Although D neighborhoods may cash flow on paper, in reality these are more suited to very hands-on local investors.

When it comes to turnkey investments you are paying for convenience essentially you are approaching it like a stock or paper asset when it is very much not... meaning that at some point it needs to be actively managed and evaluated and etc., etc., etc. for example finding cash flowing investment properties which meet your ROI goal of 9% is NOT HARD heck almost every state (and likely every state) has a market which will achieve that but what does 9% mean without a dollar value if 9% is = to $200 or more okay that’s okay but if 9% means $25/mo. or alternatively if 50% ROI means $25/mo. doesn’t really matter much since although labor differs from area to area it doesn’t differ that much and also doesn’t really leave much room for error — so your minimum accepted ROI should also be couple within a minimum accepted $$ value (cash flow) and other minimums as well (i.e. min. equity, property types, property classes, etc.)Lastly as I mentioned achieving a 9% ROI is not hard and is achievable in every state; the HARDER part is to 1) achieve that AND 2) achieve 10-20% min.equity on the buy in or ARV AND 3) meeting your min. $ value AND 4) buying in a good/stable neighborhood/market AND 5) buying with some type of upside AND 6) etc. etc. etc. —- Again I’m not saying you have to do these things; it all depends what type of investor you are and what you are looking for however it is important to understand that if you shift the responsibility of either identifying the invest property or managing or any other aspect there WILL be a trade off — in this case the turnkey company has delivered on your goal of 8-9% ROI (projected... so TBC) and in return you have traded some of the other benefits of investing in RE for the convenience of not having to do much more than to look over the properties they have sent you and funding it from the comfort of your home, office, etc. ... again if this is the goal then you are on point but if the goal is to also partake in ALL of the other benefits of RE then you should understand that and not be surprised that it’s not a ‘stellar’ investment that checks all the boxes.

You can refinance sooner than that but you'll need to paper trail all of the improvement costs that lead to the increase in value.

In our price point and made sense on paper

The lender will need to be able to prove on paper that you can afford all those mortgages with your job income and the rental income that you have.

It wasn’t the perfect deal on paper. one unit needed some repairs, and the others were under-rented. but we saw the potential.

I will lay out my strategy on paper and meet with a lender.

If I gave you a list of 100 deals on a sheet of paper with just a few basic pieces of information you could apply the 1% rule and eliminate the vast majority of them and then only focus on a small number to consider evaluating further.

It would be helpful if you had your settlement papers. 

On paper they look great but in reality it's hard to make real wealth.