Fundamentals Of Being A Bulk REO Investor

With more foreclosures now than ever before, America’s weak real estate market seems to set new dismal records each month. Yet as always, this challenge has given rise to a huge new opportunity for alert real estate investors.

That opportunity is called Bulk REO Investing, and the opportunity is huge.

Consider with me, if you will, the fundamentals of the Bulk REO business.

You can’t understand Bulk REO Investments without understanding the process of foreclosure.

When a home owner begins to miss payments on their mortgage, the lender begins to send late/overdue notices to the home owner. The lender directs the subsequent timing of the actual foreclosure proceedings. Between the formal beginning of the foreclosure process and the public auction is the ‘preforeclosure’ period.

When a defaulted property is placed up for auction, the foreclosure process is completed. If there are no buyers at the foreclosure auction, the lender regains title to the property. The lender then categorizes the property as ‘Real Estate Owned’ – or ‘REO’ for short.

Lenders have no interest in owning property, and thus usually opt to list their REO properties with a local real estate broker in hopes of a retail sale. However, REO properties are now frequently sold for far less than their ‘book value’. But the price of receiving such great pricing is the need to purchase multiple REO properties (a ‘package’) rather than individual properties.

There is huge profit potential in these REO packages for qualified real estate investors. The most successful Bulk REO Investors will have a well-respected source of funding for their transactions. Some sources of funding for these transactions are: personal funds, hard money lenders, commercial lenders and non-conventional sources such as private investors and hedge funds. Additionally, one man is becoming very well known in the field of bulk REO investing, and his name is Sal Buscemi of Dandrew Partners, a hedge fund in New York.