What is "REO, Bev?" --I get that a lot, and I'll try to be concise:

REO = Real Estate Owned (by the bank). Put simply, whoever loaned out the money to "buy" the house in the first place, now owns the house.

Through a usually lengthy and expensive foreclosure process, generally culminating in a public auction, no one else buys the house at auction--private individual or investor-- so the "bank" ends up owning it.

From the point of view of the broker acting on behalf of a potential buyer to purchase the home after it has "gone back to the bank," there is every reason to believe that purchasing an REO property is easier than purchasing a short sale property, because most everything--the paperwork, the decisions, etc.--has been "worked out" and the listed price got listed that way as a result. When the property is still in the short sale "stage" the purchase price can often still be synonymous with a moving target, but that's my next blog entry!

Hope this helps,
BB