Bulk home buying anyone? Say, $1,500 a house?

As the glut of foreclosed homes swells, banks and other lenders are starting to warm to the idea of selling some of the homes in bulk to investors, a departure from the practice of selling homes one at a time. For the past year, investors have been eager to buy large numbers of homes from lenders at knockdown prices. Lenders have generally resisted that idea, but now some are trying it out on a small scale.

James Odell Barnes, an investor in South Carolina, says he and a group of investor partners recently paid about $1.2 million for a bulk purchase of about 800 homes from Fannie Mae. That works out to about $1,500 apiece on average. A large share of the homes were in Detroit and other depressed Michigan cities; others were in cities including Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Tenn., and Toledo, Ohio. Mr. Barnes says he quickly resold for about $50,000 one of the Detroit homes purchased from Fannie for $1,800. A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment, but the company has acknowledged an openness to considering bulk sales.