Bulk REO Investing Tips

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.

The real estate investing strategy du jour is called ‘Bulk REO Investing‘ and is a real monster.

The basis of the Bulk REO business is foreclosures, so let’s analyze the foreclosure process now.

To understand investing in Bulk REO, you have to understand the foreclosure process.

A home owner who misses one or more mortgage payments is faced with an ever-increasing volume of threatening correspondence from their lender. The official foreclosure proceedings begin subsequently, as directed by the lender. ‘Pre foreclosure’ is the name given to the time between implementation of the foreclosure proceedings and the public auction.

To complete the foreclosure process, the property is auction to the public. If there are no buyers for the property at auction, the property is returned to the lender. Such a property is then classified as an ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) by the lender.

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’. Lenders are willing to do so in exchange for the buyer’s agreement to purchase a ‘package’ of REO’s rather than a single property.

There is huge profit potential in these REO packages for qualified real estate investors. 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 Salvatore Buscemi of Dandrew Capital Partners, a hedge fund in New York.