Gina Tufano

On November 7th from 10am until 2pm at Smart's Mill Middle School in Leesburg, the Loudoun County Health Department will administer approximately 2,000 of the H1N1 vaccine to high risk people including pregnant women and children ages 2-9. The vaccination will be administered on a walk-in basis and desired recipients are encouraged to wear a short sleeve shirt.



Want to know when additional H1N1 vaccinations will become available? Check out www.loudoun.gov/flu for the most up-to-date information. If you have questions, you may contact the Loudoun County Health Department at flu@loudoun.gov or by calling the flu information line at (703) 771-5512.

First I want to say that I hope everyone had a great Halloween regardless of the few showers we had. With that being said, I'm sure that lots of you out there have extra, unwanted candy that you would be happy to give up and our office has just the solution - We are accepting donated candy for our troops abroad and local children in Afghanistan. So please feel free to drop off as much or as little candy to our office in Sterling by Monday, November 9th, between the hours of 9am-5pm. Let's give a little piece of home to our hard-working and dedicated troops overseas with a very 'sweet' gift.

RE/MAX Select Properties, Inc.
20 Pidgeon Hill Drive, Suite 201
Sterling, Virginia 20165

The other night I was chatting about real estate with a close friend of mine, who also happens to be an appraiser. We got to talking about what we think will happen in the near future with the foreclosure ratings and I started to grow a little concerned. Previous to talking with my appraiser friend, I had heard rumors about MANY, MANY more foreclosures that are projected to come to the surface. It was not until I came across multiple articles posted by RISMedia that I started believing those rumors and began to prepare for the next wave of distressed properties...

Currently, about 65% of the recent home sales have been distressed properties and the U.S. Treasury Department says there is more to come in 2010 - by the MILLIONS. So get ready, because they are coming whether you are ready or not!

Okay, don't stress, just freshen up on your skills and prepare for the worst - like mom always says. I made a list comprised of tips on how to effectively target prospective buyers of foreclosures. I combined the list of tips RISMedia gave and added a few of my own. This is what I came up with:

• Include the terms "foreclosures" and "bank-owned properties" in your listings and html tags. ALWAYS, check with your seller first to make sure they are not sensitive to seeing these terms when describing their property.
• If you have a personal web page, add a section about describing to the public what defines a short sale and a foreclosure. Follow with a link to your distressed properties.
• If clients contact you in regards to foreclosures and short sales, comprise a list for them and/or add them to an MLS property search.
• When working with a client, extensively educate your clients, buyers and sellers, on what constitutes a short sale and foreclosure.

For more tips and information regarding distressed properties, click here to go to the source of this article.

Okay, so I had new pictures taken recently because I got sick of the old ones and I thought I would freshen up my look a little bit. A great friend of mine took some beautiful photo's of me and now I'm stuck on which picture I like best..! I've narrowed it down to the three below:

1. Classic B&W (current AR picture)

2. Full on Color

3. Indoors, but with a little greenery in the background still

Which one do you think??