According to this article in Retail Traffic Magazine, REIT Joint Ventures Unfazed By Credit Market Tumult.
I have done a fair amount of work with REITs acting as private equity managers, leveraging their portfolio with institutional investors rather than public equity.
As Andy Sucoff points out, the REIT typically puts up 15% or 20% of the equity plus a promote for beating a target IRR. They also use higher leverage ratios than they do in their portfolio to maximize the return.