The recession in the U.S. economy has resulted in more foreclosures than experienced by any other generation of Americans. But challenge always gives rise to opportunity, and opportunistic real estate investors are rising to the challenge.
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.
To understand Bulk REO investing is 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. The formal process of foreclosure begins at the lender’s discretion. Between the formal beginning of the foreclosure process and the public auction is the ‘preforeclosure’ period.
Foreclosure is completed when the property is put up for auction. If there are no buyers at the foreclosure auction, the lender regains title to the property. 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. Yet with increasing frequency, REO properties are being sold for pennies or dimes on the dollar. This happens because the buyer of the REO is required to purchase multiple REO’s in a single transaction.
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 Salvatore Bushemi of Dandrew Capital Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.
