All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Frank Jiang I couldn't agree more.

The quote to follow should be - "Ask not what my friends can do for me, but what can I do for my friends?"

The more people you serve, the more people you will attract. The quality of your service will determine the quality of the people you attract.

Thanks Josh. Good tips. I'll experiment and see what works as I get rolling.

I want to keep my BP account in good standing so I thought I should ask before doing this.

I recently started my own website/blog and, being new to blogging as well as to BiggerPockets, I wasn't sure what the rules were in regards to creating a blog on BiggerPockets and copying posts from my other blog to my BP blog.

The thing is, I want equally to contribute to the community here at BP as well as build my website into a useful resource in its own respect. I don't want to, or imagine I could, replicate or replace BP. I just want to be able to say what I have to say in both places so more people can see it.

I understand that any posts I do copy over still need to adhere to the BP rules. Basically I am just wondering if I have to choose which blog I will write for, or if it's OK to write for both at the same time.

Sorry if the answer to this already exists. I did some searching and couldn't find anything that addressed this specific issue.

Thanks,

BJ

@Cheryl P.

 Wow, great list of links. I've been checking these out all morning. Thanks!

Hi @Theresa Colbert, 

I've been doing this a lot lately too. 

First I like to get a map of the county and/or city that I'm looking at properties in. More specifically, I like to see where the zip codes are mapped to, locations of government centers, police stations, fire stations, schools, etc... Some counties have interactive maps with this kind of data, but, if not, you can find a lot of different maps if you google your county with "maps" and look at the images results.

Then, I like to check out the county website - just google for the county the property is in - and see if there are any good resources on there. Some sites are better than others. Some are .gov sites and others might be .com sites. 

Then add "real estate assessment" and/or "real estate tax" to your google search term (the county name) and this should point you to a website where you can look up property taxes and the assessment records for all properties in the county. (If you don't know a specific address, just try typing in the street name - that seems to pull up all properties on a street for some sites.)

Then google for your county chamber of commerce. You can get a feel for what kinds of business activities are going on in the county, and you can find out when meetings are held and even attend a few of those to meet the local players.

Some counties also have "Economic Development" websites that could tell you of the latest plans for developments, and maybe even the latest incentives for bringing new business into the area.

For example: if I'm looking at investing in Fairfax, VA I would run the following google searches:

fairfax county va

fairfax county real estate tax assessments

fairfax county chamber of commerce

fairfax county economic development

On top of that you can look at some other online resources like:

http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045214/0...

http://www.city-data.com/

http://2chambers.com/

http://www.numbeo.com/

Another good thing to look up is the real estate law for your state (another thing I found by googling). For example, in Virginia the real estate law is online at https://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+c...

Hope this helps,

BJ

Thank you all for welcoming me. I look forward to being part of the BP community, and working with you in the future.

Hi all,

My name is Bartley "BJ" Anderson. I'm 35, married, have a 2 year old and a 1 month old, and I live in Lorton, Virginia. I used to work in construction and physical security, and changed careers in 2012 so now I'm a software/web developer (BS Computer Science). If you need a handyman or a website (or anything computer related really), I may be able to help you out.

I've studied and practiced personal finance and investing since 2000. I have a get rich slow mentality - more of a stoic view of accepting life how it is, but striving to apply myself fully to it. I thrive on working hard and pushing out the boundaries of my comfort zone, and I'm definitely not a "get something for nothing" type of investor.

I don't have a lot of experience investing in real estate other than owning my own home since 2009. Before the crash (2008) I read a lot about real estate investing, but put off getting into REI because I could tell that the market was irrational. Instead I chose to invest in myself and went to college and paid cash for my tuition. Over the past couple months I've been reading up on REI again, doing some number crunching/research on the market in and around my area, and exploring my options for getting investment capital.

My goal is to build a stable, passive income of $10,000 a month (free and clear), and I plan to do that through rental properties. I also want to fix/rehab properties because I like working with my hands and building stuff, and eventually I want to teach my sons how to fix and remodel properties when they get old enough to start swinging a hammer. 

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

BJ