WARNING: Foreclosure can be hazardous to your health.

Possible side effects include, but are not limited to:

• Heart palpitations
• Anxiety attacks
• High blood pressure
• Stress
• Depression
• Weight gain
• Canker sores
• Skin problems
• Acid reflux
• Insomnia

The Alameda County Public Health Department and Causa Justa/Just Cause — a housing rights group — recently conducted a study of nearly 400 residents in the Oakland, Calif., area who had to endure the foreclosure experience.

Here’s the bottom line finding:

Foreclosures exacerbate the health problems [of distressed homeowners]. In addition, the deleterious health effects can often spread to tenants and others associated with foreclosed home.

The San Francisco Chronicle provides powerful context:

The survey found that residents who are going through foreclosure or recently lost their homes were more than twice as likely to say that their mental and physical health had worsened over the past two years than those not going through foreclosure. Those residents were also twice as likely to report stress, depression or anxiety over the past month.

To read the full report, which is entitled “Rebuilding Neighborhoods, Restoring Health” click here.

“Program returns for 2010 after wildly successful 2009 campaign financially assisted several bright scholars from throughout the nation!”

Boca Raton, Fla. — Sept. 2, 2010 — Foreclosure.com today announced that it will reward five more college students with scholarships who can best provide a solution(s) to one of the most troubling issues facing our nation today:

“How could education at the high school level help avert and/or minimize a future foreclosure crisis?”

Foreclosure.com, which received thousands of entries from students during its inaugural scholarship program last year, will accept written essays/plans (800-word minimum, 2,000-word maximum) through its website from Sept. 1, 2010, to Dec. 1, 2010.

Five winners will be selected at the conclusion of the contest and will share $9,000 in allotted scholarship funds. The top prize is a $5,000 scholarship and four $1,000 grants will be awarded to the runners up.

All students must read and agree to the scholarship rules, which are located on the Foreclosure.com contest page at www.foreclosure.com/scholarship.

“Education equals freedom,” said Foreclosure.com Director of Education, Linda Yates. “Often we don’t know what we don’t know – where do the roots of the foreclosure problem really lie? How far back can we trace it? These are important questions. So we are eager to get answers, which is the reason we are excited to review this year’s submissions on how the future generation of homebuyers will be able to make smart financial decisions.”

In addition to the cash prizes (5) in the form of scholarships, winning submissions will also be published on Foreclosure.com.

For complete details and submission requirements/instructions for the Foreclosure.com Scholarship Program visit www.foreclosure.com/scholarship.

• Attention agents: Aug. 2010 agent newsletter called, "Working with buyers" is now ready! It's free — http://ffs.cc/a/9ci4xx TM #
• More than 30 Keller Williams real estate agents get short sale certified through "The Agent University" http://ffs.cc/a/vcaplu TM #

• Foreclosure demographics: Study reveals Latinos and ‘modest’ homes hit hardest http://ffs.cc/a/95gluy TM #
• Ask an agent (@azjoemartin): What are the best foreclosure home staging tips and tricks for selling fast? http://ffs.cc/a/e8mlj7 TM #
• Americans seek out clever ways to avoid foreclosure http://ffs.cc/a/zd2u25 TM #

The amount of loan modifications overseen the by the government increased to about 422,000 in July, which is about 33,000 more than the previous month, according to the latest “Housing Scorecard” issued today by the Obama Administration.

However, only 17,000 trial modifications were started in July, which is not even close to the 150,000 distressed homeowners who enrolled when the program first started 10 months ago. By comparison, nearly 100,000 trial modifications were canceled last month for various reasons.

The good news is that Herbert M. Allison, assistant Treasury secretary, says all was not lost for those who dropped out of the program:

“They were able to benefit from reduced mortgage payments each month at no cost to the taxpayers. More than half of those who fell out of the program got another form of modification, caught up on loan payments on their own or received another type of assistance.”

All told, almost 630,000 of the nearly 1.3 million government modifications have been canceled since the program began last March, according to analysis provided by the New York Times.

The billion-dollar program, which was introduced to save three million homeowners from foreclosure, clearly still has a ways to go with a “volume of serious delinquencies continues to work through the pipeline.”

But in a fragile market, any and all positive news is a step in the right direction.