Syndicaters can't get enough investors

[Paul B.]

Background: I have been looking into multi-family passive investing. I attended a multi-family seminar in early November, hosted by a guru (he hates the term but I'll call him that here for simplicity) who knows my local market very well. I was convinced that it's the right path for me as a passive investor, but was discouraged by the high cost to join the program, which is exacerbated by the fact that I currently don't quite have enough liquid capital to participate in most deals. I networked with several deal sponsors at the event, in the hopes that I would be able to work with them in the future.

Two months later, two situations have raised my eyebrows:

1. One of the sponsors I met, who has a good track record, was working on a new deal that was mentioned at the seminar. I requested the information, knowing that I would not participate, but wanted to get practice examining the PPM and other documents. After our initial contact and email exchange, he has since followed up with me twice, asking if I am interested. The second time was after the date that he initially expected to have all his passive investors committed, and he still has room for 15-20% of the funds he needs.

2. The "guru" who ran the seminar emailed me recently about a deal one of his contacts (whom I have not met before) is sponsoring, in which he (the "guru") is investing his own money. I assume it was sent to everyone who attended. I also requested the information, for the same reason as the previous example. After reading through it, the dates on the documents indicated that I was not part of the initial distribution, which leads me to believe that they didn't get enough interest the first time and now were casting a wider net to reach more potential investors.

My question is, are these the signs of a weak deal?

I've been under the impression that there is more investor money out there than good deals, which would mean that anyone who has a good opportunity should have no problem finding passive investors. I don't have the expertise to do my own due diligence, which is fine because I am not ready to participate right now anyway, so all I can do is look at the projected performance, and the numbers looked good. Can I assume that more savvy investors have found flaws with the projections, and are passing? Or do all syndications take several weeks (or months) to generate enough interest to raise the money they need?

Obviously I am not asking anyone to evaluate the deals themselves. I am just asking if it's a red flag that an experienced deal sponsor with a wide network can't immediately find 30-50 people to put up 50-100K a pop?