The Basics Of Investing In Bulk REO
No generation in American history has ever experienced the number of foreclosures and defaulted mortgages as is happening now. Yet as always, this challenge has given rise to a huge new opportunity for alert real estate investors.
This new opportunity – known as ‘Bulk REO Investing’ – is so huge it’s captured attention from wealthy investors and private investment funds alike.
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.
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. The ‘pre-foreclosure’ time starts with filing of foreclosure paperwork and concludes at 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. Such a property is then classified as an ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) by the lender.
Local real estate agents are usually used to resale REO properties at retail price to the general public. 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.
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 Sal Bushemi of Dandrew Partners, a hedge fund in New York.
