Home Buying

The weakness of the U.S. economy has given rise to the largest epidemic of foreclosures in American history. However, opportunistic real estate investment professionals are turning the recession into great profits with a bit of creativity.

That opportunity is called Bulk REO Investing, and the opportunity is huge.

Foreclosures are at the heart of the Bulk REO business, so let’s consider the foreclosure process.

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. Between the formal beginning of the foreclosure process and the public auction is the ‘preforeclosure’ period.

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. This property is then considered to be ‘Real Estate Owned’ by the lender, also known as an ‘REO’ property.

Lenders usually try to unload their REO properties at close to retail price by listing their REO’s with a real estate broker. 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.

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. 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 Bushemi of Dandrew Partners, a hedge fund in New York.