There are more foreclosures in the United States right now than we have ever experienced before. Yet as always, this challenge has given rise to a huge new opportunity for alert real estate investors.

That opportunity is called Bulk REO Investing, and the opportunity is huge.

Take a just a minute to consider the basics of this highly profitable business.

You can’t understand Bulk REO Investments without understanding the process of foreclosure.

A home owner who misses one or more mortgage payments is faced with an ever-increasing volume of threatening correspondence from their lender. The formal process of foreclosure begins at the lender’s discretion. The name for this period is ‘preforeclosure’.

Foreclosure is completed when the defaulted property is auctioned. If there are no buyers for the property at auction, the property is returned to the lender. The designation of ‘REO’ (Real Estate Owned) is then attached to the foreclosed property.

Lenders usually try to unload their REO properties at close to retail price by listing their REO’s with a real estate broker. But as a consequence of the weak economy, lenders are frequently selling their REO properties far below their actual value. The trade-off is that the buyer must purchase multiple REO properties in each transaction.

These REO packages represent the potential to acquire huge amounts of equity for savvy real estate investors. Bulk REO Investors are most successful when they have a well-established source of funding for their REO packages. 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 Partners, a hedge fund in New York.