Bulk REO Investor Basics
No generation in American history has ever experienced the number of foreclosures and defaulted mortgages as is happening now. But challenge always gives rise to opportunity, and opportunistic real estate investors are rising to the challenge.
This new opportunity – known as ‘Bulk REO Investing’ – is so huge it’s captured attention from wealthy investors and private investment funds alike.
Let’s take a moment to analyze the basics of this incredibly lucrative business.
To understand investing in Bulk REO, you have to understand the foreclosure process.
As a home owner misses a payment or two, the lender sends the predictable barage of threatening letters and warnings. The formal process of foreclosure begins at the lender’s discretion. Between the formal beginning of the foreclosure process and the public auction is the ‘preforeclosure’ period.
Foreclosure is completed when the property is put up for auction. 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.
REO properties are usually listed for sale with local real estate agents. However, REO properties are now frequently sold for far less than their ‘book value’. But the price of receiving such great pricing is the need to purchase multiple REO properties (a ‘package’) rather than individual properties.
These REO packages represent the potential to acquire huge amounts of equity for savvy real estate investors. The most successful Bulk REO Investors will have a well-respected source of funding for their transactions. There are many sources of funding for these transasactions including: hard money and commercial financing, as well as non conventional sources such as hedge funds and private investors. 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.