Realtor purchased Fannie, Freddie, HUD REOs?

[Avi Adler]

Hi- New BP member here and first forum post. I recently secured my Maryland Real Estate Salesperson license. In addition to representing buyers and sellers I am very very interested in building a portfolio of rental investor properties. I currently own 2 successful rental properties both purchased many years prior to becoming a realtor. While I've never purchased an REO property, many of the ones I've been recently looking at are REO.

Received a surprise last week when local brokerage of national real estate company informed me that their agents were not permitted to purchase Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or HUD properties. This applied not only to REO properties, but to ALL properties sold through these agencies or their affiliates. Furthermore, this restriction applied whether or not the property was their listing.

After taking a closer look at Fannie, Freddie's, and HUD materials it seems like the realtor purchase restriction is real estate company specific due to their status as a "listing broker for clients". As far as I can tell, while Fannie, Freddie's, and HUD all have 'disclosure requirements' for realtors looking to purchase properties they do not globally restrict realtors as buyers.

My questions to the BP community are:

1) are realtors able to purchase Fannie, Freddie, HUD REO properties? If so, can anyone share their experience with this this?

2) Are FM, FMAC, HUD less likely to sell to realtors even when disclosing?

** 3) Do you know which real estate firms allow their agents to purchase Fannie, Freddie and HUD REO properties?

Thanks in advance for any insights.