Just read a really great book that I’d like to recommend here: Investing in Real Estate Private Equity, by “Sean Cook” (a pseudonym for an active market participant).
The book is intended as a primer for (potential) passive investors in private real estate deals. It lays out all of the basic concepts, from pref to promote to fees, etc.
Some of these concepts are pretty complex. But understanding them is vital to figuring out whether the structure(s) in which you are considering investing are fair.
And I want to echo “Sean’s” point that many of the deals I’ve seen, both on crowdfunding platforms and via traditional word-of-mouth distribution, contain terms which are not fair to investors (along with assumptions about the performance of the deals themselves which are, to be charitable, optimistic).
Anyway, worth a read if, like me, you’re obsessed with this space.