For newbies and the BIG MEANIE INVESTORS in the BiggerPockets forums

[Jim K.]

We get a lot of this, and sometimes, it really does baffle me. As my profile says, I'm an affordable-housing handyman landlord running a small outfit out here in Pittsburgh and doing what I do is NOT EASY. It's significantly harder than anything else I've ever done. Not to be a jerk about it, but I've done my share of difficult things. I'm pretty sure my share was quite a bit more than some might believe.

So I feel my story is really only even possible here in the USA. I am a living example that real estate, starting from practically nothing, can take you places. I'm not claiming that running this outfit is passive investing, not by a long shot. I'm not sitting at my laptop on a boat in a marina with my multiple girlfriends du jour in thongs bringing me umbrella drinks every time I snap my fingers. But still, I'm getting it done, much more than I could have imagined some twenty ago before my first property rehab.

Newbies, WE ARE NOT YOUR ENEMY. The people who have been here for a while are not trying to bully you. If you feel bullied, if you feel your dreams are being quashed, well, you need more resilient dreams and more pressing motivation. We're disclosing the realities of this business, and many of those realities are just not pretty. Incidentally, no one is paying us to be extra-special nice to you while we do it. No one from BP has ever paid me a penny to write a single one of the 5000 plus posts I've written here (full disclosure, @Mindy Jensen did send me a T-shirt).

The reason I'm here is that I actually want to help, I'm actually looking for meaningful connections, I've actually found some here, and I am grateful. Really smart and capable people, who really understand this business, who have given me help and knowledgeable advice that is literally worth thousands on thousands of dollars.

If you feel that I or others in the forums have been unkind to you, please come here and air your grievances. I promise that I, at least, will hear you out.

CAVEAT: There are a lot of things established investors try not to say on public forums. Some aspects of any discussion like this (discussions of net worth, verification of one's holding, even my full name) should really be private. But once in a while, when the BS gets too thick and my eyes start to water from the stench, things need to be aired out and I will disclose these things in private in this discussion to someone who questions that I am who I say I am, or whom I think is not being fully truthful.

[Jim K.]

@Melanie P.

The Bigger Pockets forums are one of the few places on Earth where you can ask someone with real money an intelligent, specific question about how they makes his money and they will answer.

There are plenty of people here who are trolling for business. I get it. But along with their business, there's good advice to be had here, and they'll share it. Why? Because this business is isolating. Everyone I went to college and have remained friends with over the years since is pretty much stuck in the same boat. They live in an expensive house in an expensive neighborhood, they drive a car they owe money on, and they complain that their wife doesn't let them invest anything in real estate. We all graduated from college in the late 1990s

Who do real estate investors have to talk to once we're on the other side of the looking glass? What am I supposed to tell my older brother, who worked at least twice as hard as I did but took out a gargantuan $750K mortgage on a McMansion five years ago? He drives a car with doors that open funny, too, and every day, he has to drive that car 45 minutes to work and drive it back home for 45 minutes.

He professes to love his alone time in his commute and he loves his challenging job, but for the love of Christ that's an hour and a half a day of prime time down the crapper five or six days a week. I worked from home from 2009 until last year. My wife works less than two miles away.

My brother and I have never had an honest conversation about time or money. Not once in our adult lives. Instead, I come here.