5 Real Estate Blogs You Should Explore at FinCon Dallas 2017
FinCon is a top conference for finance, and real estate is certainly not left out of the mix. As a real estate FinTech company, RealtyShares is a proud member of the FinCon community. However, there’s a lot more going on in real estate at FinCon than crowdfunded real estate investing. If you want to help raise your real estate IQ, be sure to connect with and follow these five real estate focused blogs and the amazing writers behind them. Here are five of our favorite real estate blogs represented at FinCon17.
BiggerPockets — Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench
BiggerPockets is one of the largest real estate communities on the web. BiggerPockets is a real estate site with a blog, podcast, forum, marketplace, guides, courses, and books. The BiggerPockets community has more than 840,000 members from over 20,000 companies. Members have contributed nearly 3 million forum posts and over 14,000 blog posts, according to the BiggerPockets stats page. The blog section includes many great contributors, but two of our favorites are Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench.
Mindy Jensen has been flipping houses since 1998 and is a licensed real estate agent in Colorado. She lives in Longmont, Colorado, not far from BiggerPockets’ Denver headquarters. She has contributed over 90 posts to the BiggerPockets blog. When flipping houses today, she teams up for the work with her husband.
Scott Trench works in Operations for BiggerPockets at the Denver headquarters. He is a real estate investor taking a slow and steady approach to building his real estate investment portfolio, typically adding around one property every year or so. In addition to his own investments and work at BiggerPockets, Scott is an active agent in the Colorado real estate market. When not adding to his Hawaiian shirt collection, he is busy on the keyboard and has more than 50 posts on the BiggerPockets blog.
Afford Anything — Paula Pant
Paula Pant founded Afford Anything with an amazing motto: you may not be able to afford everything, but you can afford anything. This philosophy is clear in the Afford Anything blog and podcast, which is managed by Paula and her partner Will Sisk.
Afford Anything rose to popularity tracking Paula’s journey to a passive income through real estate. With a portfolio of properties in Atlanta, Paula and Will recently moved to the desert in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to Paula (2015), with no state income tax, it was like getting an instant raise!
Epic posts at Afford Anything include topics like renting versus buying, making money as an Airbnb host, and buying affordable investment properties managed by a local team while she is busy traveling the world.
Ideal REI — Eric Bowlin
Eric Bowlin is a good fit in the FIRE movement, advocating Financial Independence and Retiring Early. He blogs about this journey at his site, Ideal Real Estate Investing, or Ideal REI. Through his blog and membership program, Eric helps others follow in his path of building a six-figure passive income with rental properties.
Eric reminds readers that real estate is not only a potential source of passive income, a smart strategy can possibly help you save on taxes, pay down debt and build equity, grow your wealth through appreciation, and leverage existing equity and properties to grow your real estate empire. Keep in mind there are risks to real estate investing including loss of capital.
Through a combination of personal stories, numbers-driven analysis, and easy-to-follow guides, Eric helps readers get started in real estate investing.
31-year-old Eric is a military veteran who walked away from a Ph.D. program in economics to follow his real estate dreams. After a risky fix and flip in 2012, this licensed real estate agent is someone real estate enthusiasts should not miss at FinCon in Dallas.
Reluctant Landlord — Elizabeth Colegrove
Outside of being one of the nicest people you may meet anywhere, Elizabeth Colegrove is a host of knowledge in all things related to becoming a landlord with single-family homes. Standing up to the naysayers in her life, she slowly built a real estate empire with her husband, a military veteran.
Combining frugal living and smart financial planning, the Colegroves bought their first investment property, a foreclosed fixed and flip that required a mix of cash and sweat equity. They moved on to buy a short sale home, and slowly expanded to the seven houses they own today, according to her website.
While she didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a landlord, as you may guess from her site’s name, The Reluctant Landlord, she has since jumped into the industry head first. While she may be a reluctant landlord, she is a skilled one and someone anyone involved in real estate or real estate media should meet at FinCon.
Coach Carson — Chad Carson
Chad Carson is a real estate investor and world traveler. At his website, CoachCarson.com, Chad helps empower visitors to follow in his footsteps in real estate investing. His journey in entrepreneurship began as a new college graduate in 2003 with just $1,000 in the bank. After the hustle and struggle of building a new business, he discovered the wonderful world of real estate.
To Chad, real estate is both a source of income and an opportunity to build wealth. A former Clemson University football player, he is now a “coach” to those looking to improve their finances through real estate.
He contributes to the previously mentioned BiggerPockets blog in addition to his own site. At his blog, he covered topics including deal analysis, real estate loans and financing, flipping houses, finding good deals, landlording, and more.
Say hello to the RealtyShares team
While you are busy hanging out with these top real estate bloggers at FinCon 2017 this October in Dallas, don’t forget to come find members of the RealtyShares team who are excited to return for another amazing FinCon. If you want to learn more about crowdfunded real estate, raising funds for your own real estate project, or just want to say hello, look out for me and others from the RealtyShares family.
