Bulk REO Investing Basics

There are more foreclosures in the United States right now than we have ever experienced before. 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.

Let’s take a moment to analyze the basics of this incredibly lucrative business.

To understand Bulk REO investing is to understand the foreclosure process.

As a home owner misses a payment or two, the lender sends the predictable barage of threatening letters and warnings. Following a period of time determined by the lender, formal foreclosure proceedings begin. The name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.

Foreclosure is completed when the defaulted property is auctioned. If there are no buyers at the foreclosure auction, the lender regains title to the property. The designation of ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) is then attached to the foreclosed property.

Typically, lenders list their REO properties with local real estate agents in hopes of selling the property to a retail buyer who will pay full price. But more and more, lenders are selling their REO properties for a greatly reduced price. The trade-off is that the buyer must purchase multiple REO properties in each transaction.

Qualified real estate investors are increasingly finding once-in-a-lifetime opportunities in these REO packages. Bulk REO Investors are most successful when they have a well-established source of funding for their REO packages. 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 Bushemi of Dandrew Partners, a hedge fund in New York.