There are more foreclosures in the United States right now than we have ever experienced before. Yet well-funded investors in real estate are seizing upon this opening to profit from an profoundly profitable new opportunity.

‘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.

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. 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.

Foreclosure is completed when the defaulted property is auctioned. Ownership of the property is returned to the lender if the property is not sold at auction. Such a property is then classified as an ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) by the lender.

Lenders have no interest in owning property, and thus usually opt to list their REO properties with a local real estate broker in hopes of a retail sale. 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. 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 Buscemi of Dandrew Capital Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.