Crowdfunding makes real estate easily accessible, however, in regard to institutional/syndicated real estate investments, the advice of an expert who works in the industry every day, knows all the players and their track records, and performs due diligence on each offering is a great benefit to you and comes to you at no cost.

Gianluca B.I forgot to mention another key player I found is a great local lender/bank.  

You need to know all the players and their motivations, what they want out of this deal, and how you can balance those desires with your own goals for a successful project.

Know who ALL the players are before getting involved.

The players I have encountered are severely lacking in the experience and knowledge I would like.

Many of the most active players in this market rely on his connections and expertise, myself included. 

Aloha @Kevin MurakamiThere's only a handful of real 'players' in the residential investing market here, which I define as REIs who flip 10 houses or more annually.

Get creative and keep bouncing things off the players until something sticks and you make some money.

To make the long story short: major players poured major amounts of money into it.

But even now I can combine these folks and quite a number of “B-level” players in a number of ways depending on what the deal requires.