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.
That opportunity is called Bulk REO Investing, and the opportunity is huge.
Let’s take a moment to analyze the basics of this incredibly lucrative business.
You can’t understand Bulk REO Investments without understanding the process of foreclosure.
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. The name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.
To complete the foreclosure process, the property is auction to the public. If the property is not purchased at auction, ownership reverts to the original lender. Such a property is then classified as an ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) by the lender.
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. 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.
Qualified real estate investors are increasingly finding once-in-a-lifetime opportunities in these REO packages. REO packages are easiest to buy and sell with a well regarded source of financing in place. 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 Buscemi of Dandrew Capital Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.