Unlock 7 Secrets to Thriving in Turnkey Rental Properties Today

John Harcar (00:01.312)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with John Blackburn. And what we’re going to talk a little bit today is about turnkey rental properties. Hey guys, remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X your business by providing tools and resources to grow the business you want to grow, which helps live the life that you’ve always dreamed of. John, welcome to the show.

John Blackburn (00:19.118)
you

John Blackburn (00:28.472)
Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. Excited for our conversation today and see where this goes.

John Harcar (00:33.328)
Yeah, me too. I know I have a couple of rentals and I know that a lot of other folks are, even that even in the real estate space have thought about getting rentals because we know that real estate can build the wealth. But before we get into all that, do me a favor and tell our audience a little bit about you, kind of your background, how you got into real estate and kind of what got you here.

John Blackburn (00:53.934)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, back in 2005, 2006, we all remember those amazing years in real estate. One of my good friends from home was a real estate agent and I was in college and he convinced me to get my real estate license and any real estate agent could sell a house at that point in time. So I had immense success right out of the gates. then 2008, 2009 hit and life got a little bit ugly. I focused, I knew real estate was the game after I graduated college, but

John Harcar (01:00.464)
Mm.

John Harcar (01:12.634)
Sure.

John Blackburn (01:23.888)
being an agent wasn’t working any longer. So that’s where my focus turned to investing. just like everyone else, right? You start wholesaling, you do your first fix and flip, you see if you have the metal to handle the stress and you just grow up from there. over the years, I’ve been really lucky to create a lot of really amazing relationships, which has ultimately helped me expand and focus on rental properties.

John Harcar (01:40.996)
Mmm.

John Blackburn (01:53.76)
property investing, is really my core business for the most part.

John Harcar (01:59.652)
Got it, okay, so you’re listing properties back in, know, before the crash, the crash comes, you had to pivot, right? So what type of mindset did you have to have in that change? And then what kind of challenges did you come across as far as, you know, now getting into wholesaling?

John Blackburn (02:04.461)
Mm-hmm.

John Blackburn (02:17.741)
Yeah, I you know, I was a real estate agent. was 20, 21, 22 years old around those times, you know, and, and, you know, you’re, you’re broke, right? You barely have any credits, right? know, you get that first commission check for six grand and you think it’s the most amazing thing in the world. So, you know, by the time the market swung, you know, I didn’t know anything about economics. I’m just like, Oh, why can’t we get financing for houses anymore? Right? Like that was my mindset back then. And, you know, so you’re like, what are the other ways to do that? And, and, know, it’s like,

what everybody else does, right? You start Googling, you start looking for people that have done it already. And, you know, I was lucky enough to meet my mentors, Dan Merrill and Paul Sajan, who at one point owned Fortune Builders. They had moved to San Diego about the same time I did. And that’s what kick started me into the wholesaling and rehabbing game was meeting them, you know, meeting their team, learning their education and their process. And ultimately I, you know, went to work with them for a while.

John Harcar (03:00.528)
Mm-hmm.

John Blackburn (03:17.615)
for about eight or nine years but at the same time build a real estate investing business too.

John Harcar (03:23.748)
Did you seek out, Than and the other gentlemen, did you seek out a mentor or why was it important for you to find that piece versus, I mean, heck, YouTube you or any other information that’s out there on the internet.

John Blackburn (03:37.71)
Yeah, want to, I’ll give you the short but insider story, if you will. So yes, I was searching for a mentor. That was happening and I knew of Fortune Builders, I knew of Thane, I also knew of who was the guy in Texas, Montelongo I think in Texas and some other people in that industry at that point in time. And guess who moves into the condo across from me when I moved to California? Fortune Builders.

John Harcar (03:45.498)
Please.

John Harcar (03:56.931)
Mm-hmm.

John Blackburn (04:07.863)
CMO and at one point she turned into my wife. So she introduced, yeah there’s a backstory, she introduced me to you know.

John Harcar (04:13.449)
Whoa, okay, okay, okay. So there’s a little backstory there.

John Blackburn (04:21.459)
and I was like, my God, I was just looking at these guys on Google and now I’m at a barbecue with these guys. So that’s pretty awesome. You know, unfortunately, you know, that marriage didn’t work out, but you know, it changed the course of my life and the trajectory of investing. So I was actively looking and then the world conspired to put me in the right place.

John Harcar (04:42.32)
about to say, know, that that’s kind of the epitome of right place, right time, I guess, in a sense, and on all aspects, not just the ability to find these mentors, but a wife as well. So you start wholesaling, right? At what point did you kind of start thinking like, you I want to start stepping the game up, maybe doing some flips, maybe holding properties. I mean, what, where did that kind of process lead you or guide you?

John Blackburn (04:46.014)
Yeah, yeah.

John Blackburn (04:50.157)
Right now, right? Yeah.

John Blackburn (05:04.427)
Yeah, a few things. First was, you know, I started…

I started flipping houses very early on. I maybe wholesale a couple properties and I was like, all right, I need to get in this flipping game because it’s more consistent. I think personally it’s less work than wholesaling properties. So I jumped into that super quickly just because I wanted to find more consistency. I was really into it. Everybody wants to have their own HGTV show. that was the mindset, was like, like, you know.

John Harcar (05:13.69)
Okay.

John Harcar (05:23.632)
Mmm.

John Harcar (05:32.784)
Especially then.

John Blackburn (05:38.478)
I felt like wholesaling was kind of your entry level point. I wanted to move through that entry level point as quickly as possible. So that’s really how I went into the game. then after I started that, Than and Paul, at that point in time, they had flipped hundreds of homes. This was probably 15, 20 years ago at this point. Than had said something to me. was like, man, the biggest regret that I had, and this is someone who’s now worth $100 million, so how many regrets could

John Harcar (05:56.921)
Yeah.

John Blackburn (06:08.471)
somebody have at that point. But he goes, the biggest regret that I had man that I didn’t hold more properties that I purchased, right? It’s like if I could go back and make do anything different my real estate career that would be it. I took that to heart. I was like, shit, okay, I should probably listen to this guy. And that’s where my mind shift, mindset shift came of like I need to not only fix and flip and grow this business, but I also need to really pay attention to holding properties as well too.

John Harcar (06:10.052)
bright.

John Harcar (06:33.776)
Got it, okay. So when you’re flipping these properties, how many properties did you start buying? Did you keep every other one? Did you keep ones that just kind of fit your specific buy box or what you want to hold or?

John Blackburn (06:47.679)
Yeah, so I took a little bit different approach. So I was investing, like I was doing fix and flips and I still am today in Connecticut. And if anybody knows anything about Connecticut, it’s brutally expensive. It’s like Southern California, but with snow. So it doesn’t make sense to, don’t know why people would live there, right? High taxes, high property costs, so on and so forth. It’s not a really good rental market. So what I did was I basically said, hey, if I can stand on the gas on my flipping business,

I can get these big checks coming in and then I’m just gonna translate, instead of keeping every second property or keeping every third property, every third property I sell, I use those proceeds to go buy a rental in a good market. So that was the process that I took and that’s how I kinda got into the turnkey game because I was like, I’m focused on growing a business, a lot of my clients are focused on their W-2 job, but we still wanna invest in real estate, so that’s the…

direction that I went with it.

John Harcar (07:49.744)
What were the challenges of flipping on the other side of the country?

John Blackburn (07:55.513)
Um, I don’t… Yeah, you know what the funny thing is? I don’t know the difference, man. Like, I’ve never flipped a house where I could drive to it and just see it, right? So it’s like, everyone’s like, what were the challenges? I was like, I don’t know what the challenges would be different from doing it your backyard.

John Harcar (07:55.952)
Because a virtual flip is not easy, I can’t imagine.

John Harcar (08:01.68)
Really?

John Harcar (08:06.266)
Hmm, okay. Okay, right?

John Blackburn (08:15.573)
I had my project manager, I had a really, really good relationship with him. And that, I think that solved a lot of problems that you normally otherwise would have. I just had a really awesome project manager. I have a second project manager now that’s just as equally as amazing. they handled 99 % of it from a boots on the ground standpoint. They’re my eyes and ears. I trust them fully. And that allows me to just focus on acquisitions and business strategy.

John Harcar (08:44.236)
Okay. So your project manager is the one that would bring all the trades guys. They’d bring all the contractors and all that kind of stuff. So you’re just kind of like hands off and once you get a property, turn it over to them and, kind of, you know, I guess manage it from a 30,000 foot view, right? In a sense.

John Blackburn (08:49.995)
Yep. Yep.

John Blackburn (08:59.457)
Yeah, I mean, have SOPs in place, right? You know, our project managers put together all of the scopes of work. I sit down and review the scope of work and approve it with them. And then we have weekly meetings. We have one meeting every single week where we review each property, you know, budget, timeline, you know, any issues, change orders, things of that nature. And yeah, so that’s, we review pictures and obviously, and all of those things. But other than that, they manage everything in the day to day.

John Harcar (09:27.652)
Very cool. So what does your business look like now?

John Blackburn (09:30.958)
Yeah, so we fix and flip and still wholesale properties on a monthly basis, right? For me, direct mail is my bread and butter for…

Leads in New Haven and Hartford County. We spent you know, 20 30,000 direct mail pieces every month We do some PPL we do that and that’s that’s how we get the leads and we just crank and then on the other side of it so I have a second business where you know, I was Working with fortune builders, you know educating myself learning how to build a rental property portfolio like I just I saw this need like you know, we’re

or hoodwinked or undereducated in terms of how to invest in real estate or really invest at all period, whether it comes to stock market, crypto, whatever, you name it, we don’t know it, right? And real estate’s my bag. So we created this company called Turnkey Property Pros where we sit down with someone who wants to buy rental properties, build out an entire financial investing strategy for them, surrounded by rental properties, and then help them find and acquire those properties.

It’s kind the next evolution of what we’ve been doing the last couple years.

John Harcar (10:46.028)
it. And then, so I’m curious because, you know, I talked to a lot of folks and, you know, a lot of them do do some mail. What kind of response rates are you getting in mail? you know, have you seen those tick up? You know, have you seen them go down?

John Blackburn (11:01.237)
Yeah, I mean, we’re always tested measuring everything, right? You know, I think industry average right now is half a percent for direct mail. For us, we try to keep it at just above a percent, right? You know, if we fall behind that percentage, that usually means that, you know, either that list or that mail piece is getting fatigued. And depending on how long each one’s been running, we’ll adjust one or the other to kind of see. yeah, I mean, you know, direct mail.

Direct mail is obviously not the highest response rate, but what I’ve always found is direct mail is consistent as heck. If you put mail on the street, you will get phone calls and you will get deals. Like if I say, if I’m gonna do 30,000 mailers, I’m gonna walk away this month with six deals. We just do that and that’s how it works.

John Harcar (11:38.554)
Mmm.

John Harcar (11:51.17)
Okay. Okay. And I don’t think I asked this before. Why specifically did you choose Connecticut or how did you choose that as a virtual market?

John Blackburn (12:01.043)
Yeah, well, we had talked about earlier, you know, I had met at that time my wife and that’s where she was from. She was from Connecticut, actually. So that’s, I was from Pennsylvania, she was from Connecticut. You know, she had family in Connecticut. So I started to still just invest there because it was easy. And yeah, and you know.

John Harcar (12:10.156)
okay.

John Blackburn (12:24.905)
Even a marriage later, I’m still investing there. I still love the market. It’s a super popular market. It’s still really a seller’s market at this point in time. So we love investing there.

John Harcar (12:35.118)
Right. What do you think are important things for folks to look at when they’re gauging or looking at a virtual market? Because, know, a lot of folks maybe want to think about the big markets, you know, the markets in Texas and Florida and maybe Vegas, but, know, some of these smaller markets, what are the key things to look for?

John Blackburn (12:46.273)
Mm-hmm.

John Blackburn (12:53.781)
Yeah, for me, I’m always gonna look at cost, right? What is…

What is my price point? What is my buy-in? So I always like to mitigate my risk. I always like to invest and flip properties where my ARV is within 20 % of the median home value. Because our median home value is where our biggest buyer pull is. That’s always gonna be where most people, the majority of new buyers are gonna be able to afford. So I wanna look at that. Like in San Diego, our median home buyer price point is like $750,000 $850,000.

John Harcar (13:28.688)
I’ll say a million bucks.

John Blackburn (13:30.51)
Yeah, it’s like insane, right? And you’re like, I have to spend that much money to do this property, right? Where in Connecticut, that median is like 350, right? And you’re like, okay, I can get in at two, I can do a renovation and be out at 350. So that helps to keep my risk down, right, number one. And then number two, if you really wanna dig deep, then you can start looking at the economics of a city, right? Population growth, you know.

John Harcar (13:31.824)
Right

John Blackburn (13:55.522)
what type of socioeconomic anchors jobs are in those areas, right? What’s driving that economy, whether it’s in decline or increasing. So there’s several things, but first I would always start with price, and then from there, you can move on to the economics of the city themselves.

John Harcar (14:12.336)
And with these smaller markets, right? It’s probably maybe a more case of you you might be known, you know, people might talk. It’s a smaller market, right? So how did you go in and brand yourself in there? Obviously not being in Connecticut. How did you brand yourself into that virtual market?

John Blackburn (14:29.389)
Yeah, you know, one thing that…

you do over years of investing. When you start out branding yourself, for me, I never worried about branding myself. I never worried about having my face on a billboard. I was like, just need my first deal. Let’s go get our first deal and that’s all that matters. And what happens is over time, you start to see a correlation. You and I were talking about before the call, data. So the same list you mailed to is the same list that you’re cold calling is the same list that you text.

messaging, they’re the same type of people that you’re doing TV commercials to, which we’ve done all of this over the years, right? So, you you just you show up in front of these people in nine different ways and then that creates the brand, especially with sellers. And for me, I don’t really care, you know, what my brand is to other real estate agents or whatever. I just want sellers to know my name, right? And by, you know, one, giving yourself time and two, exercising different marketing avenues, you know, you’re ultimately, even though it’s not 100 %

John Harcar (15:24.016)
Yep. Yep.

John Blackburn (15:34.144)
perfect, but nine out of ten times you’re gonna be marketing to the same person through multiple different channels, right? Just because, you know, if you look at all of how AI pulls the stress data on each person, you’re just gonna wind up there, right? So, you know, that’s how you create your brand and name and then produce a good product at the end of the day. You know, I had, I was probably a year or two into the business and

John Harcar (15:48.624)
Mm-hmm.

John Blackburn (16:03.509)
I had a property inspector.

for one of my buyers that was coming in to buy a flip, property inspector called me after he did the inspection. He goes, hey man, you know, I normally don’t do this, but I just wanted to give you a call and let you know that you produce the best product in Connecticut out of any of the flippers that I’ve done inspections on. And I just want to say that I appreciate that for you. And I was like, man, I really, thank you. And he’s like, I tell all my buyers or all my clients that get an inspection from me for one of your properties that that’s the best.

John Harcar (16:24.464)
Wow.

John Harcar (16:29.231)
awesome.

John Blackburn (16:36.911)
renovated property in Connecticut and I was like couldn’t ask for more than that you know so produce a good product the word will get out

John Harcar (16:42.384)
Yeah, Yeah, let your results speak for themselves. That’s awesome. Inorganic branding is the best branding of all, right? When you’re not going out and forcing it on people, just from the fruits of your labor, per se, right? So let’s talk about your turnkey rental business, OK? So you created this. Why? Why did you see the need to have a turnkey rental business? Or why did you feel the need to create one?

John Blackburn (16:54.763)
Yep, exactly.

John Blackburn (17:04.022)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you know, why does anybody else, you know, create a business? Because usually the individual that’s creating the business had the need to begin with and then saw that more people had it, right? And I was in the same position, right? You know…

I’ve been in the turnkey space now for probably 11 or 12, 13 years. I’ve seen the good, the bad, the ugly. I’ve seen that if you jump online and Google, I wanna buy turnkey real estate, right? There is no governing body on what is good turnkey real estate and what is bad turnkey real estate, right? And the word turnkey is the most bastardized term in real estate at this point in time, right? For me,

John Harcar (17:40.772)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (17:45.898)
I am 90%.

John Blackburn (17:50.24)
definition of turnkey is fully integrated, like linearly, right? The same company that finds the house is the same company that buys it, that renovates it, that tenants it, that’s managed it. There’s a straight line of accountability across the board, right? But turnkeys use, oh, you know, I found it and then somebody else renovated it and somebody else is gonna manage it and you know, that’s when you get into this mess of like…

non-performance from the property. you know, one, I wanted to have the opportunity to provide a product to someone that was really good, right? That when you said you were getting a 12 % return, you actually got a 12 % return. And, you know, there’s so many people out there on a day-to-day basis that want to invest in real estate, but truly don’t have the time or really the desire to learn the ins and outs of it. But they’re like, I’d love to own real estate, but I don’t want to learn how to rehab a house, which I totally get. So, you know, that was, that was the base.

John Harcar (18:24.101)
Right?

John Blackburn (18:41.865)
premise for it is provide an amazing product and a service that I think is really wanted by investors across the United States.

John Harcar (18:48.248)
And how are you finding these clients that want to invest but don’t want to do any of this hammer swinging and all that type of stuff?

John Blackburn (18:54.263)
Yeah, we do all kinds of things. One, I come on podcasts like this. Two is we do direct paid marketing to consumers through…

you know, Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff. I do a lot of educating and talks with self-directed retirement companies. So I’ll go on and educate their students on, their clients on how they can use their self-directed retirement account to invest in.

rental properties. And lastly, we work with a couple of larger education companies, right? Like fix and flip education companies and educate their students on how they can invest. those are like the four or five main ways that we bring in clients to help service and help invest. Yep.

John Harcar (19:33.53)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (19:43.376)
Very cool. What kind of trends are you seeing in real estate here? You know now coming up the pipe etc

John Blackburn (19:51.074)
Yeah, I mean, you know, none of us have a crystal poll, but you know, I don’t see…

I don’t see real estate changing a whole lot in probably the course of the next 12 months. that, you know, we’ll see what happens after this 90 day tariff stay, you know, surpasses, you know, that could definitely adjust things, but, you know, the only thing that I think could arguably adjust real estate at the moment is if rates are drastically lowered and, you know, the Fed and our current administration are not seeing eye eye on that. So I don’t think anything’s going to happen anytime soon. So.

I think we’re just gonna hang out. Some markets are still seller’s markets, some markets are buyer’s markets, if you look at Florida and Texas. I think it’s just gonna kinda be the status quo for a while.

You know, I always say this, there’s never, perspective gives us the opportunity to learn, right? And the best learning that I’ve come at from starting in 2006, To being 20, 25 right now is always say, if you bought a house in 20, 20, 10, or sorry, if you bought a house in 20, 2006, in 2010, you were really, really, really pissed off. You bought that house in 2006, right?

But in 2025, you’re really, really, really pissed off you didn’t buy as many houses as you could in 2006, right? So that’s perspective, right? Like just buy real estate. Like that’s the end. I don’t care what the rate is, just buy it. That’s the end of story.

John Harcar (21:16.032)
then yeah.

John Harcar (21:24.804)
Yeah, and a lot of people say, hey, I’m going to wait till things get better, know, maybe till rates lower. Well, what happens when rates lower? Prices go up. So, you know, it’s like. Exactly.

John Blackburn (21:32.045)
It’s called, you marry your purchase price and you date your rate, right? Because you can always change your interest rate, you can never change your purchase price. Who cares what interest rates are? Make sure the purchase price. Yeah.

John Harcar (21:42.032)
That’s 100%. I think that’s one of the better nuggets, better nuggets I’ve gotten on one of these podcasts lately. So what advice would you give to somebody that maybe wants to start getting into whether it’s turnkey, whether it’s flipping, investing as a whole? What advice would you say that has been a key to your success?

John Blackburn (22:01.599)
I I hear all these people talk about mentors, right? mentor, I don’t think is the right term or the right type of person that you need to support you, right? What I would call is someone that is going to hold you accountable. Because I can go on YouTube and learn everything.

John Harcar (22:23.034)
ability.

John Blackburn (22:27.883)
Right? You know, I can go and, you know, get on…

you know, all these forums or, you know, go pay, you know, $99 a month to have a membership somewhere and get the education I need. But what happens is people, you know, they tell themselves that information gathering is action and it’s not, it’s just information gathering. And, you know, I would rather have someone that knows nothing about real estate, but it’s willing to shove their foot up my butt every week and tell me like, go do this. You spent all this time, go do this, right? So find someone that will hold you accountable. If they know, if they’re a master at what you’ve already

John Harcar (22:56.762)
Yes.

John Blackburn (23:02.763)
done awesome right but you know instead of going and looking for a mentor go and look for someone that’s gonna hold you accountable right friend family partner you know or someone who is in the real estate profession like that’s that’s the biggest thing because if you’re not held accountable you’re not gonna you’re not gonna get things accomplished

John Harcar (23:20.612)
You’re not going to do anything. You’ll be stuck in that analysis paralysis. No action equals equals no reward. So, well, man, any other last words of advice you’d like to give our audience? Or plug a plug for for I know for your website, your turnkey business.

John Blackburn (23:24.077)
100%.

Yep.

John Blackburn (23:32.939)
Yeah, I mean it just goes back.

John Blackburn (23:39.128)
Yeah, well first and foremost, know, guys, the best time to invest in real estate was yesterday, right? Whether, you know, you and I work together or, you know, the only reason you’d probably be watching this is because you are in that mindset of you want to buy real estate, right?

The art of investing in real estate is very simple, right? The difficult part is taking action, right? And that’s what you just need to be really good at. Not really good at investing in real estate, but really good at taking action. And for our team, everything we do is 100 % complimentary, right? We get paid if you buy a house. So it’s our job to make sure you’re educated and excited and know how to buy real estate. if you want, if you’re interested in investing in rental properties, turnkey property,

pros is plural.com so turnkeypropertypros.com. You can jump in and set up a time to chat with me or someone on my team and we can kind of figure out what your goals are for rental property investing and go from there.

John Harcar (24:41.358)
Awesome. Great information. John, thank you for coming on here and sharing all that. Guys, I hope that when you’re listening to these, you’re taking some good notes because he dropped some great nuggets. Really, think that accountability piece is huge to take action. John, thank you again for coming on, folks. I hope you guys had a good show. I know I did. And we’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

John Blackburn (25:03.143)
Absolutely, I see it.