By Dr. Jim Dahle, WCI Founder

A real estate syndication is an illiquid but passive way for accredited investors to invest in real estate. As a syndication investor, you won’t be getting 3am toilet calls, and you will never have to talk to a tenant. You don’t even have to ever lay eyes on the property. Once you make the decision to invest, your role in the investment will be limited to cashing the checks sent to you by the syndication. Who doesn’t want mailbox money?

While a syndication can be done with as few as two investors, a much more common structure is the typical legal maximum of 99 investors. Like with a mutual fund, the investors have banded together to enable some economies of scale, to hire professional management, and to acquire larger and more profitable properties than they could afford by investing alone.

A typical property