@Melissa Callegari I thought about going the turnkey route myself. I met up with Allen Glass, who has done over 1 billion in real estate deals (see BP podcast 98), and he pointed out to me that when you go turn key, you miss out on a lot of the value add opportunities and also the margins. You basically pay someone else to find the deal (margin), flip the deal (margin), find the tenant (margin) and then you get what's left... if anything. You loose control, which is a big part of investing in real estate. If something goes wrong, then you have to fly out and fix it (loss of the little margin you had). Furthermore, many of the high cash flow markets often do not appreciate well, meaning slower wealth building in the long term. If you already exhausted your own market and want to venture out and don't mind getting less from the deals, then by all means go turn key., but I would suggest buying larger multi-families where you can put in property managers and use economies of scale. But at least starting out, I'm gonna take Allen's advice and go for where I can add value and maximize my gains, in my own backyard.
