Structuring Real Estate Investments: Organizational Forms and Joint Ventures Large real estate investments often require several investors to pool their capital in order to have sufficient equity to acquire the property. Different investors may bring different amounts of capital and expertise to the table. Therefore, an ownership agreement that takes this into consideration must be structured. This chapter discusses various ways that more than one investor can jointly acquire or develop real estate. The economics of these joint ventures are discussed, along with the legal ownership forms that can be used, such as general partnerships, limited partnerships, and corporations. Although the focus of this chapter is on limited partnerships, the same concepts apply to simpler partnerships such as a general partnership that does not have limited partners. Finally, as you will see in this chapter, most REITs formed in the past 10 years were structured such that the REIT is the general partner in a limited partnership that owns the properties. The limited partners are investors who exchanged their partnership interest in a syndication for a partnership interest in the limited partnership owned by the REIT. This will be discussed further in Chapter 21.