Hi everyone. So the company I've been using is Memphis Invest. I've been out to visit them a couple of times already and feel very comfortable recommending them.
The properties I bought were all outside of the downtown Memphis area, in the suburbs and all of them were in desirable areas. (I've confirmed this by talking with locals) The prices were all in the 80-100k range and rented for about 1% of purchase price. (E.g. My most expensive property, which was 99k, is renting for about 1050.) Note though that the prices have gone up since I bought, so the returns are now a little lower. But that's across the board, I think.
The insurance costs were not over-the-top compared to other areas (I'm looking at you, Cleveland!) and neither are the taxes. They used an "assessed value" method of taxation, so your assessed value be higher than the price you've purchased. In some of the neighborhoods, there is also a city tax. One of my properties has that.
All of the places cashflow about $300 / month after PITI (25% down) and mgt fees (9% of gross)
There are two things that are not optimal about this area, though.
First, the prices are low, under 100k usually. This means your mortgage slots will quickly be eaten up without much of a boost in DTI. Low amount mortgages also means that lenders really are not as enthused to work with you and it's more expensive to get the loans. I'm running out of headroom, so I'm trying to borrow more under one slot with my latest purchases. This means I really can't afford to get smaller loans anymore.
Secondly, there are a lot of older properties over there. I do have one from the 50s, my oldest, and in retrospect, I should have waited to get one from at least the 80s or better. Luckily, though, MemphisInvest often does replace furnaces, hot water heaters, etc. before they sell to you, so there's a lot of preventative fixes. And, because they do so much business, they would be able to do it more cheaply than if I hired a contractor myself. 2 years into it, and no maintenance problems on any of my homes. (One note: MI has recently broke ground on a new development, so they are getting into brand-new rentals too. ) I did hire an inspector for all the places and he had nothing but good things to say about their renovations, especially compared to other turnkeys.
As for vacancies and late payments, no vacancies yet. I really like MI's prop mgt. arm. MI usually does 2 year leases but they tell me most people end up staying for about 3. Vacancies are by far the biggest cost to landlords and from what I've heard from others, they've re-tenanted places of others in less than 30 days. (Part of that I think is that they really only buy in top areas, so it's much easier for them to rent. But, they are also really aggressive when it comes to re-tenanting)
I have had a couple of partial rent payments. This was communicated with my by their customer service dept. and they really handled it well. The next month everything was caught up.
I don't think it's really a "unicorn" to find a good turnkey. But, if you have the time and desire to do everything yourself and are actually right there locally, turnkey is not a good option. For me, though, I've done my own rehabs and although it was a fun project, ultimately it really was a waste of time and energy. Most importantly, though, doing it yourself doesn't scale. These REI projects are not for my health, they're all about how to quickly generate a solid passive income for FIRE.
Hope that helps!