BiggerPockets® Community Rules & Regulations

Welcome to the BiggerPockets® Community Rules & Regulations

The real estate investing discussion forums, marketplace, and social network at BiggerPockets.com are where investors and other real estate professionals congregate. By participating in BiggerPockets forums, marketplace, and social networks, you agree to follow the community rules and regulations outlined below. When we use the term “forum,” we mean any area of the BiggerPockets.com that allows interaction with other individuals visiting or using BiggerPockets.com, such as forums and marketplaces. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use.

Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with these rules and regulations. BiggerPockets is a community, and we rely on you to keep this community friendly and enjoyable by following these rules.

If you feel that another member's post or activity has violated these rules and would like to bring it to our attention, you may contact us via [email protected]. Although BiggerPockets tries to evaluate all reports regarding misuse of its services, it does not promise to do so, and it reserves the right to take any action or no action at all in response to such reports.

I. Forum And Blog Posting Regulations

A - No Pornographic or Sexual Material.

Sexually explicit discussions are not acceptable to our community. Sexually explicit content and links to such content are strictly prohibited.

B - No Profanity or Discriminatory Language

The use of profanity and discriminatory language is strictly prohibited, whether in titles, forums, blog posts, or anywhere else on BiggerPockets.

C - No Contact Information is Allowed in the Forums

Contact Information is not allowed to be posted in the Forums. Users cannot post email addresses, phone numbers, social media handles, or links to their website/company website or share others' email addresses, phone numbers, social media handles, or links to websites.

If you want to include your email address, website, or phone number for people to contact you, please put this information in your Signature. BiggerPockets reserves the right to remove any email address, website, or phone number that has been placed in our message posts as a means of contact. This is to prevent bots and scrapers from pulling your information and keeping our site and your information as secure as possible.

In addition, do not disclose any personal information that you do not wish others to know.

D - No For the Attention of (FAO) or Goodbye Posts.

Personal discussions or "for the attention of" posts are prohibited. Please use the private message feature, chat, or email for this purpose. In addition, please refrain from "Goodbye Forum" posts in forum threads.

E - No Impersonations.

Do not impersonate or attempt to impersonate other forum members, moderators, or administrators. In addition, do not copy/paste answers from AI to write your posts. Do not post email addresses, standard addresses, ICQ and other messaging client numbers, or phone numbers which are not your own. The creation or use of fake user accounts is strictly prohibited. If you see or suspect AI-generated content from other members in the forums, please use the "report abuse" button so our moderators can be notified.

F - You Must Disclose Your Relationship with any Company, Website, Guru, or Other Entity that You Comment About.

If you participate in a discussion about a company, website, guru, coaching program, etc., and have any kind of relationship with that entity (e.g. affiliate, partnership, employee, owner), you must disclose this relationship in your post. BiggerPockets reserves the right to publicly or privately ask about your relationship with any company that you comment on, to remove any post which does not disclose such a relationship, and to close your account if you fail to disclose such a relationship.

G - One account per user, please.

BiggerPockets users are limited to one account per person; users may not register or use alternate accounts.

H - No Abusive Behavior.

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not post or otherwise transmit (including through the BiggerPockets private messaging system) any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, abusive, hateful, harassing, obscene, sexually explicit, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. Abusive behavior includes posting in all caps.

I - Do Not Flame or Troll

Flaming, flame-baiting, and trolling are not allowed anywhere on this site, including in posts, signatures, and private messages. Flaming is directly insulting another member, flame-baiting is making a comment with the intention of getting a flame as a response, and trolling involves starting arguments or upsetting people by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

J - Remember - All Members are Equals

Treat all BiggerPockets members equally, whether they are an admin, a moderator, or a general member. Do not single out a member because they have a low post count or a low status on the site. In addition, do not personally attack members who violate these rules. Instead, report the member or post to a moderator or admin.

K - Respect the BiggerPockets Employees

If a BiggerPockets employee tells you to stop doing something, stop. Never attack the staff directly. If you disagree with any action taken by a staff member, please contact the administrator privately.

L - No Email Harvesting

Harvesting email addresses from our site is strictly prohibited. Do not harvest or sell email addresses from BiggerPockets users.

M - No Private Message Spam

Users with basic BiggerPockets memberships may only send private messages to their colleagues. BiggerPockets Pro members may send private messages to any member. Still, these private messages may not contain advertisements or solicitations (this includes sending links directing people to your website) including copy and paste messages. Violations of this rule can result in being blocked from our messaging system.

N - No Poaching or Polling

Diverting our members to competitor forums, URLs, or websites is strictly forbidden.

Polling our members to gather information to be used on a competing real estate site, course, podcast, book, blog post, or video is strictly forbidden.

O - No Affiliate Marketing

No form of affiliate marketing is allowed on BiggerPockets by members. That means no posting affiliate links or coupon codes anywhere on the site including in messages, forum posts, in your signature, in member blogs or regular blog posts, blog comments, or on your profile. Hiding affiliate links through services that provide short URLs is also forbidden.

P - Stay On-Topic

Posts in a particular forum need to stay on-topic. If you want to talk about something that is drastically different from the topic of a post, please create a new topic. Posts that are unrelated to real estate must be placed in the off-topic forum.

Q - No Religious or Political Postings

Religious statements and threads on the topic of religion are not permitted on BiggerPockets. Political threads are not permitted on BiggerPockets. Any post or thread regarding politics will be removed. BiggerPockets reserves the right to edit any post or thread that may contain political commentary.

BiggerPockets is a real estate forum, not a forum for religious or political debates, discussions, or proselytizing.

R - No Thread Killing

Thread killing disrupts the flow of conversation on BiggerPockets. If you are not happy with a post you made and nobody has posted a reply, please reach out to an admin immediately to request removal. Any posts that receive a response will not be removed from the site for any reason.

S - No Spamming

Spam is strictly prohibited on BiggerPockets. Spamming is characterized by initiating threads or posts that contribute nothing to a forum, whether on or off-topic. Examples include: advertisements that are not located in the Classifieds Forum, empty posts, copy and pasting content from other websites, posts with few words that have no relation to the current thread, promotion of your website or product in any thread other than the classifieds, and those posts that state they are Spam, either to annoy or to increase a member's post count. Posting the same copy-and-paste message (or similar) across several threads is also considered Spam, as is filling your post with keywords with the goal of attracting searchers (keyword stuffing).

If you have information to share, post it in the forums. We have many read-only members who can also benefit from your information.

T - Off-Limits Ad & Solicitation Types

Posts or messages including chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any Ponzi schemes are not allowed on our site. Promoting or marketing properties that you have no contractual or ownership interest in is also strictly prohibited.

U - No Advertising, Sponsored Posts, or Promotions Outside the Classifieds Forum

BiggerPockets may consider looking for or offering deals, looking for or offering loans, looking for or offering to be a cash buyer, looking for or offering services or any mention of your company, or what your company does or links to your company website, social media handles or email address to be advertising. These posts are only allowed in the Classifieds Forum. Your account is for your use only. You may not use your account to post on behalf of any other person or company. These posts may not be 'sponsored by' or 'brought to you on behalf of' or any other variation on this theme in an effort to circumvent our 'No Self-Promotion' rules. This rule applies to all forums including event announcements.

There is one area of the website for promotion, solicitation, marketing, and requests: The Classifieds Forum. Posting advertisements in other forums, in blogs, in comments, or via unsolicited private messages is prohibited.

These rules apply to the Classifieds threads: The primary purpose of BiggerPockets is to give members a forum to discuss real estate. Advertising is a secondary benefit to paid members. We limit the number of ads each user may post. A user may start up to 2 new ad threads each day. A member may repeat an ad for a previously advertised product or service as long as at least 5 days have elapsed from the previous posting. Replying to an existing ad just to get it back to the top of the list is considered repeating an ad and can only be done after at least 5 days from a previous update. Replies that address questions or comments from other members are not subject to the 5 day time limit. Note that the limits on repeating ads are based on the product or service being advertised, not the specific text of the ad. Furthermore, BiggerPockets reserves the right to remove ads or to close completely accounts of those users who have incomplete profiles, or who fail to provide enough information to identify the product or service that is being promoted, or for any other reason.

II - Member User Names, Signatures, Avatars, and Profile Information.

A - Profile Name

The name you enter for your first and last name MUST be your actual name—pseudonyms or fake names are not allowed. Names cannot have post-nominal letters or titles added to them. Members may not use website URLs or email addresses as their profile link name, and profile names may not contain references to drugs, sex, or any other inappropriate material.

B - Avatars and Profile Images

Member avatars exist so our users can share their personalities or photos. Avatars may not be used for promotional purposes. This means no ads and no company logos. In addition, users are strictly prohibited from using the following as an avatar: - Images depicting any person other than yourself - Images you are not authorized to use under copyright law - Sexually explicit images - Unprofessional images - Images that make a political or religious statement

C - Forum Signatures

BiggerPockets Pro members are allowed to append signatures to their forum posts. These signatures will appear once a user upgrades to Pro and:

- Must be set up in your profile, and not manually added to your messages
- May not contain any pricing, sales, or product details
- May include two clickable link URLs and/or email
- May not contain links to other real estate forums or competing websites
- May not be rented or sold to anyone.
- May not consist exclusively of capital letters
- May not include links to YouTube channels, Facebook groups, or Meetup or LinkedIn pages
- Company logos may not be stock photography, any copyrighted image, book covers or contain contact information

Signatures that are offensive, insulting, or harmful to either BiggerPockets, its members, or its staff, are strictly prohibited.

BiggerPockets may remove any signature at any time for any reason.

III - LINK MODIFICATION BY ADMINISTRATORS

BiggerPockets administrators may, at their discretion, modify any link contained within our forums. These modified links may contain codes allowing BiggerPockets to profit for referred traffic.

IV - FORUM VOTING

BiggerPockets' forum voting system was created so members can recognize others who have made valuable contributions to the community. BiggerPockets employs automated voting bans and reserves the right to take any measure it deems necessary to prevent members from artificially inflating their influence or that of other members.

V - Use of Official Private Messaging System

Forum administrators reserve the right to periodically scan and review the private messages database in search of abuse and/or spam.

Abuse of the forum email or private messaging systems may result in immediate removal from BiggerPockets, and BiggerPockets has the right (but not the obligation) to pursue all available remedies to address such abuse. Spam, abusive, or aggressive posts may be reported by any member using the “Report Spam” button inside the message. Please note that by registering for this forum, you agree to receive emails and private messages about your account from forum administrators and moderators. You may also receive promotional messages from BiggerPockets. See our Privacy Policy for how to opt out of unwanted promotional email.

VII - Removal of content, banning, suspension, and termination

BiggerPockets may in its sole discretion remove any content for any reason or no reason at all. In addition, BiggerPockets may restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to parts of or to the entire BiggerPockets website if you violate any of the community rules and regulations or terms of use, or for any other reason, in its sole discretion. BiggerPockets may take these actions at any time, with or without notice and without liability to any users.

BiggerPockets' failure at any time to require performance of any provision of these rules and regulations or our Terms of Use or to exercise any right provided for herein will not be deemed a waiver of such right provision or such right. All waivers must be in writing. Unless the written waiver contains an express statement to the contrary, no waiver by BiggerPockets of any breach of any provision of these rules and regulations or our Terms of Use or of any right provided for therein will be construed as a waiver of any continuing or succeeding breach of such provision, a waiver of the provision itself, or a waiver of any right under these rules and regulations or our Terms of Use.

Our forums discussion and blog comments are semi-moderated, and moderators or administrators may close or delete a thread or comment at any time and for any reason. Once a topic is closed, members are not allowed to start a new thread with the same topic. All questions or remarks regarding closed or deleted threads must be sent via private message to the forum administrator.

It is your responsibility to maintain a current, valid email address in your registration information so that our moderators can contact you in the event of a policy violation, though no such contact by BiggerPockets is required.

If any of your BiggerPockets privileges have been revoked and you have questions, please email or private message the forum administrator.

BiggerPockets is a dynamic online community, and BiggerPockets reserves the right to change or alter these rules at any time.