The recession in the U.S. economy has resulted in more foreclosures than experienced by any other generation of Americans. Yet as always, this challenge has given rise to a huge new opportunity for alert real estate investors.
The new opportunity is known as ‘Bulk REO Investing’ or ‘REO Package Investing’ and it’s a huge opportunity.
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.
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 ‘pre-foreclosure’ time starts with filing of foreclosure paperwork and concludes at public auction.
Foreclosure is completed when the defaulted property is auctioned. The lender regains ownership of the property if there are no buyers at auction. 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. Yet with increasing frequency, REO properties are being sold for pennies or dimes on the dollar. But the price of receiving such great pricing is the need to purchase multiple REO properties (a ‘package’) rather than individual properties.
There is huge profit potential in these REO packages for qualified real estate investors. Bulk REO Investors are most successful when they have a well-established source of funding for their REO packages. 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.