REO Investing in 2026: How to Find Distressed Real Estate Deals | Windy Keefe

Windy Keefe (00:00)
REO has slowed down a little bit. I am seeing an uptick. And one of the things I wanted to get the word out is that the skills and brokers, I mean skills and work that an REO broker does, it’s very similar to what an investor would need. When you get a property from a lender or a bank, one of the first things they need you to do is do an opinion of the value.

And also is it occupied? Is somebody living there? And you may have an investor that has just bought a property maybe on auction or something. They live in another state, but I want to get this listed and sold so they can find an REO broker to do the same thing.

Scott Bursey (02:08)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. Glad you’re with us. And today we’re pleased to be joined by Windy Keefe, who brings more than two decades of specialized operational experience in default servicing, distressed assets, and default real estate management.

As the business development manager at REO Network, Windy has played a pivotal role in expanding nationwide connections between asset managers, financial institutions, and top-tier real estate professionals. Listeners, you can expect a clinic on navigating market cycles, positioning yourself in default real estate, and building high-value industry partnerships. Windy, welcome to the show.

Windy Keefe (02:48)
Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (02:52)
It is awesome having you here, Windy, and to help our listeners get up to speed. Please give us the ninety-second highlight reel of how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Windy Keefe (03:02)
Yes. 24 years ago, that’s how long it’s been since I’ve been with REO Network. I have a good friend Dwayne Andrews that started the site and he was an REO broker in the San Francisco Bay Area. And banks were asking him, do you know other REO brokers across the United States? And he created this website called REO Network. And I’ve been running the site since 2002.

And it’s a directory of real estate agents and brokers all across the United States that specialize in listing these defaulted properties or distressed assets.

Scott Bursey (03:37)
That is a journey. Thank you for sharing that. And Windy, what really caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to scale nationwide membership and strategic sales initiatives at REO Network while keeping those personal high trust connections alive across thousands of brokers and asset managers. And really expanding off that. Curious to know what do you consider the ultimate core strength of REO Network when helping asset managers and credit unions execute efficient default real estate dispositions?

Windy Keefe (04:12)
We definitely we screen our brokers and agents for experience listing default properties. And I definitely you mentioned I’ve been here a long time, I’ve made these connections. A lot of these brokers and agents have become good friends over the past several years, and I’ve reached out to them personally trying to help sometimes a lender will come to me and say, “Hey, can you help me find a good agent in such and such area?”

We do have really good coverage of brokers and agents all across the United States, Alaska, West Virginia. I’ve been very proud that we’ve been able to build that database. And one of the things that I’m noticing, which is why I wanted to get the word out, is more and more investors are using REO Network to find good REO brokers and agents to list their properties, and I can help with that. I’m excited about that.

Scott Bursey (05:00)
Windy, looking at that key advantage, how do you continuously ensure your broker and vendor network maintains that elite standard as market demand shifts?

Windy Keefe (05:11)
Yes, that’s a great question. I am constantly trying to put the word out to our brokers and agents of best practices, what I’m hearing in the industry. I do go to quite a few conferences and networking events to find out what is going on. How what are asset managers, banks, hedge funds, investors, what are they looking for in brokers and agents to work with? What kind of prompts you to call one person and continue to use them, and what kinds of things are they doing? I’m always trying to work with our broker network to let them know, hey, here’s some tips. This is what you should be doing. And the brokers and agents that have been using these tips and things that we’ve talked about before, they do seem to be over the past twenty-four years still working in the business. I’m I’m super proud of that that I’m constantly trying to educate them.

Scott Bursey (06:01)
Appreciate you breaking that down and love to hear. Where do you see the most potential for REO brokers and default servicing specialists falling short when trying to stand out to institutional sellers?

Windy Keefe (06:17)
Mm-hmm.

REO has slowed down a little bit. I am seeing an uptick. And one of the things I wanted to get the word out is that the skills and brokers, I mean skills and work that an REO broker does, it’s very similar to what an investor would need. When you get a property from a lender or a bank, one of the first things they need you to do is do an opinion of the value.

And also is it occupied? Is somebody living there? And you may have an investor that has just bought a property maybe on auction or something. They live in another state, but I want to get this listed and sold so they can find an REO broker to do the same thing.

What do you think this what giving give me your opinion of value? Is this property occupied? And if it is occupied, a lot of these REO brokers, they know what to do with that, they know their local laws.

They know how to process if they have to do the eviction. They know how to work with local law enforcement. They’re just used to problems like that. These skills that you have working with the bank, they work very, very well with listing a problem asset that an investor might have too. They know what to do.

Scott Bursey (08:08)
Digging just a little deeper on that, Windy, what is one simple operational adjustment a broker can make today to fix that gap?

Windy Keefe (08:17)
I think that you can write out a plan to figure out what to do what if I get an investor that calls me today and says, “Hey, I’ve got a property in such and such area. Can you list it for me?” And ’cause sometimes we get a lot of people that that say they’re investors and they’re not, but sometimes they’re like, “Who are you? What is” and they can have a plan ready going, “Okay, let’s get a BPO together” and you should be ready to do that. Let’s talk about what a list price. I can drive by the property and you can ask the investor a few questions. Do you normally, how many properties have you purchased? If you kind of want to phone interview them, if you because you want to start to build that relationship with that investor, that eventually you’re their that broker is their go-to person all the time on there, and they’re your boots on the ground person. I think a broker and agent just needs to prepare ahead of time for that call and be ready for it.

Scott Bursey (09:12)
Great piece of practical advice right there. And Windy, curious, where do you see the biggest untapped opportunity right now for real estate pros looking to capitalize on distressed asset inventories?

Windy Keefe (09:27)
Definitely you want to just to kind of I already touched on a little bit is build a good relationship with a real estate agent or broker. Eventually you want to be that person where the investor goes to that broker and says, “Hey, I’m thinking of buying this property. Can you take a look at it?” And then that broker is saying, “Sure, I would love to do that.” Because then that investor is helping him get listings, then that agent is looking out for him. And you just wanna make sure you have this good relationship together. I think that’s huge. This industry’s like that. You just gotta build those relationships. I know everybody wants the business right away, but it does take some time to build those relationships, especially if you’re an investor that’s in one state and you wanna kind of expand and let’s say you’re in California and I wanna buy properties in Texas and you want to build a good relationship with that real estate agent or broker. And it can go both ways. I mean the investor can interview the broker or agent and the broker and agent can interview the investor, but they can I’ve just seen this happen organically where they just have this really good partnership where they’re helping each other make money basically make good deals.

Scott Bursey (10:37)
And stepping back for a second, what macroeconomic shift or regulatory hurdle poses the biggest external challenge to default real estate management over let’s say the next year?

Windy Keefe (10:51)
Well, I am noticing a trend if if let’s say lenders have a lot of default on their books that they’re selling it off to investment companies. And then it kind of pushes that timeline down because people will be there’s a lot of foreclosed property in my area, but I don’t see them coming on the market. Well, I am kind of seeing this trend of them selling them off.

And then it’s the investment company’s property problem. And then they’re doing different things. Sometimes they’re renegotiating loans, sometimes they’re selling it, but then the whole process starts all over again. And they are pushing it down the timeline a little bit longer, which is why you might see some people are still staying in their homes for years because the timeline’s being pushed off.

In some states too, you have to go through the court system to get everything done, like New Jersey, I believe, New York’s another one, Florida’s another one. That and that takes a long time too for that process to go through. Although what I’m hearing is they’re just now starting to see properties come on the market that were foreclosed on in like 2019, 2020. So it is starting to pick up a little bit. But just the timelines being pushed down a little bit is is what’s what’s happening. Then you also get a lot of vacant properties. They’re just sitting there, abandoned. And nobody likes that for their neighborhoods too.

Scott Bursey (12:49)
Thank you for keeping our listeners ahead of the curve on that. And Windy, navigating through that uncertainty, what proactive steps should default professionals take right now to protect their business?

Windy Keefe (13:02)
Yeah, you I mean again, you always want to be prepared for anything. REO brokers are expected to have their own like vendors on hand, like contractors, lawn maintenance, property preservation. I would start getting those together. It used to be that lenders or big investment companies would have their own contractor group that they’d want you to use, but now I’m finding a shift where they want that agent or broker to have people on hand.

It the whole process goes faster if the broker or agent can say, “Hey, I’ve got a contractor that can here’s the bid, this is how much they cost, and we can move forward with it now.” Definitely make sure you got those on hand. Start getting really, really good at like BPOs, which stand for broker price opinions. They’re like CMAs. BPO is another common word used in the REO industry. Get really good at doing those.

And because it’ll just help you really get to know that market well. And you just want to start getting prepared. You need to have something that you can keep track of tasks, receipts, some sort of internal management platform. Cause you’ll easily start paying for stuff and then lose track of, “Okay, what was I supposed to get reimbursed for?” Because I will say the REO broker, most of the time they’re expected to kind of pay for let’s say a repair, but they get reimbursed at closing, but you better keep those you better make sure it was approved and you better make sure you kept that receipt. You gotta have some sort of management task platform to keep track of that. Having a really good staff helps too. I mean, everybody kind of knows that and just keeping track of who you need to get back to. Just being prepared ahead of time for those things.

Scott Bursey (14:39)
Sound strategy. Yeah. Shifting gears for a moment. How do you balance maintaining top-tier vendor relationships with expanding nationwide scale across changing market cycles?

Windy Keefe (14:51)
Yeah. We do have some members on our site that do pay a little bit of extra to have to be the brokers pay extra to be featured at top. I do give them a little more extra care because I want them I want them to get the most amount of it. It’s kinda like when you do a Google search and people have paid for the ads at top, you wanna get them the most amount of traffic on there. When you search for a broker or agent on the REO Network, you’ll notice that some do show up at the top. And people, when they pay to be in that spot, they usually respond quickly and they paid to be there. So they want to get their money’s worth being up there. But they usually get the best service too. Those are the ones that I really try to make sure they know what’s going on. I keep in contact with them when they renew every six months. I usually keep in contact with them, how’s it going, who you’re getting calls from. They’re the ones too, I also get a feel of how each state is going. Like I’m noticing Florida is getting more and more REO, Texas too is getting more and more REO. I get that feel when I call them about how’s it been going, and do you want to renew your premium? How is it going? And those are the ones I do really I don’t want to say baby’s not the word for it, but take care of the most. Yeah.

Scott Bursey (16:02)
And expanding on that concept. How do you keep communication seamless across so many moving parts?

Windy Keefe (16:11)
Mm-hmm. Well, we do a lot of email. We do things like this and I do go to conferences a lot. I usually stick to the REO conferences, but I’m noticing more and more investors that are attending these conferences, purposely trying to meet brokers and agents to help them list their properties and things like that. A lot of these brokers and agents also do property management.

And we’ve encouraged the brokers and agents to mention that on their REO Network biographies if they do that. Property management, commercial too, that’s another one that’s been pretty popular. If they do that, we encourage them to mention that on their biography. But I try to just keep going to as many events and keep in contact as much as possible.

Scott Bursey (16:54)
Always great to hear how industry leaders manage scale. And building on that power of connection, what does your professional network look like right now?

Windy Keefe (17:03)
Ooh, we got over 6,000 REO brokers all across the United States. I believe we calculated about 98% of the population is covered on REO Network. And the reason why I mentioned that is sometimes it’s hard to find a broker and agent in very rural areas that want to do distressed assets. You can usually find them on REO Network. And if you can’t, there’s a pop-up that says, “Hey, email Windy and she’ll find someone for you.” And I do that all day long and all the time because if it’s not on our site, I want to find them and get them covered on there.

Scott Bursey (17:36)
Thank you for highlighting that, Windy. And to unlock the vault here. What is the single most impactful piece of operational advice you can give to a real estate pro looking to dominate in default servicing and distressed assets?

Windy Keefe (17:51)
Mm. Definitely don’t give up if it’s not happening right away. Like I said, building the relationships is what takes time. And if you find a good REO broker either on our site, REO Network, or somewhere else, keep in contact with them and you can make a lot of money between you and them and them listing your properties, being your eyes and ears for that area, they could help you out a lot of money. You just gotta not give up on those relationships. Also I forgot to mention, social media is big. I do try to keep in contact a lot on LinkedIn and you guys are welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn too. I just think the industry professionals are very active on LinkedIn. And I realize Facebook’s a little more personal, but that’s fine too. You learn things about me you might not want to know, but not bad things. But I keep it very professional on LinkedIn. But I do think that social media is important. I know it takes time to do that, but just a little post or just something of, “Hey, I read this article and this is what I think,” but I make a lot of connections on there.

Scott Bursey (18:55)
That is pure gold right there, Windy. Thank you for dropping that wisdom. And you have dropped a tremendous amount of wisdom here today. But is there any additional words, golden nugget or two that you’d like to leave with our listeners?

Windy Keefe (19:09)
I just want to encourage investors to use REO Network because the brokers and agents on that site know how to work with problem properties and they’re good about getting the problems have solutions before they even happen and they know and if a problem comes up that’s just a regular Tuesday for them and they know how to handle it that here this is some solutions this is what I would do.

And if you’re looking to expand in other states, REO Network would be a great place to go and reach out to me anytime if you’re looking for a good listing agent. It’s free to do a search on the site. You don’t have to always reach out to me, but it’s free to just do a zip code search on there. But my email is also on the website if you need to reach out.

Scott Bursey (19:53)
Okay, excellent. And just to recap, Windy, real quickly here for our listeners, what is a couple additional ways for them to contact you or the best ways? What’s the best way for them to plug into your pipeline and reach you directly?

Windy Keefe (20:06)
Yes, reach me directly. I’m at Windy—and I do spell my first name a little bit different, it’s [email protected]. [email protected]. That’s because my hippie parents spelled it that way, but that is the right way. People always ask me, “Is that spelled right?” Yes. [email protected] is the best way to reach me. My direct phone number, you’re always welcome to call me, but it’s 866-316-4690. If I call you, you probably think I’m spam, but that is my direct number, 866. And that’s all on the contact page of REO Network.

Scott Bursey (20:39)
Windy, thank you so much for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Windy Keefe (20:43)Thank you very much for having me. I was honored to be here, thank you.

Scott Bursey (20:46)This has been an absolute masterclass. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be filling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Windy Keefe, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. See you in the next episode, everyone.

Windy Keefe (21:07)Thank you.