I was driving around looking at some reos and i was suprised to see an agent's sign and a phone number out front. Is this standard for agents to represent banks or was that unusual?

some lenders handle their reos and use an employee to represent the home, but some (usually bigger) lenders do user brokers to help them with their transactions. In this case the broker knows what the home is worth and will try and get as much for it as they can. Yoou can still get a discount in a situation where their is a realtor, but it usually wont be as significant.