A turnkey real estate investment is an income producing rental property that has been completely renovated and is cash flowing at the time of purchase, with a reenter and property management already in place.

Investing in turn key real estate is much like investing in the stock market. Your initial capital investment is made with the anticipation of future monies earned.

A true turn-key experience provides cash flow from the day of purchase, is entirely hands-off, and is a completely passive investment. You don’t coordinate repairs or receive phone calls from renters. You simply realize your monthly returns while building wealth through real estate.

We’re here to be your experts every step of the way and to make the process as fast, easy, and profitable for you as possible. We make it our business to be familiar with the best lenders that will give you the lowest rates and costs within the realm of people that actually get deals done.  For that reason, like all turn-key providers, we work exclusively with about a dozen lenders with a proven track record of closing deals in our markets. 

Each month we analyze the closing documents of every property we sell and review the actual rates and closing costs our investors received and use that information to curate the list of lenders we recommend to you when you get to the top of the list so that you’re primed to get the very best loan terms out there!

For every beautiful investment property we offer you, we have already matched a highly qualified renter who has placed a deposit, typically they have either just  moved in or move in during your purchase process. 

We want you to cash flow on your property right away, and even though most deals will have cash flow from the day you close,  we even guarantee you’ll cash flow within 30 days of closing, which you can read more about in the Our Guarantees section.

bility to pay is king, and we have the strictest renter criteria in our markets. If a renter is approved with our management company, she’s a renter that would get approved with any management company in town, within the limits of the renter’s income. 

We check all three credit bureaus, (most property management companies only shell out the money to check one bureau) we do a deep dive to verify employment and income (which must be at least three times the monthly rent), we conduct a criminal background check (anything other than traffic violations will disqualify), check with the previous landlord, look for bankruptcy history, and more. 

Our management team processes over 14,000 applicants a year! 

By the way, we qualify renters at no charge to you or the renter. This is pretty much a universal income stream for all property management companies who will often charge $50 or more  to each adult renter applying for a property.  By not charging this fee, we not only earn appreciation and loyalty from the renter, but we can take applications over the phone without hesitation, leading us to get a large pool of applicants for your houses. 

Mid South Home Buyers was founded in Memphis TN in 2001, as local investors began to prefer to buy properties Terry (the founder of MSHB) had selected and renovated himself, over spending nights and weekends away from their families. That business grew and grew, and in 2019, encouraged by repeated requests from our investors to explore the thriving market just 2.5 hours from our home base, we officially began offering our first renovated rental properties in our new market.

The two markets are almost completely interchangeably awesome. Great occupancy rates, low maintenance construction styles, high renter demand, and extremely business and landlord friendly states.

The minor differences between investing in the 2 markets are:

1. AR has state income taxes, TN does not. Your tax professional can help determine if you need to file in AR. While we cannot speak for every investor’s experience, most are able to arrange write-offs to fall below minimum income requirements to file.
2. Little Rock has slightly lower property taxes than Memphis. A typical $120,000 property in Memphis is likely to have around $1,200 in property taxes, where that same property in Little Rock will likely be closer to $700-$900.

For our typical complete rehab, we replace just about every major component in the property. We’ll install a brand new 30-year asphalt shingle roof, entirely new HVAC system even if the property did not have central heating/air before, new Bradford White 40 gallon water heater, entirely new kitchen cabinets, countertops, flooring, bath fixtures with tile surrounds, interior and exterior doors, and plumbing and electrical updates. 

Once in a while we’ll purchase a property where one or more of these components have already been recently replaced. In these cases, it doesn’t make sense to rip off and replace a 3 year old roof, or swap out 2 year old kitchen cabinets for new ones.  

In these cases we’ll keep these like new components and reduce the purchase price of the property to account for the loss of life expectancy of that item.  We might keep the kitchens and baths that were installed in 2020 and reduce the purchase price of the house by a corresponding amount to the age of the components (typically between 3k-8k) making these houses great for folks looking to improve their initial cash flows.

Only attorneys and CPA’s are licensed to give legal and tax advice, as well as liability and asset protection, so you will want to consult with a professional on this question. 

We see many folks hold their properties in their own names and utilize the affordable liability insurance options that come with homeowners insurance (and the Mid South team will get you a quote from our current insurer as a courtesy to you during your purchase process), and we see many folks choose to go the LLC route.  One reason we will get you a quote from our preferred insurance company is that they provide $1,000,000 in liability insurance with their default policy. 

For our many investors seeing conventional financing, be aware that conventional lenders will not lend to an LLC, so if you ever plan to refinance the property, an LLC would be an obstacle and even if you don’t plan to refinance, the property would need to be transferred after you closed in your own name. You can transfer them after lending is concluded, though. We see folks use liability insurance and umbrella insurance policies in these cases. 

For those that have decided that an LLC is right for them, we have great resources for you from recommendations for affordable formation options and a great title company that can do ownership transfers between you and your LLC for you. 

We  are honored to assist our investors in 40+ 1031 exchanges annually and are well set up to help you with yours. We know you may only have a short window to select your properties, but there’s no need to stress. We have the inventory and price ranges to help you utilize your funds and maximize your tax savings.  

Even if you need to purchase multiple properties to use your funds, we can help you identify the homes you’re looking for and get them under contract. You have a longer period to close after identifying your properties, but since our properties are renovated and newly occupied, typical cash buyer  closing times are only 2 weeks and only 4 weeks for financed purchases. 

We can also recommend a fantastic qualified intermediary to help you with your exchange and make sure all the boxes are checked on that complicated but very beneficial process.

Once  you request a property, we’ll send you a short purchase agreement via DocuSign. Once that comes, we’ll kick off a series of emails to get everything fully going.  

We send the purchase agreement to the title attorney’s office to get started on title work and title insurance. 

If it’s a financed purchase, we’ll also send the purchase agreement to your lender to get started on the mortgage. 

We’ll get you a quote for homeowner’s insurance. You’re not required to use the provider we recommend, but we do shop around for the best rates – we want the very best cash flow for you!

We’ll also get you some additional photos over the property and get you some information about the renter(s) already in place at your property. 

Following that we’ll make weekly check-ins with all parties to make sure everything stays on track. Financed purchases typically take 4 weeks to close, and during that time your lender will let you know anything you need to send over, there will be an appraisal of the property, and then the clear to close. The closing attorney’s office will schedule a mobile notary to come to a location of your choosing for the signing and send wiring instructions. 

Cash purchases typically take 2 weeks to close. We’ll check in to make sure that title work is going smoothly and the title attorney’s office will send you closing documents via DocuSign and send you wiring instructions. 

After closing, we’ll connect you with our awesome  property management team to set up your online owner’s portal, auto deposit of your rents into a bank account of your choosing, teach you how to read your monthly report, and answer any questions you may have.

We have 1,085 homes out of our 5,000 under management that have been in their Mid South properties for 5-9  years! We have 500+ houses where the residents are at the 10 year mark or beyond. Our average renter stays nearly 3.8 years, and the national average is two. 

Both Tennessee and Arkansas are very “landlord friendly,” so the law is very much on your side. Evictions overall are rare for us, but at the same time, if you have ten properties for ten years, you’re going to experience at least one. People unexpectedly lose their jobs, or get divorced and are suddenly single head of household, “life” just happens, even though we do the deepest vetting of potential renters on the front end possible, sometimes people’s life circumstances change for the worse. 

Within your awesome future property management team,  we have a 2 person Renter Retention Team, similar to “collections”, only they’re operating backwards from what is best for you and for the renter, which is for them to get back on their feet and avoid an eviction on their record. If your rent is even $5 short, this team will go into overdrive, communicating with both you and your renter.  

On the rare event of your interacting with these folks, which you could go years without, it would typically be a partial payment and the person gets back on their feet after a short period of making extra payments to get caught up. Of course, if you can’t pay you can’t stay, as we say, and some folks hit a full stop in payment and they’re not a chance for catch up, and we will file and handle everything for you. How fast we act depends a ton on the prior history of the renter, their length of time in the home, and amount they are communicating with us and bringing in payments. The retention team are experts and have been with us for years, and are very seasoned in the behaviors of those that get back on their feet versus those who do not. If someone moved in, got their keys, and dropped off the face of the earth, we may file eviction quite quickly, due to our prior experience with that being a bad sign. On the other hand, say Mrs. Smith has been in the home for four years, paid on time that whole time while taking great care of the home, is missing work due to chemo treatments but getting seeking assistance from her church, or lost a job but is having many interviews and expects to get paychecks flowing very shortly, particularly if they’re finding ways to continue to bring in partial payments, we may work with that person for some months, with the end result that you close out the year 100% whole, with a grateful long term renter on your hands, and both of you better off and you having avoided the pain of the maintenance expenses of a get-ready and the cost of finding a new renter, and additional lost rent days. 

The only cost to eviction outside of the loss of rents and inevitable maintenance touch ups after move out is the filing fee and attorney cost, which comes in around $195 in total, there is no expense to it otherwise, and we handle everything for you. 

Luckily all of that is rare, and we do a great job on the front end. On average in a year, we collect 96-97% of the rent of our portfolio.

Mid South Home Buyers was founded in Memphis TN in 2001, as local investors began to prefer to buy properties Terry (the founder of MSHB) had selected and renovated himself, over spending nights and weekends away from their families. That business grew and grew, and in 2019, encouraged by repeated requests from our investors to explore the thriving market just 2.5 hours from our home base, we officially began offering our first renovated rental properties in our new market.

The two markets are almost completely interchangeably awesome. Great occupancy rates, low maintenance construction styles, high renter demand, and extremely business and landlord friendly states.

The minor differences between investing in the 2 markets are:

1. AR has state income taxes, TN does not. Your tax professional can help determine if you need to file in AR. While we cannot speak for every investor’s experience, most are able to arrange write-offs to fall below minimum income requirements to file.
2. Little Rock has slightly lower property taxes than Memphis. A typical $120,000 property in Memphis is likely to have around $1,200 in property taxes, where that same property in Little Rock will likely be closer to $700-$900.

Your property will automatically come up for rental analysis every year as you have existing renters in the property, and then outside of that, it will have a new market rental analysis at any and every turn over when it goes vacant. Your rent will be personally reviewed by our head property manager, and he a seasoned expert at the rental market in our area. 

It’s definitely something we’re extremely careful and precise about, and we have your rents lined up to the penny for the best performance possible. In general, our policy is not to raise rents on an existing renter after the first year of occupancy. This helps the renter put down roots, their kids become used to the schools and their friends, etc. 

 On average, rents have been increasing every 2 years or so, by an average of 5%, but it’s a delicate balance. If you’ve got an exceptional renter in the property, we may renew them at a $25 a month increase when if you went vacant, we’d remarked it at a $35 a month increase, but the person renewing their lease will save you a grand at least, so you don’t want to lose money chasing $10 a month. 

Our management team will automatically  these increases for you, but also they’ll be available to discuss their recommendations and what and why the market rent is where it is!