This has been a week of milestones here at BiggerPockets.com! In the last few days, we crossed the 150,000 forum post and 34,000 member milestones.

I just wanted to thank everyone who has been a part of our success!

In addition to the tens of thousands of members, millions of visitors have come to BiggerPockets to find the real estate information they seek.

We owe everything to you all.

Thank you, and please continue to support BiggerPockets.com!

Welcome to Our Blog!
Welcome to the Real Estate Dispatch from BiggerPockets.com. Our blog brings together experts in various fields of real estate with the goal of keeping our readers informed and up to speed. Whether you're a real estate professional (lender, Realtor, banker, etc), investor (landlord, flipper, wholesaler, etc.), or simply a consumer, renter or homeowner interested in the world of real estate, this blog is the place for you to get involved!

You can subscribe to our RSS feed, get blog updates by email, join our free mailing list, or best of all, join our social network along with 35,000 others interested in real estate education, dealmaking, networking, and marketing.

Tags: biggerpockets

BiggerPockets.com launched two great new features to the site today: Events & BiggerPockets Pro

Real Estate Events

The events system is an events calendar application, where members can find out about and choose to attend real estate auctions, classes, seminars, conferences, open houses, real estate club meetings, social events, webinars, etc.

When a member chooses to attend an event, that event will show up in their Dashboard, and they will be sent a reminder of the pending event the day before.

BiggerPockets Pro Accounts

Our BiggerPockets PRO Accounts gives members the ability to upgrade their account to get many value added features including:

• See who is visiting your profile, blog, and property listings
• Join as many groups as you’d like
• Send Private Messages to any member
• Increase your colleague requests from 10 to 25 at a time
• 1 Free press release per month
• Enhanced forum signature
• Ability to show your profile contact info to ALL VISITORS
• Show your property listings on your company’s profile
• Post events on the events calendar
• Get extra exposure for your profile on the Networking page

Here’s the chart to compare our new upgrades:

There are other features in the works as well! We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop!

Tags: biggerpockets, biggerpockets pro, biggerpockets.com, events, pro

Today has been another exciting day for BiggerPockets.com. Earlier today, I sat down with Andrea Lopez from CBS News (4) in Denver to talk about BiggerPockets. The interview was aired earlier tonight and I wanted to share it with all of our readers:

CBS FEATURES BiggerPockets.com

Special thanks to Andrea and CBS!

I hope you all enjoyed the piece. Please share it with everyone you know!

Best,
Joshua Dorkin

Tags: CBS, Press

BiggerPockets has reached yet another exciting milestone in its continued development as the nation’s premier real estate social networking website, 30,000 Members!

With a limited amount of time in the day and attention spans shrinking, it is becoming harder and harder to join every social network out there. As such, only the best thrive! We’ve seen MySpace eclipsed by Facebook, LinkedIn taking over business networking, Twitter ruling micro-blogging, and now, BiggerPockets is proving that it is the site of choice for real estate professionals, investors, and other aficionados of real estate.

We want to thank all of our members for signing up and all those people who have contributed to our success!

If you’re not a member already, Sign Up Today!

There’s much more to come at BiggerPockets - We’ll see You at 50,000 Members Soon . . .

Tags: bigger pockets, biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, milestone, real estate, real estate social network, social network

On Monday, January 12, 2009, BiggerPockets.com’s own Richard Warren wrote a compelling piece here on the Real Estate Dispatch called A National GO Zone?, proposing a solution to the nations housing crisis.

At a time when housing is one of the most critical issues in the national debate, I’m excited to let our readers know that the top politicians are also keeping their fingers on the pulse of what is going on in real estate by reading BiggerPockets.com.

As proof of this, we wanted to share with you a letter from the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, in response to the article above.

February 12, 2009

Dear Mr. Warren:

Thank you for contacting me regarding our nation’s current housing crisis. I appreciate you bringing your article The Real Estate Dispatch to my attention.

In my view, the housing market plays a vital role in the financial sector and stabilizing this industry is a key component of our economic recovery. That is why I worked hard to keep this problem from growing as it has. Recognizing that mortgage defaults and declining home values were the root cause of the current crisis, and that Nevada was ground zero for this phenomenon, I worked hard to pass the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-289) that President Bush signed into law on July 31, 2008. Additionally, while Congress worked with the Administration to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-343) that provided broad flexibility to the Treasury Department to respond to the deteriorating financial system, I pushed for language that requires the Treasury Secretary to ease the number of foreclosures.

As my colleagues and I seek ways to address the economic downturn and the housing crisis, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and ideas on how best to confront these challenges. I took note of your suggestion to provide tax incentive to stimulate the housing market similar to those imposed in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. As Nevada’s senior senator and the Senate Majority Leader, I am committed to doing all I can to strengthen our nation’s economy and provide millions of hardworking Americans with the relief they deserve.

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. For more information about my work for Nevada, my role in the United States Senate Leadership, or to subscribe to regular e-mail updates on the issues that interest you, please visit my Web site at http://reid.senate.gov. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

My best wishes to you.

Sincerely,

HARRY REID

United States Senator
Nevada

HR:cs

Tags: bailout, biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, Harry Reid, housing, housing crisis, majority leader, senate

As proof that we continue to provide a needed service to the online real estate space, the press has once again come to write about our site. BiggerPockets.com got a great featured writeup in today’s (Sunday) Denver Post (with a nice photo of yours truly!) that we hope you’ll check out:

Real estate investors at home on website

Thanks to everyone for the continued support!

Tags: bigger pockets, biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, denver post, joshua-dorkin, pr, publicity

We’ve realized for a long time that advertisers are looking to reach a targeted market when they promote their wares. Over the years, people who were looking to advertise to real estate investors have been coming to BiggerPockets. As our site has expanded, so has the audience, and as such, our advertising capabilities have as well. As BiggerPockets attracts real estate professionals, investors, homeowners, renters, and others in the real estate space, we knew that we had to make it so advertisers could target these folks in a more sophisticated way . . .

BiggerPockets Adds Demographic and Occupation Based Real Estate Advertising

BiggerPockets is now able to target our real estate advertising based on the following criteria:

• Occupation: We can target ads to show for a user based upon their chosen occupation on our site. We believe this is one of the most powerful targeting methods available, and we know that our advertisers and members will see a lot of benefit from this.
  Example: You’ve got a company that sells services to commercial real estate agents; you’ll thus have your ads appear only for those visitors as they navigate BP.

• Age: You can target your ads for visitors of any age or age range.
• Gender: You can target your ads to show only for males or females.
• Location: You can target your ads to members by Country, Region, State, Metro Area, or even by individual city.
• Combine Several Criteria for Extremely Targeted Ads: Not only can you target your ads for any one of the above criteria, but you can target as many as you’d like! Example: Your ads can target Males between 35 and 45 who are Mortgage Lenders in San Francisco Metro, and Des Plains, Iowa.

So . . . what are you waiting for? Start advertising on BiggerPockets Today!

Tags: ads, advertising, biggerpockets, real estate ads, real estate advertising