I am an eager real estate investor searching for an enthused partner to assist with creative ideas in an effort to build a solid real estate portfolio in the New Orleans market/ metropolitan area.

It took me 8 months of concentrated effort before landing my first one - now I'm working on acquiring property number 12 (most were flips - now I'm getting into rentals as well). 

As the Euroskeptics have been pointing out across the pond, we have these global elitists world government types, which the administration is fully part of, setting aside their domestic best interests, and taxpayer money, chasing some goal of a unified economy in which the rich and responsible help the poor and reckless (ala Greece).  

I am fairly new to this site and was just reading through the threads about becoming a real estate agent to assist with investing efforts. 

Since then I've spread some around a bit but still plan on sitting on lots of cash for the short term future given the state of the economy and the global dynamics that could push us into a recession until the fog lifts and we can get a better grip on which way the wind is blowing.

How do you know it's an absentee owner and what criteria do you use to determine if it's worth your effort?

Churches, alumni, fraternal & social work agencies, or organizations typically, along with thousands of arts, education, cultural & industry specific associations make a lot of effort to donate, or subsidize housing---in particular. if your mortgage is $ 300K at 6% apr using $ 2,500 a month in the first few years nearly $ 18K will be deductible. if you're renting to some tenants certain programs will filter far more inducements to both you and the tenant. obviously there are reasons that you'd most likely want to own units that cost $ 60K and rent for $ 1,500 a month to make even more sense out of these opportunities. when i was 23 my best friend a newly mented attorney, who lived with me pursued buying a 2 family home that the City of NY's Housing Development Preservation (HPD) offered us for $ 1. it needed about $ 150K of improvements. we were supposed to borrow the $ 150K at 1% interest under a very aggressive renovation schedule that returned the property to it's fully taxed  assessed value in 90 to 120 days; or we'd have to pay 2% apr for the sums we elected to borrow from an HPD aligned lender. my income was 3 times the lawyers; and i wanted him to live in another 26 unit apartment building we were developing under an even more lucrative program that allowed us to borrow $ 500K at 1%, if we ("I") put down $ 25K. i wound up renovating the apartment building on my credit cards and we walked away from the 2 family: due to the lawyer's reluctance to move into the apartment building. i actually felt that having him in my own apartment really confused the women that visited me.

However, I would also figure out some small compensation for the renter’s inconvenience, time and effort, even if the insurance makes them whole.Be firm, be fair.

That said, if you learn how to find and analyse a deal, you can bring a deal to someone with capital and experience and perhaps gain both an education and retain a small part of the deal for your efforts.5 If you were in my position right now with debt and credit score, what steps would you take to start investing?

And to anyone who insists on pursuing this, never, EVER pay any money up front for ANY service related to this effort.