012 topic. We are now in the process of accepting applications and the deadline is December 1, 2012. I would love to interview you this time next year!

Let’s see what you’ve got.

To read Cindy’s winning essay visit the Foreclosure.com Article Center right here. For more on the Foreclosure.com Scholarship Program, as well as to view the 2012 topic and eligibility/submission requirements, click here.

BofA donated 150 homes throughout the United States in 2011 and plans to up that amount to more than 1,200 in 2012. Wells Fargo, meanwhile. topped 1,120 donated homes last year, which is 295 more than it did in 2010.

Most of these homes are either refurbished, resold or demolished “to rid neighborhoods of blight,” helping the communities in which they are located recover from the housing downturn faster. On the flip side, banks rid themselves of maintaining homes they can’t sell, which, naturally, saves them money over time. Even underwater homeowners who can’t sell their properties are literally giving them away in exchange for tax deductions.

According to the GreenBayPressGazette.com, Habitat for Humanity — a nonprofit housing organization that builds simple, decent, affordable housing in partnership with people in need – renovated and sold 1,210 donated homes that it received from June 2010 to June 2011.

It’s a “win, win, win” decision, according to a BofA official mentioned in the report, which benefits the neighborhood, bank and investor.

Foreclosure.com is extending Black Friday throughout the month of December!

We are so grateful for our newsletter readers and website visitors. We started Foreclosure.com more than a decade ago with the goal of making it the number one-ranked online destination for distressed property listings.

And here we are, 13 years later, thanking you for helping us make that vision a reality.

To commemorate the holiday season this year, we are excited to announce a treasure trove of our most generous money-saving opportunities ever, which we designed especially with you in mind. Enjoy extended free site membership, discounted foreclosure and short sale educational programs and much more.

As always, we also invite you to check out the myriad free tools available on our site to help make your foreclosure and short sale searches a success. It would be just silly to miss our free On Demand webinars, free foreclosure listing alerts and everything else that we offer at absolutely no charge.

The November 2011 edition of Foreclosure.com’s free educational newsletter, “Investment Exchange,” is now available, which will help you uncover the unbelievable wealth that might just be waiting for you right around the corner — literally — thanks to an unprecedented package of discounted resources.

We’ve never offered such an amazing bundle of deals and zero-cost learning opportunities to kickstart the real estate investment careers of our website visitors. So, take advantage of the free, money-saving offers that we are gifting to you this holiday season before it’s too late.

And well before all the New Year “resolutioners” flood the market.

To read this month’s free educational newsletter from Foreclosure.com and cash-in on our limited-time holiday offerings CLICK HERE.

SFGate.com confirmed the holiday moratorium, adding that other financial institutions such as JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America are also implementing similar initiatives to reduce turmoil and/or displacement during such a family-oriented time.

Major government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie are expected to announce their eviction suspension policies as it relates to this holiday season very soon.

Check out the official Wells Fargo foreclosure moratorium statement after the jump:

“Wells Fargo is suspending eviction actions from Nov. 23 to Nov. 25, and again from Dec. 19 to Jan. 2, 2012. We will not physically evict or conduct lockouts on the foreclosed properties in our owned portfolio during these times. For loans we service for others, foreclosure-related actions may still occur, but Wells Fargo will not evict tenants during these periods.”

In essence, these policies ensure that foreclosure sales are not scheduled and evictions and/or lockouts on delinquent loans are prohibited during these periods.

That means that it will likely return to “business as usual” on Jan. 3, 2012; however, it buys distressed homeowners a little more time to enjoy the holidays with family, as well as provides them with peace of mind that they can celebrate/plan without the fear of having to relocate immediately.

If you’re facing foreclosure and want to know if your lender has implemented a similar foreclosure moratorium policy we encourage you to contact it as soon as possible.

Abandoned, empty homes apparently do more than attract illegal squatters and vandals.

Foreclosed homes in Las Vegas, Nevada, and elsewhere are “going to pot,” literally, according to the Los Angeles Times. Marijuana “grow houses” are no longer set up in the seedy outskirts of society, but rather nestled among well-to-do, albeit distressed, neighborhoods.

And the nationwide housing crisis is apparently one of the many factors fueling the “pot home problem.”

William Sousa, a criminologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, explains:

“You can’t have crime without opportunity. And all those empty homes present an opportunity for criminal activity.”

“Sin City” and its surrounding area has been hit exceptionally hard by the downturn in real estate, ranking among the most troubled markets/states in the United States since it began several years ago.

And when growers/dealers can pick up a nice (relatively) new five-bedroom, 2,600 sq. ft. home in a Las Vegas suburb for more than 60 percent less than market value (this is just an example, NOT a marijuana grow house), while making making millions off a grow operation in six months or less, it’s no surprise, really.

It’s important to note that this is not an isolated problem that affects just Las Vegas. Therefore, if you suspect suspicious illegal activity is taking place at a house (or houses) near you, be sure to share your concerns with local authorities.

America’s number one source for the most up-to-date distressed real estate information to provide national foreclosure listings to the industry’s leading interactive social and business networking site.

Foreclosure.com today announced that it will power the foreclosure channel on RealtyJoin.com, an online networking resource that helps real estate investors, service providers and other professionals find relevant opportunities and connect with the people they need.

Real estate professionals and other website visitors can easily access the listings free for a limited time at http://www.realtyjoin.com/foreclosure-listing/.

“It’s no secret that foreclosures represent tremendous investment opportunities for homebuyers and investors to make – or save – large sums of money,” said Stephen Chip, director of business development, Foreclosure.com. “First-time homebuyers, experienced investors and even agents, among others, want to search for the best foreclosure deals in their areas quickly and efficiently. And they can now do that seamlessly at RealtyJoin.com as a result of this partnership.”

Under the agreement, RealtyJoin website visitors will enjoy seamless access to Foreclosure.com’s valuable investment-laden information through an innovative co-brand site creation. Foreclosure.com maintains the most comprehensive nationwide database of more than 2 million preforeclosure, short sale, foreclosure, Sheriff sale, foreclosure auction, bank repossessed (bankruptcy), HUD homes, foreclosed homes for rent to own and tax lien listings.

“Offering discount properties on RealtyJoin is an essential step to making RealtyJoin invaluable to real estate investors on RealtyJoin,” said Andy Heller, a veteran real estate investor and public speaker, as well as RealtyJoin co-founder. “I have worked with the team at Foreclosure.com for years, and it was an easy decision to turn to them for this vital service to RealtyJoin members.”

The data from Foreclosure.com includes complete property details, exclusive tax roll information, property photos, local demographics and community statistics, as well as critical seller/listing contact information. Foreclosure.com will also provide visitors with educational materials and resources to help them make more informed purchasing decisions.

To search for potential foreclosed homes for sale in your area free for a limited time visit http://www.realtyjoin.com/foreclosure-listing/ today.

Big Brother really is watching. And his name is Mark Zuckerberg Facebook.

If you think you can just go off the grid and escape your mortgage obligations, or at least make such an effort to the delay the inevitable, then you better completely disconnect.

No longer are phone calls, emails and random site visits the only means that lenders will leverage to track down homeowners in default. It seems that several governments are going digital, sending foreclosure notices to not-so-hard-to-find people on the world’s leading social network.

The Economic Times reports that a lawyer from Australia led the charge about two years ago. And now courts in New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom are following suit (pun intended).

Check out an example of how it works:

“In March, Hilary Thorpe, a lawyer in East Sussex, England, persuaded a British court to allow her to serve a woman solely through her Facebook account, after showing that calls, faxes and visits had failed to track her down. The people in both the UK and Australian cases were successfully notified in the eyes of the court, the lawyers said. Tsirimokos said that ‘within a day’ of sending the notice, the recipient’s privacy settings in the Australian case were tightened, showing the debtors got the notice. MKM won a court order and then seized and sold the house.”

Clever.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that lenders in the United States would be able to legally adopt a similar practice anytime soon. There are several roadblocks, including collecting “enough proof to convince a court the accountholder is the right person and the page is checked often enough to ensure it’s a fair path of notification.”

There are also privacy and ethical concerns at play such as lawyers “‘friending’ the target under false pretenses to get past security settings.”

Sounds rather diabolical.

It’s April 18.

Typically, the date doesn’t strike fear in the hearts of ordinary Americans. Today is different, however, because it (not April 15) is the deadline to file individual tax returns.

And for many, 2010 could have been financially difficult, including defaulting on a mortgage loan and losing a home to foreclosure and/or short sale.

The good news is that the  Mortgage Debt Relief Act, passed in 2007 and expiring in 2012, protects most distressed homeowners from being responsible for additional liabilities.

Most, but not all.

CNN.com lays out the exceptions to the rule. Read about them after the jump:

1. You did a cash-out refinance and splurged
2. You have a home-equity line of credit
3. You lost your vacation home or investment property
4. You owned a multimillion-dollar home

Even if you do fall under one of the categories mentioned above, you may still “have a way out.”

Your best bet is to contact a tax professional and discuss your situation with him or her to determine the best course of action.