Ok so I ran into a home where the owner has passed away about 1year ago.

So your picking up a potential 6,000 in gross rent minus ongoing costs and heavy management of tenant types in a higher crime area.I do not touch anything low end anymore.

I do have several on going rehab projects in Alabama as well so I can help to connect with a local HUD consultant. 

If the people bringing the money don't have an ongoing active role in the deal, it is a syndication.

I ran into an issue of some birdie whispering in my investor's ear that this area is a "dead zone" but failed to present ANY evidence to back this up.

The homes had been poorly maintained, took forever to rent (so they kept lowering the price,) and the tenanted units had several ongoing problems (mold, roof problems, mechanical issues, bad windows, etc.)It took us about 6 months, but we were able to get most of the homes up to market rents, almost all vacancies were leased in less than 2 weeks since we took over, some tenants renewed their leases when they had planned on moving because things are now getting addressed.I just spoke with this owner last week and it appears that they are going to have nearly an $11k gross increase from their portfolio over previous years, but they have spent about $35k this year to correct some problems that had been previously ignored.

I served for 4 years and deployed one time to Iraq.

I never said I ran numbers after seeing pictures...I said ...

One of those skills can be money, but you said you don't want to passively invest because you won't learn anything (which isn't necessarily true - although you won't learn as much if you did the deal yourself, you will still learn a lot from attending the new deal offering conference call, asking questions about the deal before investing, and reviewing the ongoing updates and financials).

I ran some analyses with the Biggerpockets rental calculator, and pretty much any property ends up having minimal or negative cash flow.