BiggerPockets

Bigger Pockets

Very large Real Estate investment site - - Hi participation, low quality and little authoritative information.

Before Biggerpockets, I bought and managed a multi-family rental for 19yrs. I went to seminars(before buying or joining BP), bought lots of informational products only to learn from hard-knocks that I was buying half-truths. Several products were aimed at the investor's FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Heavy emphasis was placed on Asset Protection via a legal entity owning the investment and isolating the investor's personal assets from litigation. Also learned that Federal and State Fair Housing Regulations are the cornerstone of rental management and few investors were even aware of such.

I then participated for about 18 months as a Buy & Hold investor - -

Summary: "The inmates are running the asylum". The naive, uninformed and wishful thinkers post and comment to one another as "peer experts". Few rational and experienced let alone professionals contribute to the chaos of the Bazaar. Unstructured forums allow the same question to be posted and ruminated creating a large set of duplicate or conflicting answers - - and the biggerpockets.com(BP) staff and management just don't care.

My gripe is several "sophisticated techniques" of investing are heavily promoted and not Censured by BP include some techniques which are nefarious at best and frequently blatantly illegal in several states; eg: Wholesaling. Just like any broker, a wholesaler gets two parties together - - for a price. Brokering without a license is a violation of most State Real Estate laws. BP staff and management allow such babble as if it were 'just another choice'.

Another example is transferring a property title from personal to a legal entity. Numerous comments exist where these inmates of the Bazaar suggest "the due on sale clause is seldom/never invoked". WOW! Talk is cheap, especially when the consequences land upon someone else. Additionally, using a legal entity is couched as "asset protection" but the negative consequences are never disclosed, such as Difficulty in obtaining credit under the entity name.

Deriving revenue is typically a problem for most websites. BP creates a primary stream from a layered membership structure. The bottom level is free, the intermediate level is one price and the elite level "Pro" is a few hundred bucks with some additional benefits attached. Problem; What is a "Pro"; someone with credentials in the field of Real Estate? Nope! Anyone willing to fork over the few hundred buck to get this label attached to their login - - IMO, intentionally misleading!

After attempting to keep the uninformed out of trouble for many months, I finally threw in the towel when someone asked about placing a Lease Option(LO) on MLS listings. When told 'you need to own or be the sales agent for said property', the response received back was "it's part of the own nothing and control everything" (aka John D Rockefeller). I guess anyone can create an LO on anything? NOT!

There are other nauseating subjects as well, but I've had my fill. If you're reading content from BiggerPockets.com, be sure to validate any ideas you glean using secondary sources and validating against YOUR State Regulations.