starting turnkey real estate investor

[Yu Chen]

I've just started my turnkey investment. wanted to document the experience and have anyone who's interested give me some pointers and constructive criticism. Thank you!

I’ve been doing extensive research for the past few months: reading articles online, listening to podcasts, watching youtube videos, etc. I’ve also made phone calls to agents, I think I’ve finally ready to move forward with Turnkey Real Estate Investing. Since I’m a physician, with busy work schedule, I think investing in turnkey will be the best strategy for me. Prior to this, I’ve invested in stocks, I’ve made some good money over the years, however, investing into bitcoins/altcoins has drained my profit I’ve made in stocks. I’ve learned an important lesson of not diversifying my portfolio. Currently my funds are tied up in bitcoins as in if I pull out now, I would loose a huge amount because I bought at it’s highest point in late 2017/early 2018. And with the current volatility in stocks, I decided real estate should be my main focus in terms of wealth building. Finally now that I’m done with residency and have a stable job and steady income, I have some extra cash flowing in that I can save up and start my real estate investment journey. I would like to use this blog to document this journey and share with whomever cared to read about it.

After talking to multiple turnkey providers, I’ve decided to go with Bridge Turnkey. I had a great conversation with David on the phone. He seems like a great guy, he wants to build a long-lasting relationship with me, and wants me to succeed in the business with his help and in term also help his company grow. He asked me many questions about my goals that other providers didn’t care to or wanted to ask. I think I will move forward with him and see how it goes. He and his partner is based in Kansas City so I will start there. I think the team that you work with is just as important if not more important that the properties that you buy. My current goal is to look for properties in the $100k range that rents $900-1100/mo, aka B neighorhoods.

But first things first, getting myself a lender and get pre-approved.

I’ve been in contact with Highlands Mortgage to get pre-approved for a mortgage loan. Due to some personal finance reasons, my savings got tied up and I was not able to meet the requirements of the lender in savings, therefore I had to wait awhile for my savings to be replenished. now I have enough in my bank account I was able to move forward.

The loan approval process was quite extensive (in a good way, we do not want a repeat of 2008), they required 2 months bank statement, pay stud, w2s, now they are running my credit report, I should be getting my preapproval rate soon.

In the meantime I was also in contact with my turnkey provider, Bridge turnkey. Shane was my contact person, he has been quite helpful in answering all my questions. He had originally showed me 2 properties based on my criteria (first two below). Of course I wanted to do some more research for the neighborhood, I was able to find some info on zillow, trulia and some census data websites. Because of the pricing and location, I was leaning towards the stark ave property. After talking with Shane, he felt that I might like another property which he promptly showed me. Within the week of my trying to decide, I found out that the Stark Ave property has already been sold… This kind of sped up my decision process, so I went with the 3rd property. I've posted some of the numbers below. Let me know what you guys think. I'm in the process of closing this deal.

Cap rate	6.47%
CoC return	6.59%
rent/price ratio	1.00%
house price	$109,950.00
cash injection	$21,990.00
closing cost	$3,000.00
rent	$1,095.00