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.
‘Bulk REO Investing’ is the name of the new strategy, and it’s captured the attention of many well-heeled investors.
Consider with me, if you will, the fundamentals of the Bulk REO business.
Understanding the notion of Bulk REO’s requires understanding of 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 official foreclosure proceedings begin subsequently, as directed by the lender. ‘Pre foreclosure’ is the name given to the time between implementation of the foreclosure proceedings and the public auction.
Foreclosure is completed when the property is put up for auction. The lender regains ownership of the property if there are no buyers at auction. The property then receives the designation of being an ‘REO’ or the more formal name, ‘Real Estate Owned’.
Local real estate agents are usually used to resale REO properties at retail price to the general public. However, REO properties are now frequently sold for far less than their ‘book value’. The trade-off is that the buyer must purchase multiple REO properties in each transaction.
The recession in the United States has yielded huge profits to real estate investors prepared to take advantage. 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.