With more foreclosures now than ever before, America’s weak real estate market seems to set new dismal records each month. Yet as always, this challenge has given rise to a huge new opportunity for alert real estate investors.
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.
As a home owner misses a payment or two, the lender sends the predictable barage of threatening letters and warnings. After a certain period, the lender will then formally begin foreclosure proceedings. 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. The property then receives the designation of being an ‘REO’ or the more formal name, ‘Real Estate Owned’.
Lenders usually try to unload their REO properties at close to retail price by listing their REO’s with a real estate broker. But more and more, lenders are selling their REO properties for a greatly reduced price. 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. One excellent source of funding for Bulk REO Investment transactions can be found here: Bulk REO Investment Training.
