I both work for a turnkey company and am a turnkey investor. I can say without hesitation that I won't be buying anything other than turnkey/new construction for my investment journey.
I know myself, I know my desire to do any of the work myself, and I know that if I follow the path I'm on then I'll end up where I want to go. Base hits win games. Home runs are great, but going for the home run ends in a strikeout a lot. I'd rather have a high On Base Percentage.
I've heard the stories of people who have bought low, BRRRR, and then have an insane amount of equity to put into the next deal. That's fantastic, but they tend to gloss over how long it took them to source the deal, the number of labor hours they put into the renovation, how much sleep they lost over it, and what they had to give up in terms of life/money(job)/others.
You want to talk about turnkey cutting into your margin? It's true you're buying at market value, but I'll still take a 10+% cash-on-cash with an even higher total ROI knowing that my work is close to nil. You're not getting ripped off; you won't get a loan if the property doesn't appraise.
I have property managers who I trust (granted I've fired a few to get to this point) and my total amount of time I put into managing my portfolio in 4 different markets is 1-2 hours per month. Total. I'll take that over spending 4-6 months full time flipping a house after calling 200 people trying to convince them to sell me a property.
Definitely do your due diligence, look over the inspection report, and make your list of deal breakers. The majority of the stories you hear about people getting burned are people who were convinced to skip inspections or accept the problems in them. Don't do that.
