The 55-plus deal I got sent has an 8% pref. Is that basically a note?

The word pref is doing less than it looks like. It means your 8% gets paid out of available cash before the sponsor takes anything, and if there's no cash there's no payment. A note would give you a payment obligation you could enforce, a maturity date, and usually collateral. Ask whether the 8% is cumulative and compounding, because unpaid and never-caught-up is a very different instrument from unpaid and accruing at 8 on 8.

Also ask where the cash for the pref comes from in year one. A stabilized 55-plus community might throw off enough, but if any part of the raise is lease-up or a repositioning, distributions get funded from reserves for a while, which is your own money coming back to you with the word yield attached.

The number I'd want before anything else is the debt service coverage at the going-in occupancy, not stabilized. On active adult at that size, if the bank loan eats coverage down to 1.15 in year one, your 8% pref is decoration until year three, and the 14% hurdle ends up being the sponsor's problem too. Read the waterfall for whether accrued pref is paid before or after return of capital at sale, because that ordering is worth more than the coupon. And have your own attorney read the LPA. Whatever the deck summarizes, the agreement governs.