All About Bulk REO Investing
With more foreclosures now than ever before, America’s weak real estate market seems to set new dismal records each month. However, opportunistic real estate investment professionals are turning the recession into great profits with a bit of creativity.
The real estate investing strategy du jour is called ‘Bulk REO Investing‘ and is a real monster.
Take a just a minute to consider the basics of this highly profitable business.
To understand investing in Bulk REO, you have 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. After a certain period, the lender will then formally begin foreclosure proceedings. The name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.
Foreclosure is completed when the defaulted property is auctioned. If there are no buyers for the property at auction, the property is returned to the lender. The lender then categorizes the property as ‘Real Estate Owned’ – or ‘REO’ for short.
Typically, lenders list their REO properties with local real estate agents in hopes of selling the property to a retail buyer who will pay full price. But as a consequence of the weak economy, lenders are frequently selling their REO properties far below their actual value. Lenders are willing to do so in exchange for the buyer’s agreement to purchase a ‘package’ of REO’s rather than a single property.
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.