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.

This new opportunity – known as ‘Bulk REO Investing’ – is so huge it’s captured attention from wealthy investors and private investment funds alike.

Foreclosures are at the heart of the Bulk REO business, so let’s consider the foreclosure process.

Understanding of the foreclosure process is central to understanding Bulk REO investing.

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. The name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.

To complete the foreclosure process, the property is auction to the public. If the property is not purchased at auction, ownership reverts to the original lender. This property is then considered to be ‘Real Estate Owned’ by the lender, also known as an ‘REO’ property.

REO properties are usually listed for sale with local real estate agents. But more and more, lenders are selling their REO properties for a greatly reduced price. But the price of receiving such great pricing is the need to purchase multiple REO properties (a ‘package’) rather than individual properties.

These REO packages represent the potential to acquire huge amounts of equity for savvy real estate investors. REO packages are easiest to buy and sell with a well regarded source of financing in place. 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 hedge fund in New York.