We just launched the All New BiggerPockets Dashboard!

BiggerPockets members now have an easier way to navigate our real estate social network!

In an effort to improve the user experience and navigation of BiggerPockets, we’ve completely revamped the DASHBOARD.

Some of the most important improvements of the BiggerPockets Dashboard include:

• Activity Logging: Members can now track the activity of their colleagues on the site. See what your colleagues are commenting on, posting to the site, etc! You can track new activity and be the first to know about new properties, articles, and other stuff from your colleagues.
• Easier to Use Functionality: The most used functions on the site are now found on the left of the Dashboard in an easy to use toolbar.
• Site News & Announcements: Important website news and updates are all easily visible below the important functions
• Latest Forum Posts: Members can see the most recent forum activity directly from the DASHBOARD to help you find interesting topics more easily.
• A New Function Bar: The gray drop down function bar at the top of the DASHBOARD makes finding what you want on BiggerPockets easier then ever!
• Notifications Box: At the top right of the DASHBOARD will appear all NOTIFICATIONS that require your attention, including Reference Requests, Colleague Requests and Private Messages.

These are just some of the many improvements we’ve made to the dashboard. We’ve got some great additions that we’ll be adding to the dashboard in the next few days, and as we continue to grow, look forward to some really special stuff to come!

Sign into BiggerPockets.com Today and See How We’re Continuing to Revolutionize Real Estate Social Networking!

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for our real estate social network. Thanks for visiting!

Tags: biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, real estate 2.0, real estate social network, real estate social networking

It has been a long time coming . . .

BiggerPockets Members can now show off your BiggerPockets Real Estate Profile by adding our badges to your website, blog, or profile on other social sites! All badges will link directly to your profile, so add them today and promote yourself socially!

To get your badges, just go to your Dashboard, open the Profile section, and click on the Profile Badges link, OR go directly to http://www.biggerpockets.com/badges.

Here are just a few samples:

We’ve also got property badges, where you can promote your listings on BiggerPockets, and we’ll be launching more designs in the next weeks!

So . . .get out there and let people know that you’re a proud member of BiggerPockets!

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

What can I say but thank you!

What started less than 4 years ago as a personal website about real estate investing, is now fast becoming a nationally recognized internet brand.

A few minutes ago, BiggerPockets.com registered its 20,000th Member

I couldn’t have imagined when I was just starting this website that we’d come so far. It has been a great ride, and I derive so much pleasure knowing that we’ve helped so many of our MILLIONS of visitors over the years!

We’re Just Getting Started!

While 20,000 members and well over 100,000 monthly visitors may sound great, we’re just getting started! BiggerPockets has quite a few tricks still hidden under its sleeves, and with every new release, we only hope to help serve our members further.

In the next week we’re planning on releasing a few great new features to help our goal of improving real estate networking, education, and dealmaking for our members, and we’ve got even more cool updates coming shortly thereafter!

Our long-term plans (I could tell you about them, but I’d have to . . . . well, you know) include some very exciting updates over the next several months and years, and hopefully will continue to generate enthusiasm and interest from folks from every corner of the real estate world.

Thank You

To everyone who has supported me and BiggerPockets, I thank you. The site couldn’t be where it is today without your help, and I am so appreciative for your time and energy. Specifically, there are a few key people who I wanted to thank here: Julie, Charles, James, Jon, Rob, Edd, Steve, all of our moderators, blog contributors, advertisers, joint venture partners, members, and of course, our visitors - Thank You!

Well . . . enough for now. I’ve got to get back to work! There’s No Time to Think if we’re going to get to 50,000, 100,000, 1,000,000 members soon . . .

Tags: biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, joshua-dorkin, real estate, real estate 2.0, real estate investing bigger pockets, real estate social network

It has been a long time coming . . .

We just launched a MAJOR FACELIFT to BiggerPockets!

For years, people have been using our site to do everything from finding tools and resources, to discussing real estate, to making deals, to selling property, etc. We’ve just made it easier to do several of these things.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Created a New BiggerPockets Front Page — some of the great things you’ll find on the new front page of BiggerPockets.com include highlighted property listings, random member profiles, assorted public gallery photos, tags from our property listings, the latest forum and blog posts, and more!
  

• Re-launched our Property Directory to make it “2.0″ — it is now fully integrated into the social profiles of our members, and is easy to use and interactive! Members can save a property as a favorite, email it to their colleagues, subscribe to our main listing RSS feed, or customize their own feeds for individual State or even more specific listings, and much more!
  

  Of course, adding a listing is free and easy. Members (agents, investors, FSBOs, etc) can add investment properties, land, a primary residence, commercial properties, or even make a deal post on the property directory by going to the property section of their Dashboard or adding directly through the Property Directory page. Of course the listings are integrated with mapping, and are connected directly to the listing poster’s profile.

• Established a Property Notification “Matching” System — members can select criteria that interests them, and once a listing is added to the site that matches that set of criteria, the user will be notified in their Dashboard — if they elect to do so, they will also be sent an email letting them know that a match to their requirements has been made. The user can then remove individual notifications if they are no longer interested in seeing them, and disable or deactivate all notifications.
  

• Built a Community Gallery Page – members who elect to share photos by creating a public gallery will see their property photos in our gallery page.
  

• Cleaned up several areas of the site, and made many other changes to improve the user experience.

Stop by and see how BiggerPockets has stepped up the game!

Next up . . . . stay tuned! (did you really think we’d share all of our secrets?)

Tags: 2.0 propertiy, bigger pockets, biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, find real estate, Google maps, investment property, maps, property directory, real estate, real estate social network, social network, web 2.0

 Sunday, June 1, 2008: Martha Phifer of The Orlando Sentinel features BiggerPockets.com in her Home Base column in the Real Estate Section of the paper.

Every week Martha shares in her column “products, Web sites, tips, books and other things related to home decoration or home buying or anything home related.”

In her own words, “Any time I found a cool Web site that I think readers might find useful, I include it in the column.”

We’re proud to have been selected to be featured in the column, and of course, we look forward to more press in the future.

Tags: biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, Martha Phifer, orlando sentinel, real estate blogs, real estate investing, real estate website

The Launch of the BiggerPockets Blog

It all started 3 years ago today with a post titled “Real Estate Is Very Hot Investment” On March 13, 2005 I launched this blog about real estate, as an experiment to see if it would interest our BiggerPockets users.

3 Years Later, our BiggerPockets Blog known as Real Estate Investing for Real is often mentioned as one of the top real estate blogs online. In that time we’ve posted 622 articles and have had 2,873 comments (many thousands more if you include the spam we’ve had to delete).

I wanted to thank all of the people who have supported our blog over the years, all of our contributors, all of our subscribers, and finally, everyone who took the time to share their thoughts by commenting here on the site. This blog has undergone many different “phases,” and we’re still feeling our way around today, but we’re confident that we’ve done one thing throughout, and that is serve our readers with timely news, articles, and helpful information.

Blasts From the Past
I thought it might be fun to share a few of my favorite posts from the past few years . . . here’s a sampling:

1. BREAKING NEWS: Pinnacle Development Partners LLC Under Investigation - This article is so important to me because it allowed us to help spread the word about a terrible ponzi scheme with the world. Because of this article and our Pinnacle forum discussion we were able to help hundreds of people affected by this company. With close to 300,000 views and 1,500+ comments between the post and forum discussion, I’d have to say the impact of this article is as far reaching as anything else we’ve done throughout the years.
2. Top 35 Real Estate Blogs - In August of 2006, we thought it would be helpful to share what we felt were the top blogs in real estate. This post has been extremely popular, and over the years I’ve gotten a TON of complaints about non-inclusion. Many on the list are still around and would still be on a new list, but others would likely fail to make the grade today. We’re planning on releasing a 2008 edition of the top 35, and hopefully we can get this out ASAP.
3. How to handle a Real Estate Collapse - In June, 2005 I wrote about how to handle a potential real estate collapse. The market had been over-inflated for years by this time . . . I had been warning my friends since 2004 to get out while the going was good, but when I wrote this I had a terrible vibe that something bad was going to come of the Bubble. Fast forward to today and we can see the horrible ramifications of subprime and the housing run-up. I’m glad at least some people did listen and cashed out of their overpriced property when they could. Too bad millions and millions of others weren’t as lucky.
4. Top 10 Real Estate Lies of 2006 - I got a lot of flack for this post from realtors who thought I was being harsh. The fact is that many realtors do lie to convince their clients to buy or make other decisions and in 2006, this was plainly obvious to see. I couldn’t stop hearing about stories from people who had a sleazy real estate agent who tried to use a line to manipulate them. This post was a tribute to those scum-bags. The great thing about this post was that in the comments, a few of the readers helped to continue the list and we’re now at 35 lies. If we can get this one to 50 I may do a republishing . . .
5. Meet the Investor: Real Estate Investing Interview with Ryan Webber - This post marked the beginning of our feature, “Meet the Investor.” The interview was designed to help newer investors find some inspiration and learn from others who have been successful. We’ve since done quite a few investor interviews and are always looking for new people to interview. If you’re interested in joining the ranks, shoot me an email!
6. A Rental Property Management SNAFU Story - This post is important because, like the Pinnacle Development Partners article, it helped people who had been burned by a company to come together and get informed about the situation they were faced with. It was a very personal matter for me (as I was going through it myself), and I actually faced threats for writing it (and the ensuing follow-ups), but it was important for the 70+ landlords and hundreds of tenants and others who were affected just like me. Like the Pinnacle Discussion, we also set up a Whitener & Flynn Properties, LLC Management forum discussion to help those affected, and as a result, also created an area on the forums completely devoted to finding out about different real estate companies. The forum area is aptly named Ask About a Real Estate Company.
7. It’s Here - This article is so important because it marked the launch of our new Real Estate Social Network. Since launching a little over 2 months ago, close to 5,000 people have joined our site as members, and the feedback we’ve gotten has been incredible! This post is a great reminder for me of that day!

These posts mark just a small fraction of everything we’ve shared on this blog, and each post has been important for different reasons. We’ve now got 10 fantastic contributors who help to inform you all about anything and everything having to do with real estate, and I’m confident that we’ll continue to grow our readership and influence in the real estate world.

Thanks again for all of your support and I am excited to see what the next 3 years brings for us!

Our Readers Give Back

I thought it might be interesting to hear your thoughts on the past 3 years (or less for those new readers). Do you have a favorite post? Who are your favorite contributors? We’d love to get some of your thoughts on what we’ve done and what you’d like to see from our blog! Jump in and make a comment for all to see!

Tags: bigger pockets, biggerpockets, biggerpockets real estate social network, biggerpockets.com, josh dorkin, joshua-dorkin, real estate blog, real estate bloggers, real estate investing, real estate investing for real

BiggerPockets.com Real Estate Investing Community

December 23, 2007

Happy Holidays!!

Hey Everyone! I wanted to take some time to thank you for all of their patronage of BiggerPockets!

We’re approaching the end of 2007 and this has been another banner year for BiggerPockets.com Real Estate Investing Community!

BiggerPockets 2.0
Launch is Imminent!

Several years ago, we thought it would be important to develop BiggerPockets into a site that made it easy for people to not only share knowledge and deals, but also to network. Sadly, the project was a complete failure. Several months ago we set out to revive this vision and have been working on it ever since.

As you read this email, we are Beta testing the new functions for BiggerPockets. The official launch is just around the corner and we believe that these new developments will improve the Networking capabilities of our members.

Keep up with the latest developments at www.BiggerPockets.us

BiggerPockets Forums

Our discussion forums started the year with slightly over 4,000 members and have grown to over 11,000 strong! There continue to be countless wonderful conversations happening on the site, and our body of knowledge and wisdom just gets better!

I wanted to thank our moderators, who have all helped to keep things running smoothly. Thanks a million to James Connery (Flipper101), Jon Holdman (Wheatie), Ryan Webber (Ryan Webber)! You guys are the best!

BiggerPockets Blog

Our blog, Real Estate Investing for Real, has had a great year. Over the past several months, we’ve been building up a team of experts to keep you in the know on the latest real estate trends, news, and lots of great first hand lessons. Help us thank them all personally: Connie Brzowski, Michael Creel, Charles Feldman, FSBOJane, Joshua Marks, Esq., Richard Warren, and Jim Watkins.

We’re always looking for new, talented contributors . . . If you’re interested, be sure to let us know!

Thanks again to all of our readers/users/members/contributors for making this the best year yet for BiggerPockets.com!

Tags: bigger pockets, biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, Featured Articles, real estate investing