Beginner’s Guide To Being A Bulk REO Investor

There are more foreclosures in the United States right now than we have ever experienced before. But challenge always gives rise to opportunity, and opportunistic real estate investors are rising to the challenge.

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

Foreclosures are at the heart of the Bulk REO business, so let’s consider the foreclosure process.

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

When a home owner begins to miss payments on their mortgage, the lender begins to send late/overdue notices to the home owner. The formal process of foreclosure begins at the lender’s discretion. The ‘pre-foreclosure’ time starts with filing of foreclosure paperwork and concludes at public auction.

To complete the foreclosure process, the property is auction to the public. Ownership of the property is returned to the lender if the property is not sold at auction. The property then receives the designation of being an ‘REO’ or the more formal name, ‘Real Estate Owned’.

REO properties are usually listed for sale with local real estate agents. But as a consequence of the weak economy, lenders are frequently selling their REO properties far below their actual value. The trade-off is that the buyer must purchase multiple REO properties in each transaction.

There is huge profit potential in these REO packages for qualified real estate investors. REO packages are easiest to buy and sell with a well regarded source of financing in place. 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.