Guide To Being A Bulk REO Investor
No generation in American history has ever experienced the number of foreclosures and defaulted mortgages as is happening now. But smart real estate investors are turning these ‘lemons’ into ‘lemonade’ in an incredibly profitable new way.
That opportunity is called Bulk REO Investing, and the opportunity is huge.
The basis of the Bulk REO business is foreclosures, so let’s analyze the foreclosure process now.
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 name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.
Foreclosure is completed when the defaulted property is auctioned. If the property is not purchased at auction, ownership reverts to the original lender. The designation of ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) is then attached to the foreclosed 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. 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. Bulk REO Investors are most successful when they have a well-established source of funding for their REO packages. There are many sources of funding for these transasactions including: hard money and commercial financing, as well as non conventional sources such as hedge funds and private investors. Additionally, one man is becoming very well known in the field of bulk REO investing, and his name is Salvatore Buscemi of Dandrew Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.