"Passive" merely indicates that the taxpayer does not materially participate in the activity, or that the activity is a rental real estate activity. 

Welcome home Jay, you've come to the right place.Browse the site and participate.

If so, I'd warn against it unless you have institutional sized funds.

Regulation D exemptions are the only way for many people to participate in some funds and it severely hampers capital flows to certain financial product offerings.BTW...Welcome to BP!

and not one was institutional loan.

Some here believe to be an advantage.You'll find a lot of resources here and will find that participation will help build good contacts.

I am beginning a search to find large loans/ppm from financial institutions.

Although it has escaped major headlines, it is mainly becuase the FDIC struck some backroom deals with large institutional investors to buy those "toxic" mortgages for pennies on the dollar.

I think they did eventually get through the process, but it took years.You might look into the Urban Land Institute, http://www.uli.org/.

I'm at 710 only because I'm young and don't yet have a credit card, I have one I'm going to activate and use sparingly to bump it up to around 730ish (that's what the myFICO prediction was anyways).My parents on the other hand... 819 for my dad and my mom said around 830, they never have problems with financial institutions when asking for money.