As more and more people default on their home mortgages, REO properties are quickly saturating the national real estate market in the US. What are REO properties you ask? REO properties are properties that the banks have repossessed from the previous home owners and now have to manage themselves, on their own. Banks really dislike having vast portfolios of REO properties because they are not in the business of managing real estate assets; they are in the business of making money off lending out money.
So when banks are sitting on high volumes of REO properties they tend to mark them down significantly so that they can attract qualified and worthwhile investors who can then buy those REO properties from them. What this means for the avid investor is that if they look around for a bit they can actually get the best deals on REO properties that have ever been offered—as more and more banks look to liquidate their overwhelming REO inventories. For many who are looking to make good investments in homes, the time has never been more ripe!
