I am talked to over a couple hundred people over the past year and for those people SAVING less than 30K per year after their day job should invest in rentals or turnkey rentals in a market like kansas city, memphis, atlanta, birmingham, not seattle, san francisco, california...

 The short term goal is to gain landloard/aquisition knowledge and build a cashflow base of a couple thousand every month. But once you achieve that you should step up to larger passive partnerships/syndications because the return to pain in the butt ratio is greater. People who call/email/write on forums fail to see this two phase journey. People hear the benefits of MFH and come up with the ridiculous 1000 unit goal when they have not even see if they are borrowing material on their first buy and hold. Eventually, a lot of people quite a fizzle out while starting out on the MFH road when they should have done sfh and this insight.

As much as I advocate for "simple" I am really an advocate for the minimal effective dose to maximize returns with minimal effort. 

Where do you think the crossover point is? 

#goodProblemsToHave

What are the typical returns on syndicated deals and what's a typical holding period? Sorry if those are dumb questions. I'm trying to understand the benefits of investing in syndications vs owning rentals. Would your gains be taxed as ordinary income or as capital gains? It seems a lot riskier than buying rentals. With due diligence, I can purchase a B class house that rents over say, 1200/mo. Worse case scenario, I get a bad PM, bad tenants, I'm out a few thousand dollars, but I still have my house. With syndications, I can lose 100% of my investment if I pick the wrong syndicator to work with, right?

@Lane Kawaoka
Excellent point and I completely agree. I'm not sure where the crossover point is; perhaps once the investor becomes accredited through building a personal portfolio (which I 100% agree is more of a PITA) then that's when they start transitioning to the larger deals.

Since after all, you simply have a lot less options before you become accredited.

@Account Closed yes you are right it appears like a Maidoff situation waiting to happen. But I am currently sitting in a room with 200 syndicators this weekend who are doing it right and for the right reasons.