are REO, HUD owned, Lender owned properties worth the squeeze?

[Leo Gregoire]

I'm working with an investor client who is particularly interested in fix & flips. we've come across a number of lender owned / HUD owned properties with steep discounts. I'm working with my brokerage to get myself HUD registered so that we can bid on the HUD properties but my question is to anyone who has dealt with these lender/government owned properties before; are they worth pursuing?

i understand that's very general and each is a case by case basis; we've viewed a couple of them. They were abandoned and needed significant work which wasn't a huge issue but in terms of HUD owned properties i heard there can be significant processing periods. Could these waits be mitigated by going the hard/private money route?