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.
The new opportunity is known as ‘Bulk REO Investing’ or ‘REO Package Investing’ and it’s a huge opportunity.
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.
When a home owner begins to miss payments on their mortgage, the lender begins to send late/overdue notices to the home owner. Following a period of time determined by the lender, formal foreclosure proceedings begin. From that time through public auction is called ‘preforeclosure’.
The defaulted property is ultimately auctioned, thus completing the foreclosure process. The lender regains ownership of the property if there are no buyers at auction. Such a property is then classified as an ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) by the lender.
Typically, lenders list their REO properties with local real estate agents in hopes of selling the property to a retail buyer who will pay full price. However, REO properties are now frequently sold for far less than their ‘book value’. But the price of receiving such great pricing is the need to purchase multiple REO properties (a ‘package’) rather than individual properties.
There is huge profit potential in these REO packages for qualified real estate investors. The most successful Bulk REO Investors will have a well-respected source of funding for their transactions. 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 Capital Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.