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.
Let’s take a moment to analyze the basics of this incredibly lucrative business.
Understanding the notion of Bulk REO’s requires understanding of 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 lender directs the subsequent timing of the actual foreclosure proceedings. The name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.
The defaulted property is ultimately auctioned, thus completing the foreclosure process. 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.
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. 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.
The recession in the United States has yielded huge profits to real estate investors prepared to take advantage. 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 Capital Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.
