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.
‘Bulk REO Investing’ is the name of the new strategy, and it’s captured the attention of many well-heeled investors.
Take a just a minute to consider the basics of this highly profitable business.
Understanding the notion of Bulk REO’s requires understanding of 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 lender directs the subsequent timing of the actual foreclosure proceedings. The ‘pre-foreclosure’ time starts with filing of foreclosure paperwork and concludes at public auction.
The defaulted property is ultimately auctioned, thus completing the foreclosure process. Ownership of the property is returned to the lender if the property is not sold at auction. This property is then considered to be ‘Real Estate Owned’ by the lender, also known as an ‘REO’ property.
Local real estate agents are usually used to resale REO properties at retail price to the general public. However, REO properties are now frequently sold for far less than their ‘book value’. 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. 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.
