Bulk Buying Hot Deal of the Moment: Entire Houses

When Vena Jones-Cox entered the foyer of the once-grand Colonial-style home in downtown Columbus, Ohio, she stepped onto a wood floor that was so moldy and mushy that it actually wiggled. As Cox proceeded down the basement stairs, they disappeared from underneath her.

"I found myself lying on the floor," says Jones-Cox, 45. "Staring at a dead rat, by the way."

The house tour from hell didn't stop her from making an offer on the place. While she was at it, she bid on some other houses, too. Forty nine houses, actually.

She's paying $3,000 for each, a bit more than the cost of an Apple Mac Pro. "We're at a bottom," says Jones-Cox. "I mean, where else is there to go but up?"

As the greatest real-estate fire sale in the history of the United States rages on, the bulk buy is the dead hot deal of the moment. In some of the most foreclosure-ravaged parts of the country, it is almost as if the housing market has become the new big box store, with investors wiping out whole shelves at a time.

The idea is to arbitrage other people's misery. With the ranks of the rental class expected to swell, investors can buy houses at clearance sale prices, pour some money into repairs and then take advantage of the difference between their low cost of capital and the rent they receive. Often, they bank cash from day one.

Hedge funds and private equity shops like McKinley Capital Partners started to quietly become landlords by buying up inventory last year. Now Main Street investors are following suit.

"They aren't just buying one rental property," says Oak Park, Illinois realtor Kyra Pych. "This is a frenzy. They are loading up."

Pych has five clients who are in the process of buying more than one condo in Forest Park. Illinois. Units that sold for $180,000 during the boom are now going for as little as $13,500. So instead of putting that money into a retirement account, her customers are putting the cash into homes and renting them out.

In Detroit, the Midwest's aspiring Donald Trumps are buying bungalows for $500 each. In Atlanta, a group of Florida investors are in the process of buying the remaining 322 units in downtown Atlanta's swank, Art Deco Atlantic Residences, with room service and maids, near Atlantic Station. The prices start at $180,000.

In California, Waypoint Homes, which has already purchased 1,000 single-family homes, got $250 million in funding in January from Menlo Park private equity firm GI Partners for more bulk buys.

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