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Welcome! We are glad you're here--and we hope this community will prove helpful to you.

We created Syndirater to help both new and experienced investors to access private syndications. We're starting with private real estate syndications. There are many options for investors these days and we know it can be confusing.

For the new investor, Syndirater is meant to be a place to start. In this post, we'll say more about what it is like to get started investing in syndications. Experienced investors may want to skip ahead to posts on more advanced topics, use the directory to explore syndication opportunities, or sign up for the mailing list. We also plan a forum for discussions down the road.

Let's start with you. If you've found this page, you are probably someone who has invested before and you are looking for an alternative to stocks, bonds, CDs, and so forth. The world of private syndications awaits you! There are many potential benefits for those who want to put in the time and effort to learn about syndications and invest in this different way.

What is a syndication? Well, it's really just a group of investors who get together to make an investment that would be hard for any one person to make on their own. A syndication is typically a private, usually illiquid investment made by a group of people or firms in an asset (such as an apartment building) or assets (a group of apartment buildings).

In the simplest case, consider rental real estate. Maybe you bought a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home in Florida for $200,000 and have been renting it out for $1,500 a month. You make a few hundred dollars per month in passive income. That's not a syndication--that's just one person making an investment in rental real estate. But then you decide you'd like to grow your wealth more quickly. You've heard that multi-family investing can be more profitable than single-family rentals. You decide you'd like to buy an apartment building or invest in someone else's purchase of an apartment building.

Enter the idea of a syndication. There is a whole world of people--often called syndicators, operators, and sponsors--who offer investment opportunities of this kind in multi-family rental properties, among many other things. These investments often take the following form:

• There is usually a minimum, which might be $25,000, $50,000, $75,000, or $100,000, depending upon the deal. There are also companies that will allow you to invest with as little as $10, such as the crowd-funding site Fundrise.
• There is an anticipated hold time of several years. A typical deal might have a hold time of 3 to 5 years or maybe 5 to 7 years.
• These investments are typically illiquid--meaning you can't easily sell your investment to someone else, as you can with a stock or a bond--since they are privately traded.
• Syndications often pay you back through passive cash flow--"mailbox money" that you earn while you sleep and which hits your bank account every month or every quarter or on some other periodic basis--and then, if all goes well, when there is a "liquidity event."
• Payback of your capital investment plus a return may happen as soon as during the first year--some syndicators will refinance a loan, for instance, and send you back some money--or it may be after a 5 or 7 year hold period when the apartment building gets sold.
• The syndicator usually gives you a sense of what they expect: a "pro forma" which shows their expected return in terms of mailbox money on an ongoing basis, the timing of a return on your capital once the asset is sold or refinanced, and the timing of a return of your original capital.
• One thing to note: these estimates are just that--estimates. You may receive more or less than they show in the pro forma. There are no guarantees with most syndications.

Maybe you're ready to get started. You know you want to invest in a syndication. You know that a multi-family rental property is where you want to start this journey. How do you know how to find a syndicator? Check out our directory for a list of syndicators and some information about them. While this site does not, repeat, does not give out investing advice, we have scoured the Internet to find data about syndication opportunities.

That's a starting point... let us know what else you'd like to learn about syndications, come back and report to others how it has gone for you, and sign up for the email list to get updates as we create content to serve you, the investor, as you go on to create wealth and improve the world through your investments.

Consider this "Post 0" in our Syndication Basics Series. Now, on to the next: we suggest the following posts:

Post 1 of the Syndication Basics Series:

How can I get started in syndication investing?

Post 2 of the Syndication Basics Series:

What to expect when you make your first syndication investment.

Post 3 of the Syndication Basics Series:

What to expect once you are invested in a syndication investment.

Post 4 of the Syndication Basics Series:

What to expect at the end of a syndication deal.

Happy investing!