This handbook is addressed to anyone seeking up to $5 million to fund a limited partnership where you do not want to specify which properties will be purchased and/or sold. This form of real estate partnership is known as a blind pool.

Just as in a blind pool real estate investment trust (REIT), investors in private placements do not know which properties the partnership will purchase. When you offer a blind pool limited partnership interest to a third party, the evaluation of the partnership's prospects will be based on your track record as opposed to a specified pool-limited partnership where prospects can be evaluated on basis of costs and projected revenues.

Interestingly, there is no evidence that the average performance of blind pools differs significantly from the performance of comparable specified pool partnerships.

For most real estate entrepreneurs, the advantages of being able to raise money without having to first identify and have under contract a particular property are obvious.

Most real estate entrepreneurs, when hearing the word securities associated with their deal, react as a 14th-century Flemish townsman hearing of a new plague. But securities can be a good thing. Showing sophistication about the securities piece of your project can garner respect as well as expand the number of online prospective investors, to say nothing of giving you extraordinary advantages down the road if things go south.