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.

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

Let’s take a moment to analyze the basics of this incredibly lucrative business.

Understanding the notion of Bulk REO’s requires understanding of the foreclosure process.

As a borrower becomes increasingly behind in his mortgage, the lender regularly calls and writes the borrower with default warnings and threats. Following a period of time determined by the lender, formal foreclosure proceedings begin. From that time through public auction is called ‘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 property then receives the designation of being an ‘REO’ or the more formal name, ‘Real Estate Owned’.

Local real estate agents are usually used to resale REO properties at retail price to the general public. However, lenders are increasingly willing to take much less than their REO asset is actually worth. The trade-off is that the buyer must purchase multiple REO properties in each transaction.

Qualified real estate investors are increasingly finding once-in-a-lifetime opportunities in these REO packages. 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 Salvatore Bushemi of Dandrew Capital Partners, a New-York based hedge fund.