No generation in American history has ever experienced the number of foreclosures and defaulted mortgages as is happening now. However, opportunistic real estate investment professionals are turning the recession into great profits with a bit of creativity.
The real estate investing strategy du jour is called ‘Bulk REO Investing‘ and is a real monster.
Consider with me, if you will, the fundamentals of the Bulk REO business.
To understand investing in Bulk REO, you have to understand the foreclosure process.
Mortgage lenders faced with a non-paying home owner send a large volume of threats, warnings and documentation to the borrower who is late. Following a period of time determined by the lender, formal foreclosure proceedings begin. The name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.
To complete the foreclosure process, the property is auction to the public. If there are no buyers at the foreclosure auction, the lender regains title to the property. The lender then categorizes the property as ‘Real Estate Owned’ – or ‘REO’ for short.
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. 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. The most successful Bulk REO Investors will have a well-respected source of funding for their transactions. 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 Sal Bushemi of Dandrew Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.