Lynn Brier-De La Cruz

Our Vanguard Realty 'Agents with a Heart' team walked and walked and walked last weekend to raise money for The American Cancer Society's Relay For Life.

The event was held at Bartram Trail High School and our real estate team raised a couple thousand dollars in an effort to help find cures for cancer!

We had fun and still have the blisters to prove it!

What a freezing cold AWESOME day! We worked on a coat & blanket drive all week & put it together for Saturday, January 9th. What an amazing outpouring from the community! We had people from all over our city bringing coats, blankets, sweaters, mittens & more.

There were people who saw our sign as they were driving by, made U-turns, went to the closest stores & brought back NEW coats, NEW blankets, NEW sweaters. We couldn't have asked for better results. Pastor Joe, whose supplies had dwindled to next to nothing with this frigid weather was truly amazed & said the donations were a blessing.

Local media caught on, aired the announcement early Saturday morning & gave us some wonderful coverage Saturday evening.

What a fun, easy read. Now I'm hooked and will be going to a sold out preview of Twilight along with my nieces on Saturday night.

Have any of you Active Rainers been reading these? They're addictive!

St. Joseph's Catholic School will host it's 5th annual Fall Fun & Craft Show on Saturday, October 11, 2008 from 9am to 4pm at 11600 Old St. Augustine Road in Mandarin. Admission is free for kids and adults and the festival will go on rain or shine. Several vendors will showcase their many arts & crafts ~ gift-giving season is just around the corner ~ come buy a unique gift and enjoy a day in beautiful Mandarin.

This is NOT a short sale! As I'm booking showing appointments around Jacksonville Florida, I'm noticing that this is how we now have to market property for any sellers we're lucky enough to have who will actually receive proceeds at the closing table. In Mandarin (south Jacksonville), where I concentrate my business, there are plenty of short sale and foreclosure choices for buyers in any price range.

Most agents a year ago would have turned and run at the thought of listing a property for less than what the sellers owed on their note. These days in Florida, if you don't take the short sale and/or foreclosure listings, you ain't got no listings.