Bulk REO Investing 101 For Beginners

There are more foreclosures in the United States right now than we have ever experienced before. 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.

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. After a certain period, the lender will then formally begin foreclosure proceedings. ‘Pre foreclosure’ is the name given to the time between implementation of the foreclosure proceedings and the public auction.

The defaulted property is ultimately auctioned, thus completing the foreclosure process. If there are no buyers for the property at auction, the property is returned to the lender. The designation of ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) is then attached to the foreclosed property.

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. 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. 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 Sal Bushemi of Dandrew Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.