In a lot of cases the business proposals for a lot of these different real estate investments actually makes sense. Problem is that the quality ones get fully subsribed by big money interests first and the more these companies have to go after retail-type investors it indicates a higher inherant risk (In other words, advertising on the FAN 960 means that these guys didn't have a strong enough business case in their investments to convince professional money managers across Canada or the world to invest enough in their project).
Going back to protfolio theory a reasonable percentage allocation that anyone should have towards ultra-risky investments such as individual real estate projects, hedge funds, private equity, et al is like 5% of all of your investments. Considering that most of these types of investments and funds demand that you have a minumum investment of around 100,000, it would require you to have a total portfolio size of 2,000,000 diversified across more conservative investments such as blue chip equities, bonds, ETF's for any of these kinds of investments to make sense on a unsystematic risk basis.
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