Bulk REO Investment 101 For Beginners

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.

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

As a borrower becomes increasingly behind in his mortgage, the lender regularly calls and writes the borrower with default warnings and threats. The lender directs the subsequent timing of the actual foreclosure proceedings. From that time through public auction is called ‘preforeclosure’.

Foreclosure is completed when the defaulted property is auctioned. 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’.

Lenders usually try to unload their REO properties at close to retail price by listing their REO’s with a real estate broker. However, REO properties are now frequently sold for far less than their ‘book value’. This happens because the buyer of the REO is required to purchase multiple REO’s in a single transaction.

The REO investment packages available today have provided a way to profitably capitalize on the U.S. recession. 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 Salvatore Buscemi of Dandrew Capital Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.