Book excerpt: Buy bank-owned properties at fire-sale prices! Banks and lending institutions today own more than one million foreclosed properties, more are in the foreclosure pipeline. Banks desperately want to get these properties off their balance sheets, but there aren't enough buyers. The result is a soft real estate market with prices investors and homeowners may not see again in their lifetime. In recent years many bargain-hunting investors and homebuyers made the mistake of trying to get foreclosure prices via short sales and pre-foreclosure-- before the bank reclaimed the property. They've been burned by endless delays and uncertainty of the messy foreclosure process. With bank-owned properties, that's over. You deal directly with a motivated seller—the bank—and get the foreclosure price without the hassles and complexity of a short sale or pre-foreclosure. This book shows you how to negotiate the best possible terms with the real estate owned (or REO) department of a bank or lender, including step-by-step instructions and no-nonsense advice on finding great deals, estimating fair market value, and closing the deal. You don't need a ton of cash, because REO investing at fire-sale prices is affordable for almost any investor or homebuyer. Provides detailed, step-based guidance on buying REO properties Written by a super-successful REO investor with fifteen years of experience