Private investing like this seems like high risk high reward, you are off in the wild west where knowing people and trusting people becomes really important. You won't have the information needed to really evaluate the investment, so you just have to trust the people you're investing with. There's guys at my firm that are doing these apartment renovation and resale deals with like a 4-5 year time horizon, they buy some cracked out apartment complex, renovate it, get better tenants in, get the section 8 out, slap some paint on, and then try to resell it. They got a management company that has done it before and knows what they're doing.
But they want a million dollars as a minimum investment, they're doing $10-20M deals. And you don't get any of your money back and you can't access it for the 4-5 year time horizon. The contracts look solid and as an investor you have an interest in the apartment complex so they can't ice you out, but anytime you're dealing with a private deal like this it seems to me like it's all handshakes and trust and that scares me because people suck.