The community is filled with people from all walks of life who are involved or want to be involved with real estate in some fashion.

Would approach in two fashions:1. 

Use Excel, Stessa, Quickbooks, old fashioned ledger, whatever to do your bookkeeping. 

(maybe more of a Western US issue)You’ll need to check the current land zoning and make sure it can accommodate the project you have in mind.

@John Halverson Deal Machine is amazing, depending on your marketing strategy.If you have a huge budget, by all means: go the Direct Mail route.But if you don't, you need to go the old fashioned route of just picking up the phone and calling people.

@Johnny Hoang, any experience or interest in Western NC?

Hey Norton, I own a couple of mixed use building in Western Wisconsin.

I wrote this post about them:Why New Western is a Pain in My Butt

Ok, this is weird...3rd Eric in a row from western MA.

Then you go ahead and invest with that sponsor (which is where you spend 99% of your time).So, if people tell you their investment experience on investment XYZ they are 99% talking about their experience with the individual sponsor they happened to pick (as CrowdStreet is just a very temporary middleman at the beginning).To put it another way: crowdfunding is essentially the same as old-fashioned syndication...except it's done on the Internet.